The Ethical Way To Heal American Health Care : NPR...is a life worth having...I suppose...
This story, as do all of the stories I blog about, touched a nerve with me. Things often do with me - touch a nerve that is...every last one of them or so I've been told. I cried hearing this man talk.
Another nerve - and the end of an era -
the final 'exit' of ER...touches nerves as well...
A life worth living.
How can we have lives that are worth living when all around all of us the collective world, society as we know it - is crumbling? I try making sense of of - I used the 'F' word a lot....but it really makes no sense at all...and profanity sure describes it a lot better than sacred seems to (at least for me)...although I consider it ALL sacred....
ER made us take a look at the 'humanity' of suffering in life and death, life and life, life and sacrifice - in the macro and microcosm that was the ER and all the lives it touched (does touch) for us all sometimes....'do not ask for whom the bell tolls'...
And I won't get into the 'TV' worth watching debate...the end of ER is more than an end of an era for NBC programming - it's sort of a reminder of what I
did like about some (very little) programming on TV....but now that I don't watch TV anymore I could care less about what 'it' gets replaced with...
I want to get into the message. The message that most of us, so busy watching our TVs seem to miss...we miss our own lives, and at times our own deaths...
In the story on NPR, a doctor, who saw all that there was to see in life and death situations is now dealing with the death of his mother. He talks to us from the depths of his heart, his mind, and his soul about how our lives should end. Not with all the debris of forced living - but with deliberate and careful consideration - something we seem no less able to give to the state of the affairs of this planet/world/society than to our own loved ones (or to ourselves for that matter). Dignity in death it would seem, is rare...and that makes me sad.
Just like it makes me sad to see a man I work with have to deal with putting his dad in a nursing home; seeing how it is ripping him apart. Just like the creeping sadness I feel talking when to my mother's sister (my godmother - who just turned 89 I think in March),and knowing that soon - maybe not now, not in the next month, but soon - she will be gone...listening to her talk from her nursing home and remembering the vitality of this amazing woman (which she still possesses) and realizing that this probably is not how she envisioned the end of her life. She took her own mother (my grandmother) into her home and cared for her in her dying time.
My aunt's life life was assuredly a life worth living...a life worth a lot to those of us who know and love her. How do we help her to say good-bye? How do we say good-bye to one another? How do we end our days? How do we want to? Have we made this - our lives - all that busyness we call 'life' - all so complicated that we can't even do the right thing(s) for our loved ones in times when they need us to do so the most?
Between the lack of compassion these days in the health care field, the out and out fleecing of America by insurance companies (witnessed first hand by me personally today, but that's another post), Medicare, and the government's inability to fix what is so vital to life (and death) decisions, to our lack of realising what is truly important in our own lives - how do we even being to be able to celebrate not just ' A Life Worth Living' but the end of life and a graceful stage exit?
I used to envy people who had their parents still alive - it used to bother me a lot to hear people complain about their parents - but I certainly don't envy the decisions they have to make about elderly care. I think it's appalling how we treat the elderly in this country.
I envied those people because of the way my own parents died...I never got to say good-bye...
Now when I talk to my kids - I talk to them in terms of what I want to see for them - before I go...sure it's not my place or my right or even my life - but these are the conversations I want to have with them now - the ones that matter - the ones that make them think - the ones that say 'Hey - I am not going to be here forever...' - that of course is before I have to have the conversation about 'and this is what I want you to do for me at the end...' - not just a living will - not just a legal or even medical conversation - but a human being 'look me in the eye and hold my hand' conversation...
So say goodbye to ER for me - those of you out there watching it now....then make sure you know how to lovingly say fare-thee-well to those you care about the most when the time comes.
Labels: Life and Death
