Pitfalls of simply getting old...

On a more serious, reflective, topic. It seems uncommon to think much about death until death itself knocks on your door and says 'hi, I'm here to collect..' and then looks down the list of names that today are due to catch a ferry across a river to another place.

But I think about the manner of death and about how people look upon those poor souls, of whom I have known too many, who suffer from either debilitating diseases or simply rigours of old age that make their minds go to, well, mush!

There have been more than one or two people I have known that have said 'I would kill myself before I get to that stage!' and yet they never have and they have instead endured a slow, sometimes painful death which does not end like the knock on the door above, but instead is more like death turning up and saying 'hi, I've come to take x away for a decade of torment and literal hell on earth before finally taking them to the ferry!'

Medicine is a wonderful and beautiful thing but forcing people to endure a long slow death seems at odds with the purpose somehow. And yet allowing for any form of euthanasia is abhorrent to me and has been practised in some peoples living memory, albeit there is almost some irony in that thought as it is those people that are forgetting they know that it was in their living memory.

And the problem with the 'I would kill myself before...' concept is simple. We hold on to life as long as we possibly can. We, in general, look to the next day, tomorrow, as being a day when things might be better and so we head for that day. Along the way, some people, and eventually all of us that do not get struck down suddenly, will find that the next day is just a little worse than the day before, and that each succeeding day is just a tiny bit worse than the preceding day. But the promise made to oneself is very rarely enacted upon. Mainly because of our inbuilt self preservation order, but partly because of hope. Hope that tomorrow will be a better day.

Sadly, and all too often, the tomorrows do not run out. They continue. Some of them in slow ever increasing levels of debilitation of the body and its functions and some, more and more it would seem, with the slow irreversible degradation of the mind and memories. And it is at this point, the point where 'I would kill myself before...' suddenly becomes a road sign in a rear view mirror, that all is lost. All being self determination about, simply put, next.

The point at which you had said to yourself you would never permit yourself to get to, you find you have arrived at. Or in the case of dementia, you don't. It is a point at which you will be unable to do anything about it, your mind, body and soul now entrusted into the care of others. Until death finally calls upon you for the final crossing.

In some ways that crossing is a relief. A relief for the sufferer and a relief for those that love them. Having watched people that I love die slowly, I am haunted by so many things. Their suffering and the fact I can do almost nothing to help them. The inability on so many levels to be able to speed their parting because it is morally abhorrent and apart from anything else there is that inability to not take life and especially not take the life of someone I love.

Also, what can appear on the face of it, selfishness of loved ones, who want the life preserved for as long as possible even though the life should probably be in quotation marks. It can hardly be called life, or living. It is an existence. And those loved ones visit, say soothing words, stroke foreheads and hold hands, and then go home and carry on their lives with a feeling they have done all they can... and they have and I know because I have been there on too many occasions.

But hidden away in a bed, in a home or a hospital, there is a poor soul, waiting to depart and all too often, they don't even understand what is happening, who they are, who the people that came to see them were, or that they came at all. And which is worse, those that do not comprehend their existence any more, who could possibly take their life if they had any understanding of what was happening, or those that cannot physically do so but who's minds race around hoping for death, wanting death, praying for deaths sweet embrace... but being forced to endure existence, just for a while longer, just until tomorrow maybe!

And still we mumble those words. ' I'd kill myself before I get to that stage...'