Ever since I read Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal(which I highly recommend), I’ve been stunned by how little we talk about death.
I wrote this piece recently about the cultural obsessions with extending life. We want to upload our brains to computers, genetically modify our telomeres so we age more slowly, and just sustain our fragile human bodies at any cost until we find a more permanent solution.
Our fear of death has been a defining feature of humanity for a long time. Even before we were close to possessing the technology that might bring about the end of death, people were selling miracle pills and legends of the Fountain of Youth. We tell ourselves stories about characters like Elijah, Dorian Gray and Dracula who found loopholes that allowed them to avoid the terrible end.
But the simple stark reality is that while life expectancy has been steadily increasing, we haven’t suddenly been hit with a wave super-centenarians. The list of US citizens over 100 is a still relatively small. That means that while we’re all more likely to live into our 70s and even 80s, we’re no more likely to live to 120. Death is still waiting at the end of this particular roller coaster. We’ve only managed to kick the can down the road a bit.
And as Dr. Gawande talks about in his book, that means that the sudden health decline that hits many people near the end will come to more of us. The good news is that we’re less likely to die in a car accident on the Interstate, and your odds of being trampled by an oxen while plowing your fields are practically zero. We’ve reduced the odds of dying prematurely from lead poisoning or from being crushed to death in a coal mine collapse. And childhood diseases like mumps, measles and whooping cough are rarely fatal in the developed world.
That means life expectancy has improved, but it also means that you’re more likely to die in a hospital bed of cancer, degenerative cardiovascular disease or a simple heart attack. As a society, we haven’t faced the realities of that yet. We want doctors to prolong our lives through whatever means necessarily, and we’ve gone so far as to outlaw physician assisted suicide in 44 states.
What we’re saying in those places is that someone who’s life is agony can’t choose to leave this world on their own terms. Someone who feels they have lived the life that they want must waste away until their body betrays them, because it’s morally wrong for a person to take their own existence into their own hands.
To really grasp what who we’re talking about, listen to today’s The Daily from the NY Times.
Its the story of John Shields. A man who discovered he had a degenerative disease and lived in pain, simply waiting for the end. When Canada’s Supreme Court decided to allow physician assisted suicide, John decided that he wanted to lead the way. He wanted to show others how to die a good death.
Full disclosure, you’ll want to have some tissues handy. It’s an incredibly emotional 20 minutes story.
To me, John is a hero. John lived a life he was proud of. He left it all on the table. And when he compared the prospect of waiting for a painful end to finding out what’s next, he chose to take the last great adventure.
More and more of us are going to face the same choice that John had to make. I hope that each of us can look back on a life well-lived and embrace a dignified end.