Reflections on Mortality

Death.  It’s something no one wants to think or talk about; yet, it is one of the facts of this life.

We will all die someday.  We know that from birth. 

(I know, cheery subject, but it’s a dreary day here in Cleveland and I did pick this project.  You can imagine how depressing my Brueggeman discussions were on this topic.)

“Americans are afraid of dying.  And with good reason.  While rarely easy under any circumstances, we make dying a lot harder than it has to be.’ ‘When someone we love is diagnosed with a life-threatening condition, the worst thing we can imagine is that he or she might die.  The sobering fact is that there are worse things than having someone you love die.  Most basic, there is having the person you love die badly, suffering as he or she dies.  Worse still is realizing later on that much of his or her suffering was unnecessary.”

- Introduction to The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to Transform Care Through The End Of Life. By Ira Byock, MD.

This book, although I’ve just started it, has given me plenty of questions to contemplate.  Some of which are below:

How do we make the best of the worst part of life?

What does it mean to die well?

What does that look like in our world today?

How do we handle looking back on our lives and not feeling regret?

Are we able to let go of those we love? Can we allow ourselves to choose to not do something instead of “trying everything we can do” to prolong their life with a different standard of living?

How can we make letting go okay?

            All of our procedures include sustaining life for as long as possible to avoid the inevitable, yet, that could be doing more harm than good. 

In order to truly affirm life, one must affirm all of life – and that includes the part we call “dying”.   “Most people report that they would like to die at home, surrounded by loved ones, however only one fifth of our elderly die at home.  Over 30% die in Nursing Homes, and about 50% die in hospitals; most often after an ICU stay.  (Byock, 2012)

We must accept that death is a part of life and we must examine what it means to die well in our day and age.  It certainly looks different than it did in the Middle Ages, or the 1700’s, but we must come to terms with how to value a loved one’s life in the best way possible. 

How will you value the lives of your loved one's when they are near the end of their life?