Fascination/Aversion To Death

Mainstream American culture, in general, cannot come to grips with the idea that there is a beginning, and an end, to each and every life. That there is a middle and a late middle seems beyond most folks' understanding as well. Youth is everything, and scientific studies that seek ways to "cheat" death, or to prolong life abound.

Please understand, I am not advocating that an increased lifespan is not a positive goal, but if we simply live longer, but not better...is that really an improvement? If there are medical treatments that could cure or render a remission in a terminal disease, but the person has no financial means to obtain that treatment...what then? How frustrating, and what a heartache it must be for both the ill person and their loved ones that treatment exists, but is inaccessible.

Is it dying that we fear, or the potential pain, disuse, disfigurement of an older body...or our imagined images of those things, so often associated with age?

Our fear of dying often precludes finding true joy in our living, promotes an inability to eek out each moment we have NOW with those we love. And dying certainly isn't only for the "old." My husband was 22 when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer and I so well recall the feeling that someone had just hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer when the surgeon told me the diagnosis. For months, through the subsequent surgeries, chemotherapies, and healing processes, I was a zombie. I could offer little emotional support to my husband because of my fear of his death.

Fortunately, my husband was treated successfully, and is cancer-free. But the point is, if he had not been, if his disease had progressed, I was wasting precious time with him by being so afraid of an inevitable.

Our fears prevent us from being there for others, from allowing free and open exchange of their fears, their hopes, their thoughts and feelings. Our fears, not theirs, cause us to think that all medical interventions should be taken when their hearts beat for the last time. Our fears keep us from supporting their decision, one way or the other, about end-of-life choices. I can't imagine being the terminally ill person who wishes no extraordinary measures being terrified that their loved ones will try to countermand my decision and hook me up to machines I have no desire to be hooked up to.

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