Mrs Bush had announced that she would be spending her final days at home relying on “comfort care” rather than continue pointless medical treatment for her congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

She chose, for her last hours and days, a comfort-giving regime and its known consequences instead of pursuing treatment, chasing a cure time had put beyond reach.

Most families reach this sad and sorry point when an ill father or mother, a brother or a sister run out of options and struggle to retain dignity. Most families have to make a heart-breaking if relieving decision when science can do no more than sustain the husk of the person they love.

Mrs Bush, an early champion of hospice programmes for the terminally ill, made a brave and rational decision. She, like millions of others, decided to let nature take its course.

Her decision had the same structure, the same conclusion as if she had, say, two years ago, decided she did not want to endure an unwinnable struggle with the disease that eventually ended her life yet it is seen in a less socially acceptable light than the idea of voluntary assisted dying.

Only the timing was significantly different. She stopped her medication knowing exactly as a person who, choosing not to fight an unwinnable battle and after a long, and rigorous assessment, takes a drug so they might die without enduring a looming torture, maybe enjoying a glass of bourbon in their final hours.

Mrs Bush’s example is not the only lesson America — and some European countries too — offer in this regard.

Assisted dying has been legal in Oregon for 20 years. Its population is similar to Ireland’s so that state’s experience may be relevant even if it has a very different religious legacy to ours.

Unlike the tsunami of euthanasia predicted by the usual voices opposed to social progress, the voices whose dystopian threats have been proved wrong one after the other, figures seem modest.

In the last 20 years, 1,967 people had prescriptions written for lethal medications and 1,275 died by using these drugs, so around one-in-three had a change of heart. In 1998 21 people used that option; last year 218 did so. In 1998, of every 10,000 deaths in Oregon, five were assisted deaths. The rate in 2017 was 40 for every 10,000 deaths.

Our conventional, and often self-congratulating, wisdom suggests we do death well. If by that we mean being able to jive at a funeral like last Friday’s celebration of Big Tom McBride’s life as an entertainer that seems true enough but that is a post-death reaction, a response after the act.

But are we as robust, as emotionally supportive as we might be as death approaches? Are we secure enough to offer people a free choice at what is, after all, a defining moment of their life?

We need to have the discussion and a good start would be to record how many people who commit suicide were in the grip of a fatal physical illness.

Once again our capacity for moral honesty is challenged.