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It's How We Die
That Concerns Us
By the time most of us reach our 70s, we've accepted the fact that we're getting closer to death, and many of us have put aside our fear of it and the hereafter. The decline in fire and brimstone religion has been one reason. More people believe in a loving, forgiving god these days, so the fear of descending into a burning hell has decreased.
Of course, for centuries Roman Catholics have been able to remove some of their fear of the hereafter simply by going to confession to cleanse their record, or at least by making sure they could see a priest before they died. According to their church, that's almost a sure highway to heaven.
But while we may have less fear of death and where it takes us, we are now more concerned about how we die. The prospect of lingering, debilitating cancer and Alzheimer's Disease haunt many of us. The pain, we know, can be horrible, but the loss of dignity and self control are much more frightening.
That fear generated the death-assistance laws in Europe and in Oregon. It led to the brief rise of Dr. Jack Kevorkan. That American debate on death-assistance will linger for decades as our population grows older.
As long as we have our memory and the ability to think, most of us probably believe we can endure the pains associated with dying, partly because many others have already done so. Some of our colleagues also learned to endure the severest of pains on battlefields, in accidents and as a result of volatile crimes. Pain is an integral part of modern life, lessened only by a wide variety of medications.
Heart attacks seem much more appealing than either cancer or Alzheimer's, although we're less likely to be prepared for that departure.
The comforting and amazing thing is that most of us can put aside most of these thoughts most of the time, get on with our lives, and deal with whatever hand is dealt us. These are not concepts we want to dwell on, but they are an undeniable part of the SeventySomething world.
Copyright 2004-07 by Carroll Trosclair
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