A time to Die

I don't sit around wondering if I'm going to wake up tomorrow. I do know that my body is a complex system of interlinked parts that has been working more or less efficiently for nearly 80 years. Therefore, I know intellectually it is wearing out. My sell by date is approaching. That is logical & entirely acceptable.

In the meantime I am going to enjoy the life I have. I'm going to do the things that give me pleasure. I'm going to decline to do the things that don't. I'm also going to spend as little time as I can with people who are negative & self absorbed because they drain the joy out of life. I want to enjoy being with people I actually like. If you know you have a finite time remaining, then why waste it?

I do however spend a little time thinking about the "how" of dying. There have been people in my life who have had a "good" death. There are also those who haven't. I don't have a problem with dying, but I am a little concerned about the "how". I've lived alone for 15 years & am happy with that. But I really don't fancy being incapacitated & unable to look after myself. I would not want to have a fall or heart attack on my own without being able to summon help. The idea of lying in my house slowly dying or in pain until someone realised they hadn't seen me in a while isn't appealing. It is a reality however because there are quite often days when I don't speak to anyone.

I know I'm a bit of a control freak. So I have a house I designed to be future proof for my old age. I wear a personal alarm linked to the phone. I have quite a wide circle of friends. I have an on line presence to keep in touch with people I don't see.

There is a time to die for all of us. It can come at any age, any time, or place. We often have little or no warning. In reality we are dying from the moment we are born. All of that is acceptable & part of the natural order. 

The big change in my lifetime is that we are living longer & as a consequence there seems to be far more dis-ease. More people seem to have chronic conditions that involve pain, fatigue & disability. Much of that is probably bearable. The situation I cannot accept is that a proportion of people will have a very poor experience of death, involving great pain & disability, which are not properly controlled. There is a lack of good hospice care & what there is is dependent on donations.

I understand the complex issues around assisted dying, but I really hope that I will live long enough to have the choice if I get to that stage. I do not want to suffer. I want to have some agency over my death.

We are watching people dying in their hundreds of thousands around the world in places like Palestine, Yemen & Sudan & we are doing little or nothing to help. If we can tolerate that, surely we can make a conscious decision to help people who really want to die for very good reasons & have safeguards for those who shouldn't be helped. Or are our  lives more important than theirs?