In the Midst of Life

most people use to mean ending life by turning off life-support equipment, such as a ventilator or a kidney machine. But, although the ethics are exhaustively debated, and a legal decision is required before it can be done, it involves relatively few people and occurs only in special circumstances. Yet the issue is more complex. As with everything in life, it is the little things that shape our destiny. Millions of people daily take drugs that keep death at arms’ length for a few more weeks, or months, or years. Should that switch be turned off? In other words should we, who are dependent on drugs, cease to take them and allow death to come? And if so, when? This does not require the decision of a judge or magistrate. It is a personal choice.
    I have heard several ageing people, who enjoy robust good health thanks to cardio-vascular drugs and other life-maintainers, tell me quite cheerfully that when the time comes they will want to ‘take something to end it all’. When I point out that it would be far easier to stop taking life-maintaining drugs, or have the pacemaker disconnected, their smile vanishes. The muttered response is usually something like, ‘But I couldn’t do
that’
and the person looks profoundly unhappy, and sometimes even shudders. The reaction is muddled thinking, certainly, but understandable. Which of us does not cling to life? When dying seems years away, we can be objective, even blasè, about it; but when it is to be next year, next month, next week - oh no! - and we reach for the pills that will prolong our time on earth.
    YetI am convinced that within a short time – a generation, perhaps, or two at the most – we will all have to take responsibility for our own deaths, and we will have to get used to it.
    But what of those who cannot take the responsibility, or cannot articulate it? Most people would say that the doctors must decide. Under common law today, and perhaps more subtly, social pressure, doctors have to be very careful of withdrawing life-maintaining drugs. It is not strictly speaking euthanasia, but it is close.
    The people who run Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) fear being kept alive unwillingly more than they fear death, which is understandable. However, to me at any rate, their mantra of dying with dignity is less easy to understand. Dying is a biological process, and there is no dignity to it, as anyone who is familiar with death will tell you. But the departure of the soul from the body is spiritual, which is altogether different. Even people who do not believe in God, or the human soul, will tell you that at the moment of death something mysterious, even awe-inspiring, occurs which they cannot explain or understand.
    ‘To die in peace’ is the biblical expression, which I prefer. To be allowed the space, the time, and the silence in which to know that I am going to die, to contemplate death and to come to terms with the inevitable, and above all to become friends with and welcome the Angel of Death, is what I pray for. All dignity will go as control of bodily functions goes, and I will become totally dependent on others, but if peace remains, that, for me, would be the perfect end.
    Yet I am realist enough to know that such an idyll is unlikely. A hospitalised death amongst a crowd of other old ladies is what I can expect, and must accept. There will be no peace, and this, too, must be accepted. I anticipate rejection, because the old and ill are not a pretty sight, and few people want to enter these places. Few people want to draw close to death, so I must accept that I will probably die alone. It is widely assumed that the dying will be in pain, and the kindest thing is to drug them, so I accept that I may be drugged stupid, and my role will be simply to submit.
    Thisis not an inspiring end, but it is already the norm, and few of us will escape it. We can cry aloud: ‘Do not go gentle into that good night … Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ * We can huff and puff about our dignity and our rights, but it will avail nothing. Death, the great leveller, makes fools of us all. The Grace of Humility, and her sister Acceptance, will be a better and surer guide on the hard and stony path that lies ahead.
    But what have we to complain about? Practically everyone of my generation leads a life enhanced by, or even dependent upon, medicine. We have grabbed greedily the extra years and called them our ‘right’. So perhaps we