each life as a flower?

There are these lines in Mary Oliver's poem "When Death Comes",
"I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth."

Why is it so difficult to think of the chronic sick in these ways?