In the last 12 months, I have witnessed two people with terminal illnesses discuss their experiences online. And I have watched people respond. In the first case, said person was told by an atheist that they couldn’t pray for them because they didn’t believe in God. In the second case, said person was told by someone that they were disappointed said person put so much faith in modern medicine.

To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens: people with illnesses like these find themselves suddenly, and unexpectedly, much closer to the finishing line. I can’t help but think that in such circumstances, the person has the absolute right in their last days, weeks, months, [hopefully] years, to be in a situation where they are surrounded by those they love, making the most of the time they have left, unhindered by further burdens, like being forced to defend, or consider, how they chose to deal with their illness and/or spirituality.

Even if I stretch my imagination as far as possible, I have nothing more than a dulled sense of what it must be like to live with an illness like that, but it seems so blindingly obvious to me that each second would be precious, and doesn’t need to be spent defending one’s choices. No matter what our views are, and how strongly we feel about them, surely there’s a time and a place to discuss them.