There are so many new books about dying that there are now special shelves set aside for them in bookshops, along with the health-diet and home-repair paperbacks. Some of them are so 21 with detailed information and step-by-step instructions for performing the function, that you"d think this was a new sort of 22 which all of us are now required to learn. The strongest impression the casual reader gets is that proper dying has become an extraordinary, 23 an exotic experience, something only the specially trained can do.
24 , you could be led to believe that we are the only 25 capable of being aware of death, and that when the rest of nature is experiencing the life cycle and dying, one generation after 26 , it is a different kind of process, done automatically and trivially, or more "natural", as we say.
An elm in our backyard 27 the blight (枯萎病) this summer and dropped stone dead, leafless, almost overnight. One weekend 28 was a normal-looking elm, maybe a little bare in spots but 29 alarming, and the next weekend it was gone, passed over, departed, taken. Taken is right, for the tree surgeon came by yesterday with his 30 of young helpers and their cherry picker, and took it down branch by branch and carted it off in the back of a red truck, everyone 31 .
The dying 32 a field mouse, at the jaws of an amiable household cat, is a spectacle I have beheld many times. It 33 to make me wince. However, early in life I gave up throwing sticks 34 the cat to make him drop the mouse, 35 the dropped mouse regularly went ahead and died anyway.