Dr. Alan Morgenstern joined the psychiatry faculty at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in 1965. He also served as chairman of psychiatry at Good Samaritan Hospital and Medical Center in Portland, Oregon. His many accomplishments include his part in a World Health Organization Travel-Study Fellowship. He served as a senior examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and he published a critique of this process, which resulted in a humanization of the experience for examinees. While teaching at OHSU he had a tremendous impact on generations of students who were impressed by his humane approach to medicine. He received the OHSU Meritorious Achievement Award for Teaching. He also served as a captain in the United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine. His close friend, Harold Boverman, M.D., wrote, “He loved his family, his work, his patients, his friends, and his music; his license plate read ‘etude.’”

Dr. Morgenstern contacted us regarding his hope that we would facilitate publishing this account of his experience as a hospice patient. This represents an edited version of his manuscript. L.G. and H.B.