Reflections on Dying

Tuesday while Paul and I were at the cancer treatment center a 56 year old gentlemen was talking with us. He was very thin and frail. You could tell he had once been a huge linebacker sort of fellow but now he was barely able to stand and looked like an escapee from a concentration camp. We learned that he had lung cancer and his cancer had returned after an initial harrowing course of treatment. He was now back for a series of nine more chemotherapies with little likelihood of obtaining any benefit. I am not quite certain why he was talking to us. Supposedly comparing notes on insurance but at our ages on Medicare there was little bearing our experience had on his own. Otherwise his situation was even more bleak than just his physical situation...3 younger children at home and no money. You can imagine.

I was very shaken by this. Other than my obvious concern for another person in distress I had to wonder why he would bother going this far. The pain and discomfort had been breathtaking for him and his family and would only get worse with virtually no chance of cure or even remission. The financial and emotional drain on himself and his family was stunning.

I would never choose his way of dealing with death. If it comes to this I would prefer to leave under my own steam ( click to download: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=b79ac729027ffffed2db6fb9a8902bda, The Peaceful Pill by Philip Nitschke) ( and very good http://icarusfilms.com/new2005/made.html )rather than have my life artificially extended. And I would do it with complete conviction and no sense of regret. Jonathan Miller, in his third and last segment of his excellent series, A Rough Guide to Disbelief, says it as if I had written the words myself.

"I am also rattled by some of the more complacent assumptions I find amongst my friends and acquaintances that my godlessness implies some sort of lack of seriousness on my part, that people like me have failed to recognize the existence of the soul and, above all, of its immortality.
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Well, to be quite frank I find this to be somewhat impudent. The fact that I entertain no prospects whatever of some sort of subsequent existence doesn’t mean that I am indifferent to the fact that I, like everyone else, must die.
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As I get older I become more closely if vicariously acquainted with death and disease. In fact, as time goes by, I find myself opening the obituary pages of the newspapers with increasing apprehension. But all the same, I don’t find myself wondering where these departed friends, relatives or colleagues now are. As far as I’m concerned they are nowhere They have simply (or, perhaps, not quite so simply) ceased to be.
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So, how about my own death, my own ceasing to be?
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Naturally, I think about it because I am now much nearer to it than I was. I think about how it will be. Will it be painful, for example? Still, I don’t think about it in terms of will I, after all I’ve committed myself to [disbelief], be shown to be a fool by waking up somewhere else and finding that there is something after all…and will my face be red?
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The thought of death is constantly there. I know it is unlikely now that I’ll see my grandchildren get married or that I will even see or know my great-grandchildren. In other words I have to loosen my hold on the future.
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What’s more, I may be in a situation where death can’t come too quickly because I’ll be in pain, distressed, weak and disabled. I want to be able to reach for the bell and say, “this is where I get off”.
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I don’t find it difficult to imagine not existing. I don’t think about it at all really. What I am frightened of is, perhaps, that near death there might be certain experiences associated with it that are painful and frightening from which one cannot excape for the moment. It is not the fear of death but the mental states that sometimes exist when things are falling to bits. I am not looking forward to that.

I am encouraged by the fact there are perfectly ordinary people who confront their forthcoming extinction with graceful equanimity without having to fall back on unintelligible hopes for a future state."

It is possible to view this complete 3 part BBC series online at:

http://www.veoh.com/channels/briefhistoryofdisbelief

I wonder why it is that most of us try to hold on long after our time is finished? What follows is a lovely aria. Although using a metaphor of romantic love is not quite appropriate to the situation of desiring life like a Beloved who is rejecting us ... it will have to do.

Fedora by Giordano, Rolando Villazon Tenor

Love forbids you not to love

Your gentle hand,

while it repulses me,

Wants my hand to grasp it;

Your eye is saying:“I love you!”

although your lip says: I will not love you”

(Amor ti vieta di non amar.La man tua lieve,che mi respinge,cercava la stretta della mia man.La tua pupilla esprime:‘T’amo” se il labbro dice. Non t’amero!’)

Judy (via Jeff)