“If you have an abundance of love to give, you should give it" -- Strangers Make Bucket List Dreams Come True

The Washington Post has a wonderful story about the daughter of a man who is terminally ill, and the strangers who found his story on Facebook and helped to make his last days full of adventure and new friends. He had VIP visits to an MMA fight, a Naval helicopter, and a private violin concert.

Billy Collins: The Afterlife

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth, or riffling through a magazine in bed, the dead of the day are setting out on their journey. They’re moving off in all imaginable directions, each according to his own private belief, and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal: that everyone is right, as it turns out. you go to the place you always thought you would go, The place you kept lit in an alcove in your head. Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colors into a zone of light, white as a January sun. Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other. Some have already joined the celestial choir and are singing as if they have been doing this forever, while the less inventive find themselves stuck in a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls. Some are approaching the apartment of the female God, a woman in her forties with short wiry hair and glasses hanging from her neck by a string. With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door. There are those who are squeezing into the bodies of animals–eagles and leopards–and one trying on the skin of a monkey like a tight suit, ready to begin another life in a more simple key, while others float off into some benign vagueness, little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere. There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves. He will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog. The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins wishing they could return so they could learn Italian or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain. They wish they could wake in the morning like you and stand at a window examining the winter trees, every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow. (And some just smile, forever on)

The Advance Directive Said DNR, But....

A crowd of various medical staffers quickly gathered in the small room where an elderly man, Mr. R, had unexpectedly lost his pulse while undergoing a CAT scan. For several minutes, the patient endured multiple rounds of rib-breaking thrusts to his chest to restart his heart. Then, suddenly, a nurse who had been reading through his medical chart screamed, “This man has an advanced directive from six years ago that says he does not want resuscitative measures!” Nearly all the heads in the room turned, many staffers confused as to whether to continue the resuscitation. The advanced directive is a legal document that records a patient’s preferences for medical care in case communicating them is impossible. In most cases, a "do not resuscitate" order alone might stop a medical team from pursuing further intervention. But this man, unlike many patients in the intensive care unit who were clearly close to dying, had walked into the hospital for an elective diagnostic work-up. As of that morning, he was not close to dying, and even within moments of starting CPR, we felt reasonably certain that we could resuscitate him....He walked out of the hospital two days later, knowing that he had almost died. What he did not know was that aside from his heart stopping, he'd come one step closer to death because of a lack of clarity in his code status, which easily could have resulted in us stopping our efforts to revive him.

Bishop Tutu: "An Unpretentious Monk's Homegoing"

From the very wise Amy Cunningham, about the burial of Desmond Tutu:

The church setting was glorious, and the other bishops wore their robes, but surely the great man who helped upend apartheid would exit in a mahogany, walnut or cherry casket with brass rails of some sort. And wait a minute—what’s going on there with the slender foot-end of the Archbishop’s pine coffin resting naked, skirt-less on the church truck? It’s not landing normally. No rails on the sides, just rope. Tiny fist of flowers for a significant public figure like that? Yes. It’s not that the funeral directors I know staring at photos like the one above—longing only for a dignified look—are hoping to up-sell the theologian’s handlers. It’s just that some folks in funeral work instinctively struggle to pair humility with high stature. In truth, I also would have preferred a truck skirt or bier, or modern catafalque in church, but the rolling truck, in the end, had a nimbleness to it, and spoke to transparency. What you see is what you get: an unpretentious monk’s homegoing.

"Don’t call it ‘assisted suicide’"

 A letter to the editors of The Washington Post from Donna Smith of Compassion & Choices objected to the term "assisted suicide."

Using the term “assisted suicide” to describe medical aid in dying is inaccurate and offensive to terminally ill individuals, who want to live but their disease is killing them. They just want the option to end their suffering peacefully if it becomes intolerable.

In fact, data from authorized jurisdictions shows one-third of terminally ill individuals who receive aid-in-dying medication don’t end up taking it, but they get peace of mind from knowing they can take it if they need it.

A New Machine for a Gentle Assisted Death

The Washington Post reports on a new machine for those who wish to have an assisted death.

People wishing to end their lives in Switzerland — one of a handful of countries that give the option — could soon have access to a new method: a 3-D-printed pod that its creator says can painlessly end someone’s life in a matter of minutes....

At the push of a button, the pod becomes filled with nitrogen gas, which rapidly lowers oxygen levels, causing its user to fall unconscious within a minute, Nitschke said. A person does not suffocate or experience distress, he said, but rather dies of oxygen deprivation after they’ve fallen asleep. In theory, the capsule can be towed to a place of someone’s choosing, said Nitschke, who described the machine as a “stylish and elegant” way to die.

Being Present for the Dying

 Ken Budd's essay On The Obligation to Prevent People from Dying Alone is a beautiful meditation of what those moments together mean to the person who is dying and the person who is there, to talk or not, to read scripture or not, just to be present. Budd, still distressed that his mother died alone, has volunteered with NODA. 

I sit quietly. The dying can feel our presence, I’ve been told. That’s the mission here. To be a compassionate human being. To provide family members — in this case the woman’s devoted daughter — with a break from their vigil. To make certain someone is here if she needs something. To ensure that she won’t feel alone and, most important, that she won’t die alone.