WHEN DEATH SHALL COME
April, 2009
Whether you like it or not, dying is hard work.
While every death is unique, every individual must wrestle with
that one constant in the universe—change, especially the
transition that comes at the end of this life.
There is, of course, the physical process of dying, the diminishing
of the life force, whether it be sudden and traumatic or the slow
slipping into blackness. One must often deal with pain, the ebb
and flow of life consciousness, the final farewells of family and
friends. But there are also the fear and the anxiety of transition.
While we may fear that we will leave uncompleted the many projects
and dreams of a lifetime, or the separation from those we love,
or that we may not have fulfilled our reason for being, there are
also the anxiety and dread that the end of life is precisely that.
In his meditation on human mortality, Julian
Barnes in his
book, Nothing To Be Frightened Of, raises the specter
of our primal fear—self-annihilation. The fear that we will
cease to exist, to experience, to remember, to feel, to love and
be loved, gnaws at the souls of many. For this reason, most humans “rage
against the dying of the light,” or say with Hemingway’s
lieutenant at the bedside of the woman he loves who is dying, “Life’s
just a dirty trick.”
There are some who go kicking and screaming
into the unknown. When Ethan Allen, one of America’s founding fathers, was
dying, a clergyman was summoned to his bedside and told him, "General,
I fear the angels are waiting for you," only to hear Allen’s
thundering voice respond: "Waiting, are they? Waiting,
are they? Well, goddamn 'em, let 'em wait."
On the other hand, there are those who go “gently into that
good night,” “like one who wraps the drapery of his
couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.” As one
lives, so one dies.
There is so much in this life that points beyond this life. Whether
it is the ancient myths of bygone cultures or the enduring traditions
of living faiths, the belief in survival is extensive. The visions
of those on the threshold of death, communications from those who
live in another dimension of being, cases suggesting reincarnation,
and other evidence of postmortem existence assure us that we will
survive and transcend death. It is for each individual to determine
whether it is because we cannot accept the idea of our own nonexistence,
or because we have faith that the evidence is sufficient for our
continuation.
USA Today recently (March 17, 2009) said in
an article that “dying
cancer patients who rely strongly on their religious faith to cope
with their illness were three times more likely than others to
receive intensive, invasive medical procedures even in their last
week of life, according to a study in today's Journal of the
American Medical Association.”
One can perhaps understand Ethan Allen, but why would a person
of faith want to keep the angels waiting?
Sherwin B. Nuland, (How We Die: Reflections
on Life’s
Final Chapter), says “few people faced with a diagnosis
of potentially remedial malignant disease should be willing to
give up the struggle if there is any reasonable chance that some
promising form of treatment is available to lessen the ravages
of the disease or cure it. To do anything less is not stoicism,
but folly.”
However, there is also the nobility of sacrifice, when persons
who care more for their loved ones than for themselves, will forego
the expensive medical procedures that may bring financial ruin
to their families, or who do not want to see others suffer vicariously
through their own pain. Faith is trusting in a God who is with
us and within us as we endure tragedy, not vain expectation from
believing that God will help us avoid tragedy.
Our body, from its cellular foundations to the complexity of the
entire organism, has an innate program of self-preservation. Some
cells may die; some may regenerate as biological immortality moves
closer from the realm of fantasy to that of possibility. Nevertheless,
to desire death may be to contradict the intention of the Creator,
but to accept death, when it shall come, is to be at peace in knowing
that the universe is unfolding as it should and that there is so
much more beyond.
Dr. Harry L. Serio |