"Morality Plays" were a favorite form of entertainment during the Middle Ages. Townspeople gathered in cathedral squares to watch wandering troops of actors perform and one of the favorites was "Everyman." As the play opens, the lead character ("Everyman") is walking home to dinner after work and bumps into a tall dark figure. Startled, he asks his name and the response is "Death." "I have come to take you with me", the figure says. Even though Everyman says he feels wonderful and there must be a mistake, Death insists. "At least let me bring a friend," says Everyman, "I don't want to be alone." Death agrees and gives him one hour to find someone. Everyman hurries to town, knocks on a friend's door and pours out his story. His friend looks at him with a mix of sadness and terror and refuses to join him. The friend's name was "Riches." Not yet discouraged, Everyman rushed to a second home and then a third and is repeatedly turned down. Their names were "Fame" and "Pleasure."

Slowly, Everyman turned back down the path for his rendezvous with Death. As he walks along he encounters another old friend, one he had not seen lately. Without much hope, he retells his story. To his utter amazement this friend replies: "Of course, I'll go with you." His name was "Good Deeds."

During the Middle Ages average life expectancy was less than forty and infant mortality was very high. Without hospitals and nursing homes people cared for the sick and dying at home and death was very familiar. Today it is slightly removed from the general population cordoned off by a cohort of caregivers: doctors, nurses and other medical personnel. Even though we live in a violent world, death is still at a distance. Stalin once said that a single death was a tragedy but a million just a statistic. Here we have another device to shield us from our own mortality, a way of avoiding Everyman's question: who will go with us on our final journey?