Wondering what to make of life before the Necessary End

I was searching for something entirely different when I came across, of all things, the public submissions to the Select Committee on Euthanasia in the Northern Territory in May 1995.

One submission is from A. L. Chapman (pp. 107-134 in the submissions). It’s a covering letter plus a poignant document of 25 pages that later provided material for a book, There has to be a better way to die.

Chapman recounts the story of his wife’s death, and considers that in the context of the then proposed Rights of the Terminally Ill Bill, and the way in which our society, our community and our medical industry treats death and the dying.

I am particularly taken with the following:

The mere fact that we declare human life to be “sacred” and inviolable does not mean that humans can never be sacrificed should the circumstances demand it. This is something we have long understood. We train some individuals as professional killers whose lawful job it is to ‘put their lives on the line’ while killing others for reasons that, later, may seem trivial but were deemed important at a particular time. We expect them to kill, or be killed. Many of these killers are volunteers. If there are not enough volunteers, the reluctant are conscripted to the cause. When, ‘in the line of duty’, the lives of these individuals are sacrificed for the ‘greater good’ we bury them in hallowed ground (if we can find their remains), call them heroes and sing their praises for evermore, so that others will follow their splendid example. ‘Greater love hath no man than this’, we say, ‘that a man lay down his life for his friend’ (and community). Yet, when a patient who is terminally ill—whose continued existence has become a ‘burden’ to himself and an ‘impost’ on the community—offers to lay down his life for his friends, we decline his offer and say he is not lawfully allowed to do so. We regard him as misguided or incompetent and do our best to dissuade him on the grounds that his altruism is unseemly and unnecessary. If he insists, and does lay down his life in the line of his perceived duty, either alone or with help on the side, we treat him like the proverbial pariah.

I thoroughly agree with Chapman when he says:

When life becomes too great a ‘burden’ for otherwise healthy individuals, some choose the shot gun or rifle option and make things messy for their survivors. I wouldn’t want that kind of death. Others have sought to kill themselves through poisonous chemicals of various kinds—solids, liquids and gases. Many of these are very effective but some seem likely to make dying too protracted or too painful. I wouldn’t like to die like Joan [his wife, who died of metastatic breast cancer].
…
If I have the chance, I would like to actually say goodbye directly, in as non-stressful a state as possible, to such relatives and friends who may care to come around. I would like them to be able to bid farewell to a person rather than an unconscious or lifeless body.

I don’t want people to remember me as a patient in a hospital, suffering the indignities of nursing, in pain, drugged, with an IV here and a catheter there. No. Depending on who you are, I want you to remember the last time we spoke on the phone; or the last time we had dinner together; or the last time we had a drink at Rock Bottom; or the last time we ordered pizza, watched a DVD and argued some fine point from a book only one of us had read.

For many years I have puzzled over funeral announcements that include lines like “We miss you Fred”, or “You’ll never be forgotten”. Dead people, it seems to me, don’t read newspapers.

Dead people don’t read websites, either. Nor do people get to read the little booklets produced for their funeral. And they certainly don’t read the cards attached to bunches of flowers.

So please, no written messages to the dead. Address messages to the living!

PS If I’m wrong about all this, if there is a heaven, if I end up in heaven, if I’m living near a heavenly newsagent that makes every earthly newspaper and news magazine available for free, believe me, I would not be reading the dreary classifieds in The Age!

I know people who will happily say “fuck” in my presence, but they can’t bring themselves to say “death”. Or “dying”.

You are facing years of work/children/family/house/travel/retirement/whatever. And you often want to talk about those things.

I am reducing the amount of work I’m doing, don’t have children, have reduced travel plans (cancer = no insurance = a bit tricky), and am never likely to retire. Death is a big part of my medium-term future. So it’s one of the many things that I sometimes want to talk about.

For crying out loud! Death is not a four letter word. It’s OK to say the “d” word.

Try it now: “Death”. See? Not so hard!

I don’t want to talk about death all the time. Since most of us know stuff all about it, it would be pointless. But if I say “this cancer is going to kill me”, please don’t respond with fatuous “Oh, no it won’t! You’ll live till you’re 95!”.

Here are some sensible ideas on how to deal with a friend who has cancer.

Interesting article at ‘What really happens when you die?’ from The Guardian.

Actually, it’s not an article: it’s a series of comments written by the people involved: GP, pathologist, funeral director, embalmer, crematorium technician, cemetery manager and (something I hadn’t heard about before) a resomation technician.

What impresses me is the passion.

The embalmer:

The deceased is always treated with respect and I always do the best job I can. I believe that you have to care about what you do. When you stop caring, then it is time to leave the profession.

The crematorium technician:

We carry out the whole process of cremation and cremulation as if we were doing our own family – with the utmost dignity at all times. It’s not right to be slapdash.

But what is really interesting about this series of articles is that it becomes clear that the whole embalming / cremating / burying thing is not about the dead person: it’s all done for the living.

Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, society has to go on.

I suppose that, in a Darwinian sense, we have two issues pulling against one another. On one hand the species needs us to care for one another, because that increases survival, especially of children. That leads to caring, which, after death, turns to grief. But the species can’t have everyone just give up because a loved-one died. So we invent funeral rituals to get the living back on track.

Now, if the funeral is for the living:

1. Why do people generally consider it their right to say what they want or don’t want at their funeral?
2. Why is it that, after a death, the trump card that wins all questions is “oh but that’s what xxx would have wanted”?

By this logic, it shouldn’t matter what the dead person wanted; it should only matter what the living want.

And that, I think, is what pissed me off so much about the Guidelines issued by Archbishop Dennis Hart, of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, which suggest that neither the dead nor the living get much of a say.

Bugger that!

This is just weird: an endlessly-looping video in your gravestone. Or (since it’s American) your pet’s gravestone.