Love and Death

Death has come up a few times for me this week, so I guess I should write my thoughts on it. Kathy popped by a few nights ago and religion, as always is a topic of discussion between us. She's so devoutly Christian and I'm so fascinated by the comparative religions, that it's always a learning process. She told me that since she's moved into an over 55 community, that she has many conversations about death, G-d and ethics. It is her experience that many Jews aren't sure of whether or not G-d exists, because if he did, then why would so many have perished during World War II? She talked about her fear, not of death, but of not being prepared to grow old. And then she said something to me that I think is a fascinating concept...that G-d doesn't look at death the way that humans do. When you compare different religions, it is the human experience of the interpretation of what death and afterlife means.

For a moment I thought about L. and his past Mormon upbringing. I heard him say once that *IF* God exists, I'll apologise (for the non-belief) when I get to heaven. Does life's disappointments lead you to fall that far away?

This morning E. wrote about the sudden death of her husband from a heart attack this past summer. For all of the past pain that she had felt for his depression, that there is always pain for loving someone who is depressed on many different levels. It's a woman, sharing a man's pain (because we compassionate); it's the pain of not having your relationship with that man not be all that you had hoped and dreamed of including not having your needs met or the love returned in ways that are the most meaningful to you. There is the pain of not being able to care take well enough, to sooth or heal them enough. The fear of the possibility of suicide and that potential pain as well as the emotional torture of not knowing that if it's something you, personally, did or didn't do that has our hearts aching for another's pain. My mother used to tell me how difficult it was being a mother because her child's pain was always her pain as well. El said that because of her love for her husband; because she knew the depth of his depression; and that she loved him in spite of his despair, she would have stayed with him when he died so that he didn't have to die alone. It was his perception that he was unloved--and she would have been with him to prove that he was loved. She said that she thought suicide was a bad choice, but people are allowed to make bad choices.

I'm not sure that I agree with that. In a different way, I completely understand what she wrote. When my father was dying of cancer, he kept saying that he wished he were already dead, that he had thought about it at the time that he had some availability to arsenic and 'why didn't he take some when he wanted to'? I thought about it, because he didn't ask me directly, but voiced his emotional pain--could I really help him commit suicide if he asked me to? And my answer was yes, that I could. That there was enough love and respect for his decision of how to live or how to die that I could without any guilt; without any higher moral authority deciding when he would live or when he would die.

So, I asked to see someone that I knew well enough to know that it would remain private, and I brought my father's heart medication with me. I closed the door and asked him how much of each...and he told me.

My father didn't ever ask me to assist in his suicide, but he stopped eating. I KNOW that part of the terminal process of cancer is that a patient does become anorexic--but my father went through world war II as a survivor and he saw first hand death from starvation....and truthfully, for as much as I know about medicine, I couldn't tell you which one was the determining factor in his death. But as El said,  in wanting to be with her husband so that he wasn't alone, there is a privilege in being with someone at their death. They brought you to life in one way or another and there is nothing more caring than in their last moments not to be alone. My mother died alone in a hospital and it kills me that she did because she kept asking me, how come you don't call me? How come you don't come to visit?....and when I did, I would stay for a half hour and leave. I was all caught up in work, and I knew she was dying. She was my best friend and I didn't have the emotional capacity to know how to deal with her death...and I have guilt over that. I was far closer to her than my father--and yet I took care of him every day. I was ten years older when he died, and many more years wiser with the compassion and strength it took to be there.