Death and Dying

“I’m glad,” he said to his daughter in the kitchen, “that we have a little time from all the coming and going to discuss our plans for a Living Will before we leave to see your brother.”

Her dark eyebrows pinched together.” Dad, isn’t this rather sudden?”

“For you maybe, not for us.”

“You’re in good health, aren’t you?”

“Yes, for now, but it makes good sense while we’re both reasonably sound in mind and body.”

“I wish you wouldn’t put things like that,” she pouted as she squeezed her hands together.

“I know illness and death aren’t something anyone likes to think or talk about,” he said patting her hand, “and the younger you are the farthest they are from one’s thoughts. I can remember in my youth hoping I’d live to see the turn of the century and enter a new millennium. And we’re getting closer every year.”

Her face remained troubled, as if she wanted to change the subject but couldn’t. “You and Mother aren’t on medication, are you?”

“Fortunately only for sinus and normal aches and pains. But that can change overnight,” he insisted. “Neither of us wants to be taken to a hospital and kept artificially alive on a feeding tube and ventilator. We’d like to die naturally as we’ve lived naturally.” He waited a moment to add. “There’s also the expense, which is horrendous and can be more than a whole lifetime of care. We have a power of attorney, but that only covers property, heirlooms, and such.”

“I can understand that,” she replied unconvincingly. “It’s just—you know what I mean.”

“I do. Almost anything can be faked in this world except aging and death. I’m in no haste to die, of course, but am ready to depart when my time comes. “

She untwisted the cap on the bottle of Crystal Spring Pure Water, took a sip, and absently twisted the cap back on. She looked out the window and thought of the framed photo on the living room drum table of their wedding day—so young, thin, dark-haired, and smiling. “Today people live longer than ever,” she said.

“But not forever, dear. To wish not to die is infantile. There is a fate worse than death. You remember the Greek Tithonus?”

She lowered her head. “Not that I recall.”

“His goddess wife asked Zeus that he be made immortal, not thinking to ask that he also remain young. And so he grew older and feebler. He prayed for death, but had to go on living forever. At last the goddess put him in a locked room where he babbled away like a child, all the while getting smaller and smaller until, out of pity, she changed him into a tiny grasshopper. And I don’t want to become a grasshopper.”

“Dad, I wish you wouldn’t joke like that.”

“Dear, all share a common humanity with the same entrance into life and a common departure.” He took a sip of coffee, cool now but of no importance, and in a tender, imploring voice said, “We’d like you to make these medical decisions if need be, with your sister as an alternate. A Living Will can be revoked at any time when meeting with a doctor or nurse, if we’re able to communicate. It’s the ‘if’ we want to settle and know such decisions will be taken care of by the family and no one else. Isn’t that reasonable?”

“Very reasonable. Only… “

“Only what?”

“I guess…I guess it’s better to have one than not, except it’s a heavy responsibility.”

“Yes, but there’s the possibility it may never be needed. It’s the dying that needs to be considered, not death.”

The phone rang, and she excused herself to answer it.

Now wasn’t the time to mention enabling a patient with an incurable disease, with pain and suffering no longer bearable, to take one’s own life with healing no longer possible, this being more merciful and humane to die peacefully, hopefully at home with family present. Nor was this the time either to express their thoughts on cremation. With a world population doubling every forty to fifty years, land needed to sustain billions of people grows more and more pressing. And the days of burial in a cemetery were a thing of the past in an urban world, as all have been urbanized in the U.S. with two hundred million cars and fifty thousand miles of interstate highways. A memorial service too was preferable that celebrated a life rather than an artificial, cosmetic, and expensive embalming to present a lifelike appearance as if asleep. Consecrating their ashes in a columbarium at their church also had an increasing appeal over a headstone visited occasionally, if at all as the years go by. What a far cry this was from the time considered scandalous when a New York columnist had his cremated ashes strewn from a plane over the city he loved.

The phone clicked in its cradle, and she resumed her seat with a jaunty, girlish air. “You‘re not going to believe this, Dad, but that was Amy at the hospital on duty in the emergency room. She wanted to talk to someone for a moment after a Code Blue.”

“Explain, please.”

“A terrible death from an auto accident. She asked that I talk seriously with you and mother about having a notarized Living Will!”

And they laughed until it hurt. May he be blessed, he reflected, to die with dignity at home in his own bed. And may it be said of him, as it was of Papa Giovanni, Pope John XXIII of the Pacem in Terris, that he left the world a better place in which to live.