"To Take Away A Death"

The Irish side of me has this morbid fascination with death. I think some of it also has to do with my Catholic school upbringing and the fact that I grew up across the street from a cemetery. However, its been the past few years that I've become more aware of the possible and imminent death of the people around me. Even though I grew up with Death hanging around our house (my dad was a NYC police officer) I think I was less afraid of it happening as opposed to when. I remember my mom waking us up in the middle of the night when we were little to kiss my dad goodbye or depending on his shift, hello. He'd smell bad and his face would be rough and sometimes he'd had fake blood or dirt on him because he was working undercover. My brother and I would play weird games like "Mass" and "Communion" usually at an imaginery funeral. I know that when I was a teenager, I use to stay up way into the night flipping through poetry books trying to find the one poem that would convey the exact message about my dad that I could read at is funeral.

Fortunately, my dad survived the NYPD and NYC to be a funny and happy retiree in Florida. But now I live with the fear that like his mother, he may too succumb to the fate of Alzheimer's. And maybe he won't, maybe it'll be me instead who tortues her children with this disease. But considering our past experiences and where we might have to go in the future, Death has always been an open discussion in our family. And so I know my parents wishes and they know that at first I may hesitate to follow through on them. But I know that if/when that time comes, there will be a moment of clarity and they'll be able to pass with the peace and respect they and every individual deserves.

I think this Terry Schiavo case has a lot of us thinking about it as well as who is this government that keeps sticking its nose into Death's business. Incorporating God into your agenda is one thing, trying to do His job is another.

This is a snippet from an op-ed in yesterday's NYTimes that sparked me to write this:

"...Although my father was 85 and Terri Schiavo is only 41, both their situations pose questions about the outermost suburbs of life. What is the meaning of a smile? How much can you read into a blink? Should there be an allowance for more extreme life-saving measures for a young woman of child-bearing age, on the chance that more advanced technology could eventually become available?

For me, it all boils down to a simple question: when does saving a life mean stealing a death? For a year we allowed our father to be treated in hospitals for pneumonias that would have probably ended his life. But what life were we saving? Not one he would have wanted. We let our own emotions cloud our decision-making. Alzheimer's stole my father's mind, and it was wrong to let anything cheat him of the death he would have wanted, too.

All along we'd known the right choices; we had an excellent guide. It was our father himself. He gave us explicit directions that at a certain point we should not allow any extraordinary medical intervention. He had a living will and I was appointed his medical proxy.
Ms. Schiavo's case is more complicated; there is a morass of competing claims of family members and no living will to tell us what she wanted herself. The entire debate exists only because of the absence of a single piece of paper..."

You can read more of Elizabeth Cohen's op-ed in the NYTimes.