I have thought about my death quite a bit in my lifetime. I was a morbid child which turned me into a morbid adult. I let my parents know by the age of 18 that if I were on life support, I want them to pull the plug. I was fair. I told them to give it two weeks, but if I am not awake at that point, let me die. It’s an odd thing, this mortality we endure. It is not that humans are the only specie to endure it, but we are the only that appear to brood over it and mourn those we lose. Somehow, as we get caught up in living, we ignore our mortality or we begin to fear our final crossing.
I kind of cannot wait to die, mostly to see what it is like to be dead. Is it Heaven and Hell with a giant scale to weigh your soul? Is Saint Peter standing at pearly gates handing out flight manuals and a set of wings? Is Cerberus hanging out at the river banks barking at all the new souls, sniffing and growling as souls procession into the underworld? Or, is it darkness—no consciousness or acknowledgement of one’s demise? This is the only reason I would want to die: to find out what is next. Believe you me, I am in no rush to die as interesting as crossing over could be, it could also be a big disappointment, but I do not fear it.
When I die, there are only two ways I want to go: either peacefully in my sleep, or a bullet to the brain. I’m a simple girl with simple needs, like a quiet and private death. If I should end up with some terrible disease with no chance of recovery, I will find an easy to clean place and end my life. Christians (mainly Catholics, but the whole lot of sects) feel that it is a sin to commit suicide. I do not understand why it would be a sin when the only person you harm is yourself. The internet is teeming with websites that tell people how to kill themselves, best time to not be stopped, etc. People argue that if one is ready to die, we must convince them that there is something to live for—that they should want to keep living. That may be a great idea for a sixteen year-old girl in a suicide pact with her boyfriend because they couldn’t get enough Romeo and Juliet by reading it, and she believes that the only way her much older sociopathic boyfriend and her can be together is in matching plots on earth and spiritually in the afterlife. (Actually, let her do it to help human evolution along.) What about the 65 year-old grandfather who found out he is in the later stages of colon cancer, who defecates blood, who they had to attach a catheter to because his intestines are shutting down, who will waste away until he is only 100 pounds, each moment in agony save the morphine drip which he runs out of by the second hour of his day, only to go into cardiac arrest while his family suffers with him as they watch grandpa waste away? Why is he not allowed to die with dignity? Why must we make him suffer if he wants to die when there is no chance that his quality of life will improve?
My mother and I spoke about her wishes if she reaches a point in her life in which she cannot carry on. She gave me her wishes for burial and service. It took place a short time after her mother passed from ovarian cancer. I remember the last time I spoke with my grandmother. The cancer was in remission. She was lively on the phone call, talking about the next time she would see me, preferably outside of the hospital, congratulating me on going to college. She was amazing and strong of will, unafraid of death. A few weeks later, she slipped into a coma. She passed within a week. I learned a few things from this loss. The most important things I took away from her passing was that death is very much an inevitable consequence of birth and that you cannot fear it. When the doctors found her cancer, they gave her a death sentence and she chose to make her peace with God and resign her soul to the fates. Do not misunderstand me; she underwent chemotherapy and had the tumor surgically removed. She took her meds and some days were better than others, but I think she continued to live in order to see her last grandchild and only grandson born. In my argument I sight my grandmother because when she was faced with death, she did not shy away. She had a strong faith that when her body expired, it was the proper course of her life. I am sure that at some point she may have thought she still had more to do or that there were things she would miss out on, but she also knew that no one lives forever. I remember feeling robbed because I did not have more time to spend with her; that she would miss my graduation from college, she would not be there when I got married, that she would not see the first of our next generation. What I felt for was not the end of her misery, but more my personal loss, and that is what it all boils down to.
We are selfish in our pursuits of “pro-life.” When we make these judgments regarding whether people are forced to live or die, we do it based on how we will feel and not on what the person wants for his or her self. We make these decisions based on fear of loss because we who remain on this earth want solace. We want to know that our mother/father/sister/brother/best friend will always be there, even though logic and history tell us otherwise. Death reminds us of our own mortality, of the futility of our existence and unnerves most people to the core of their souls. It means that, depending on one’s faith and style of life, we have to be responsible for our own happiness and the choices we make, live now, and find contentment in what we have because tomorrow is uncertain. People who willingly meet the final threshold of what we know or can know shake our beliefs in what life is and vilify those who seek to end “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” In Hamlet’s soliloquy, he questions whether or not to commit suicide. In the end, he dies at the hands of his enemy but of his own device.
We are fortunate enough to have free will and reason, but we rarely use either. We tend to make decisions based on emotion which make logical arguments moot. I have gone on a rant that comes no where near where I initially intended this to go, but it remains that I am irked by arguments against a person’s right to end their life. This is not to say that we should all go around killing ourselves, instinct tells us otherwise, but if a person reaches a conclusion to meet their maker, who am I to tell them that their appointment is later than the one they scheduled? I would want every person to have the chance at immortality but all good and bad things must come to an end and it is in understanding that which we can find comfort in such certainty.
“Don’t take life too seriously; it isn’t permanent.” – W. C. Fields
I kind of cannot wait to die, mostly to see what it is like to be dead. Is it Heaven and Hell with a giant scale to weigh your soul? Is Saint Peter standing at pearly gates handing out flight manuals and a set of wings? Is Cerberus hanging out at the river banks barking at all the new souls, sniffing and growling as souls procession into the underworld? Or, is it darkness—no consciousness or acknowledgement of one’s demise? This is the only reason I would want to die: to find out what is next. Believe you me, I am in no rush to die as interesting as crossing over could be, it could also be a big disappointment, but I do not fear it.
When I die, there are only two ways I want to go: either peacefully in my sleep, or a bullet to the brain. I’m a simple girl with simple needs, like a quiet and private death. If I should end up with some terrible disease with no chance of recovery, I will find an easy to clean place and end my life. Christians (mainly Catholics, but the whole lot of sects) feel that it is a sin to commit suicide. I do not understand why it would be a sin when the only person you harm is yourself. The internet is teeming with websites that tell people how to kill themselves, best time to not be stopped, etc. People argue that if one is ready to die, we must convince them that there is something to live for—that they should want to keep living. That may be a great idea for a sixteen year-old girl in a suicide pact with her boyfriend because they couldn’t get enough Romeo and Juliet by reading it, and she believes that the only way her much older sociopathic boyfriend and her can be together is in matching plots on earth and spiritually in the afterlife. (Actually, let her do it to help human evolution along.) What about the 65 year-old grandfather who found out he is in the later stages of colon cancer, who defecates blood, who they had to attach a catheter to because his intestines are shutting down, who will waste away until he is only 100 pounds, each moment in agony save the morphine drip which he runs out of by the second hour of his day, only to go into cardiac arrest while his family suffers with him as they watch grandpa waste away? Why is he not allowed to die with dignity? Why must we make him suffer if he wants to die when there is no chance that his quality of life will improve?
My mother and I spoke about her wishes if she reaches a point in her life in which she cannot carry on. She gave me her wishes for burial and service. It took place a short time after her mother passed from ovarian cancer. I remember the last time I spoke with my grandmother. The cancer was in remission. She was lively on the phone call, talking about the next time she would see me, preferably outside of the hospital, congratulating me on going to college. She was amazing and strong of will, unafraid of death. A few weeks later, she slipped into a coma. She passed within a week. I learned a few things from this loss. The most important things I took away from her passing was that death is very much an inevitable consequence of birth and that you cannot fear it. When the doctors found her cancer, they gave her a death sentence and she chose to make her peace with God and resign her soul to the fates. Do not misunderstand me; she underwent chemotherapy and had the tumor surgically removed. She took her meds and some days were better than others, but I think she continued to live in order to see her last grandchild and only grandson born. In my argument I sight my grandmother because when she was faced with death, she did not shy away. She had a strong faith that when her body expired, it was the proper course of her life. I am sure that at some point she may have thought she still had more to do or that there were things she would miss out on, but she also knew that no one lives forever. I remember feeling robbed because I did not have more time to spend with her; that she would miss my graduation from college, she would not be there when I got married, that she would not see the first of our next generation. What I felt for was not the end of her misery, but more my personal loss, and that is what it all boils down to.
We are selfish in our pursuits of “pro-life.” When we make these judgments regarding whether people are forced to live or die, we do it based on how we will feel and not on what the person wants for his or her self. We make these decisions based on fear of loss because we who remain on this earth want solace. We want to know that our mother/father/sister/brother/best friend will always be there, even though logic and history tell us otherwise. Death reminds us of our own mortality, of the futility of our existence and unnerves most people to the core of their souls. It means that, depending on one’s faith and style of life, we have to be responsible for our own happiness and the choices we make, live now, and find contentment in what we have because tomorrow is uncertain. People who willingly meet the final threshold of what we know or can know shake our beliefs in what life is and vilify those who seek to end “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” In Hamlet’s soliloquy, he questions whether or not to commit suicide. In the end, he dies at the hands of his enemy but of his own device.
We are fortunate enough to have free will and reason, but we rarely use either. We tend to make decisions based on emotion which make logical arguments moot. I have gone on a rant that comes no where near where I initially intended this to go, but it remains that I am irked by arguments against a person’s right to end their life. This is not to say that we should all go around killing ourselves, instinct tells us otherwise, but if a person reaches a conclusion to meet their maker, who am I to tell them that their appointment is later than the one they scheduled? I would want every person to have the chance at immortality but all good and bad things must come to an end and it is in understanding that which we can find comfort in such certainty.
“Don’t take life too seriously; it isn’t permanent.” – W. C. Fields
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