Because sometimes we need to...

[Skidmore]

"talk about dying". I generally try to regularly post bits I find intriguing or awe inspiring, magical tidbits that are part of the real world whether in art, music, science, or human interactions. I just read this essay and I found to be an incredibly thoughtful and thought-provoking study on choice and dying in our society where technology can extend life until it is painful to watch. I downloaded it to my hard drive to keep it and revisit because the author has so carefully addressed a good many facets of a topic we so often start to look at and end up flinching and looking away from. It is well done and comes from deep within the author's personal experiences.

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/lets_talk_about_dying/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Let’s talk about dying
At 88 and ailing, I refuse to live at any cost. I only hope that when the time comes, I'll have the courage to act
LILLIAN B. RUBIN

“It’s better than the alternative, isn’t it?” Words spoken repeatedly when, during the course of a research project on aging, I asked people for their thoughts about the new longevity and their own aging. Sometimes it was said with a shrug of resignation, more often as an unquestioning statement – a certainty that living is better than dying. Each time I heard it, I wanted to ask, “Is it?” Often I gave in to the impulse, which almost always begot a confused and startled response: “You mean you think it’s better to die?”

I’ve thought about that question many times in the years since then, and my answer today is an even more resonant, “Yes.” It isn’t that I’m so eager to die, but I can’t help thinking about how destructive our fear of death is — how it compels us to live, even when “living” may be little more than breathing; how we have made living, just to be alive, the unqualified objective. For me, that’s quite simply not enough. No, that’s not right. It isn’t “simple” at all. But I do have a concrete plan to end my life when I decide it’s time – and the tools to implement it. Will I have the courage to do it?

I can almost hear some people shout, “Courage? Suicide is cowardice, not courage.” To which I can only ask: Does it take courage to live as my now-deceased husband did — a 10-year slide into increasing dementia, so that by the time he died, from a fall that cracked his ribs and led to pneumonia, there was nothing left but a body that needed constant care? Couldn’t we just as easily call it cowardice?

At 88-going-on-89 and not in great health, what’s cowardly about my deciding to turn out the lights before putting my family through the same pain they’ve already lived through with their father and grandfather? What’s courageous about spending our children’s inheritance just so we can live one more month, one more year? Is it courage or cowardice to insist on staying alive at enormous social cost – 27.4 percent of the Medicare budget spent in the last year of life – while so many children in our nation go hungry and without medical care? Is it cowardice to decide not to live with the pain of an ever-diminishing self — a body that’s always reminding us it’s there, a mind that forgets what it wants us to remember?...More

[Newest Reality]

1. We do seem to have a hard

time having much in the way of meaningful dialog about suicide, or "self-deliverance" as some call it. But then, we have a hard time having dialogs about many important subjects that require in-depth analysis, understanding and resolution--there is a list.

Shouting about cowardice is simply avoiding the issue and I think it is of little comfort to people who are considering this route. We all know that young people having a bad time in life amidst emotional and situational tumults really do need help and an understanding about how things change over time and how maturity can bring new perspectives. If you say it is an act of cowardice, then that might just add to the sense of poor self esteem that they already suffer from. Even the idea that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem may not be helpful as a quick, superficial response to a life crisis. What the person being told that might hear is "permanent" and find that appealing from their current perspective. Sometimes, when people consider suicide as an option, choose not to, and go on, they can even get a sense that they are living by choice rather than by obligation to be alive.

When it comes to people who are suffering from chronic pain and have a very poor prognosis--often more towards the end of a life, but not always--it may be be rather insensitive and even cruel to play the coward card on them. When someone is in this kind of, "to be or not to be" predicament, they may be facing their own courage when it actually comes down to the time and they are right there, ready to follow though. To challenge the sensibility of this from someone who has an option to go on debilitated, in pain, and with no real potential for recovery is a matter of context and being judgmental about it is not very useful. That is in the sense that you could imagine that you are in this situation and have fully thought it through, and there you are, ready to go. Who can have the empathy and compassion to mirror that experience and then say, flat out, it is cowardly?

I think that suicide is an important issue, be it assisted or simply a self-inflicted act of desperation and despair. We are going to see more of them as time goes on and so far, a blind eye is being turned as to the contextual aspect of the act itself and how we, as a society both contribute to it and avoid the subject's implications and meaning to all of us. Without meaning and context, what is a self and how much does it matter in the big picture in a time of individualism, alienation and lack of deep structures of community and connection in a financially obsessed world?

The more we toss out phrases or try to act shocked or indignant about suicide, the less we are doing to deal with it head on and prevent the act, or find it in our minds and hearts to understand when it is a valid, reasonable choice for certain people in certain situations, and that is then a form of respect and an indicator of wisdom.

[Skidmore]

2. Some times I wonder if we can even imagine

dying naturally without life support measures anymore. I think she is correct in point out that on this one aspect of life, a person's choice is removed and reliance is placed on the technology to absolve a responsibility created by it that did not exist even a century ago. There comes a time when we all must say goodbye and those around us must give us the respect of a dignified leave.