Evasive About Death

President Joe Biden was just diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, in its late stages. The question on interviewers' minds is: how long has he got? The answer they are now receiving is invariably evasive. While death is unpredictable, someone usually has a good idea of how long a person has got. This may include the minister. Often enough, where no one else will answer the question, it falls to the minister. I have generally given my opinion -- and I have generally been right -- always, though, with the qualification or reservation that one cannot know for sure. OBSERVATION: The closer one is to death, the easier it is to predict. My own wife asked me two days before her death, "How long have I got?" I said, "It won't be long." Others were, in my view, being dishonest about it.