Welcome your friends to the end

My grandfather was born in 1900 and got married in 1918. The great flu epidemic of that year meant that the woman he married then did not become my grandmother. He was heartbroken, but fortunately for me, he recovered and married again.

Grandpa lived to be 90 and he enjoyed his life; he did a lot of things, from painting and photographing to building experimental radios.  I saw him not long before the end.  His heart was slowing down to the point where it would no longer be able to keep him going, and he wasn’t complaining about that; he just wanted the end to come at a convenient time and place.

His doctors told him what medicines they had and what the effects would be. I know they increased his dosage once.  Then he made it clear to them that this patient didn’t want more medicine; he just wanted his friend at his side.  And that was what happened. We all missed him but we didn’t mourn him: there was nothing to be sad about.

A few years ago the father of a friend of mine was terminally ill. He asked his extended family to come and see him, and when they were all there, my friend tells me that the patient said, “If I weren’t in so much pain, this would be a blast.” It was cancer and the pain got worse and the doctors were not easily convinced that this patient did want more painkillers. So the last two weeks were rough, but the end itself was something of a relief.

What I want to reflect on here is why our culture has such a horror of death.  We used to apply it as the supreme penalty for the worst crimes, but many countries don’t even do that any more; it’s too scary. In a nutshell, the reason seems to me to be that until the 20th century, most deaths were like my grandfather’s first wife: untimely and no chance to prepare.  Many of the rest were like my friend’s father: not surprising, but painful. I’m optimistic that there will be more like my grandfather, but let’s face it, medicine will never be perfect.

Can we bring our mindset about death closer to the modern reality? One thing we could do is regard it not as a loss of life  (my grandfather didn’t lose anything), but rather as the conclusion of our life, the last page in the book, and accept that every novel should have a last page. What if we treated death as a milestone of life, in the same category as a graduation or a wedding?  Don’t just invite one friend, or the extended family, but throw a big old party -- remind the guests not to bring presents -- and say goodbye to everyone who cares about us. Then, well, there probably wouldn’t be a honeymoon as such; we might just go into seclusion, with the phrase “funeral home”  acquiring a new meaning. Or some people might choose to simply close the book that very day, but it could be a purely medical decision rather than an ethical question, because socially speaking, we’d already be gone.