terall,
I hope this person is not too young. In any case, you definitely have got what it takes to make it through this. Your post leads me to think of the following:
1 - Suffering the emotional sorrow of having a loved one die is a very necessary experience. I see no reason to hide tears. The Addictive Voice, though, would love to have us mitigate that experience with the assault of pleasure and chemically enhanced stupidity. But I believe that would be a huge insult to the dying person.
2 - When someone is in physical pain, prescribed painkillers make sense. But I am aware that my Beast would actually prefer to have my life abbreviated with a serious physical problem because that would mean it could regain that wonderful pleasure from opiates.
GT