There's nothing wrong with skepticism. Unless you let it stop you from learning. So I'd say be skeptical, but also be willing to explore.
Personally, I think there's a fair bit of reason to believe that both Zen training and hospice experience are useful to facing one's own death. Cultivating awareness of impermanence is central to Buddhist thought. Zen includes such traditions as composing one's own death poem [1] and specific meditations on death [2].
I also found spending time in a hospice to be useful. Anything unknown is hard to think about and possibly scary. Being in the presence of death made it more real for me. And I'm not alone in this; a hospice program founder has an excellent talk [3] and book [4] on what people can learn from hospice.
Personally, I think there's a fair bit of reason to believe that both Zen training and hospice experience are useful to facing one's own death. Cultivating awareness of impermanence is central to Buddhist thought. Zen includes such traditions as composing one's own death poem [1] and specific meditations on death [2].
I also found spending time in a hospice to be useful. Anything unknown is hard to think about and possibly scary. Being in the presence of death made it more real for me. And I'm not alone in this; a hospice program founder has an excellent talk [3] and book [4] on what people can learn from hospice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_poem
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara%E1%B9%87asati
[3] http://longnow.org/seminars/02017/apr/10/what-dying-teach-li...
[4] https://www.amazon.com/Five-Invitations-Discovering-Death-Li...