the end

The inevitable is, ahh inevitable.

Until someone comes up with another way to end this journey (christian or otherwise), we are all going to die one day. Some of us are further on the scale than others, but none of us know when our string is up.

In my family, my birth father died of an accident at 28. My mother of cancer at 65. Mom’s father made it to 98. I am closer to 98 than 28, but that does not mean I’ll live past next week. It’s a cruel calculus.

Yet it seems like there might be some dignity that goes with this death thing.

We have a member of the big family who is pushing the middle 90’s. He has been in good health most of his life, but this is getting near the end. He is demanding and he is ornery. His wife does not want him coming home from the hospital because she is sure she cannot handle him. His string is running out, but he puts up a monstrously spendy fight.

I am not sure how I will handle all of that when my time comes, but thoughts go through my head. Are we who call ourselves Christian really content with the faith and promises we claim to have? Why else would we fight this death thing so vehemently?

My sister sent me a URL for a piece about how Doctors die. They spend their career pretty close to death and their perspective is a bit closer than the rest of us, it seems. The author of this piece talks about several MD’s who were told they had a short time to live. They closed their practice, went home and spent their last days among family and friends and refused many spendy but usually futile therapies.

These people know the odds better than the rest of us perhaps. When a 90 year old is confined to bed and is incontinent it is a wild dream to think they will “heal” someway and "get well," with or without prayer and modern medicine.

One of my favorite uncles was told by his doctor that he needed bypass surgery. Unc was 85 at the time. So he did what the doc ordered. Then he spent the next and last 10 months of his life in hell, mostly living in the hospital often in ICU.

Had he gone home and refused the surgery, he still would have died, maybe he wouldn’t have lived a week longer, or shorter than he did, but he would have been in his house among family who loved and cared and certainly he would have been in less pain.

And, we have not even mentioned the cost to the system for that last 10 months of his life. The number would be totally staggering.

So, don’t break my ribs to resuscitate me. Don’t give me therapies that can be ugly, maybe even as ugly as the disease. Please hold my hand because when that time comes I promise you I will be terrified.