The Light of Death
The Hogwarts ghosts have a tradition I think worth borrowing. They celebrate their Deathday, a party marking the date they quit this mortal coil. If a child’s birthday leans forward–first steps, a bike, a license, the vote–a Deathday looks back at a life well lived and, for the lucky, well ended. It’s a lovely spring morning as I write this, just as it was six years ago on the day I said goodbye to my father.
Most of us have a pretty good idea about how we want to die: at home, at peace, quickly, with family, without pain. And at a ripe old age. But progress begets paradox: we’ve gotten so good at the last goal, it swallowed the others, so we live longer but die slower. Two out of three people die in hospitals or nursing homes, often alone, the process prolonged by a conspiracy of hope, fear, bureaucracy, inertia. When researchers not long ago interviewed family members of the recently deceased, half of them said their loved one did not get the support he or she needed at the end. There’s a specter to haunt us, a death worth fearing, altogether different from the death we can embrace. Read the rest of this entry »
