Thoughts On Dying

As we enter the present national debate about health care, with the “Deathers” screed against having an Advance Directive and scheduled payments for doctors who tell their patients about end-of-life care, may I inject my 2cents worth?

I am 76 years old, have been a hospital volunteer for three years, was a hospice volunteer for six years; I am now a team member of Compassion & Choices of Oregon, an eleven year old Oregon legislature-approved organization dedicated to providing compassionate life-ending assistance to Oregonians.

Most Oregonians who apply for our service are above average in intelligence, education, and the ability to think for themselves, so when their doctors confirm that they have less than six months to live and even palliative care cannot ease their agony, they have the legal and moral right to ask for our assistance.

Too many dying patients would not make this choice because most of us are terribly afraid of death. Ernest Becker, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, states in his book, “The Denial of Death”, that most Americans refuse to acknowledge their own mortality. They refuse to think about their own death, refuse to talk about it, and continue to cling onto life to such an extent that over a quarter of all health insurance funds is spent in the last two months of life; trying vainly to ward off death, we struggle to hold onto life in spite of death’s imminence, our body’s increasing pain and lack of function, the loss of our minds, and the bankruptcy of our families. We destroy not only the last remnants of our own humanity, but also the personal strength and finances of those we hold most dear.

We are so in fear of letting go -– of our consciousness, our life, and our sense of who we were and what we have accomplished – that our dying is a tragedy instead of a release, a celebration of whom we have been and continue to be.

I am dedicating the remainder of my life to assisting the few wise and courageous Oregonians who are not afraid of their own death, but instead, in their passing create a testament of graceful closure and a beautiful memorial to themselves, their families and friends, a privilege only few Americans now can legally choose.

Will you please help?

(For more information, see www.compassionoforegon.org)

What makes me who I am?

My name is Richard Ernie Reed. As a sexually abused, psychologically neglected child since I was ten months old, I have been facinated with the question of why do our adult friends and care-takers hate us so much that they visited all of the infinate unspeakable acts of anger and frustration upon us?

Recently I found the answer, in another poet's words. Don Marquis was a reporter, playwright and poet. His muse was a cockroach named Archie who wrote on the poet's typewriter at night about his love for Mehitabel the cat. One night he wrote about Mahitabel and Her Kittens.

well boss

mehitabel the cat

has reappeared in her old

haunts with a

flock of kittens

three of them this time

archy she said to me

yesterday

the life of a female

artist is continually

hampered what in hell

have i done to deserve

all these kittens

i look back on my life

and it seems to me to be

just one damned kitten

after another

i am a dancer archy

and my only prayer

is to be allowed

to give my best to my art

but just as i feel

that i am succeeding

in my life work

along comes another batch

of these damned kittens

it is not archy

that i am shy on mother love

god knows i care for

the sweet little things

curse them

but am i never to be allowed

to live my own life

i have purposely avoided

matrimony in the interests

of the higher life

but i might just

as well have been a domestic

slave for all the freedom

i have gained

i hope none of them

gets run over by

an automobile

my heart would bleed

if anything happened

to them and i found out

but it isn't fair archy

it isn't fair

these damed tom cats have all

the fun and freedom

if i was like some of these

green eyed feline vamps i know

i would simple walk out on the

bunch of them and

let them shift for themselves

but i am not that kind

archy i am full of mother love

my kindness has always

been my curse

a tender heart is the cross i bear

self sacrifice always and forever

is my motto damn them

i will make a home

for the innocent

little things

unless of course providence

in his wisdom should remove

them they are living

just now in an abandoned

garbage can just behind

a made over stable in greenwich

village and if it rained

into the can before i could

get back and rescue them

i am afraid the little

dears might drown

it makes me shudder just

to think of it

of course if i were a family cat

they would probably

be drowned anyhow

sometimes i think

the kinder thing would be

for me to carry the

sweet little things

over to the river

and drop the in myself

but a mothers love archy

is so unreasonable

something always prevents me

these terrible

conflicts are always

presenting themselves

to the artist

the eternal struggle

betweet art and life archy

is something fierce

yes something fierce

my what a dramatic

life i have lived

one moment up the next

moment down again

but alwayts gay archy always gay

and always the lady too

in spite of hell

well boss it will

be interesting to note

just how mehitabel

works out her present problem

a dark mystery still broods

over the manner

in which the former

family of three kittens

disappeared

one day she was talking to me

of the kittens

and the next day when i asked

her about them

she said innocently

what kittens

interrogation point

and that was all

i could ever get out

of her on the subject

we had a heavy rain

right after she spoke to me

but probably that garbage can

leaks and so the kittens

have not yet

been drowned

Don Mauquis

This was not just a cockroach jumping on typewriter keys. This is the truth. This is the way it is. One human being engendering another human being when he or she can't even cope with his own existence. How can we express the pain of how we feel every day, just trying to get by, just trying to exist in a world we don't even understand. And then to have another helpless, little, crying, wanting, demanding human being in the same room with us, making us feel so helpless

and insignificant. Come on, get real!

(Ya'Know poem.)

But what can we do? How can we cope? How can we stop killing the human beings we love and hate and don't know how to stop hurting? How can be begin to feel? How can be find that sane part of us to stop our pellmell progress to cultural insanity, listening to the thump of roadkill in the night?

(Road Kill poem.)

What do we do? We wait. We wait for wisdom. We wait for maturity. We wait for the day dad shrunk.

(The Day Dad Shrunk poem.)

The cautious ecstasy of freedom. An awakening. A touch of connectedness. And then maybe, maybe, I'll realize that I, and my pain, and my anguish, are not the only things in this would of mine. I will find that you and I are in this room together.

(You and I in this Room Togther poem.)

We are all together, here, now, forever. We are archie, we are mehitabel, we are her kittens. We are everything, and everyone, and all of the pain in this world is ours, and all of the joy, and all of the ecstasy, and the reality, of who we are, what we can be and what we can't be, for ever and ever and ever. Thank you.

Isn’t It Time To Change Who “You” Are?

Scientists are discovering that our brain is like an automated blackboard – the kind we had at school. Our blackboard is filled with information written when we were children, about how to live and who we are. Most of the information was written there by our parents and other role models, reflecting who they were and how they saw their prejudices, their expectations or lack of expectations about their future, their ability to be successful or not to be successful – all of it outdated (and for you, probably wrong).

So, your lack of success and happiness in life may not occur because of your life and your personal history, but is fundamentally based and directed on your parents’ and possibly their parents’ history of experiences with their fears, failures and frustrations. They just passed the pain on! And your little brain recorded it as if those experiences and feelings were yours!

But there is good news, too. The scientists say that the blackboard of your brain can be modified, maybe even wiped clean of all the false and misguided notions of who “you” are. You have the ability to re-define and re-direct the rest of your life; changing direction into a happier, less fearful and frustrating reality. You can learn to enjoy life in new ways, to embrace the wonder of every single day on your own personal terms. You no longer have to “should” yourself, no longer have to do what your old blackboard scribbles say you “aught to do”.

You have a well-spring of wisdom which flows deep inside of you that can inform, protect and encourage you on every step of your new path into your brighter future. With your blackboard of your past wiped clean, your intrinsic “intuitive intelligence” will allow you to write new, life-affirming information and directions on your mind’s blackboard which can transform the rest of your life.

And it works! I am finally learning how to wipe my minds’ blackboard clean. Others I know are doing it, too. It’s not difficult. It doesn’t cost anything. You don’t have to join a church or a cult. Just be yourself, probably for the first time in your life.

I’ll give you your first clue. The rest will follow on my next blog.

But for now, just do this:

1. Sit down and relax.

2. Quiet your mind. Push away the past. Push away the future.

3. Begin to listen to your own deep personal store of wisdom.

4. Breathe in.

5. Breathe out.

6. Count your breaths.

7. Wait for the miracle.

Diary of a Dying Man – 1-15-09

      My thoughts are on dying recently; not just because I have reached my 75th birthday, but also because of the depressing headlines in the newspapers. And, I must admit, because of my six years as a hospice volunteer and my present responsibilities as a volunteer for Compassion and Choices of Oregon.

     But maybe because of this experience, I have learned to look at my impending demise and those of my loved ones and friends as one of adventure and celebration instead of denial and fear. Life and death are just two sides of the same coin to a spirit which may not die; but maybe find a new dimension in this universe of string theories and hope for something else after.

     A recent article in the New York Times has recently put me into this line of thought. It may interest you; in fact, you or a loved one might have had a similar experience. Please let me know of your experiences.

Richard Ernie Reed

rreed@ram-mail.com

 

In Defense of Death

By DAVID BROOKS

William D. Eddy was an Episcopal minister in Tarrytown, N.Y., and an admirer of the writer and theologian Richard John Neuhaus. When Rev. Eddy grew gravely ill about 20 years ago, I asked Neuhaus to write him a letter of comfort.

I was shocked when I read it a few weeks later. As I recall, Neuhaus's message was this: There are comforting things you and I have learned to say in circumstances such as these, but we don't need those things between ourselves.

Neuhaus then went on to talk frankly and extensively about death. Those two men were in a separate fraternity and could talk directly about things the rest avoided.

Neuhaus was no stranger to death. As a young minister, he worked in the death ward at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, a giant room with 50 to 100 dying people in it, where he would accompany two or three to their deaths each day. One sufferer noticed an expression on Neuhaus's face and said, "Oh, oh, don't be afraid," and then sagged back and expired.

Much later, Neuhaus endured his own near-death experience. An undiagnosed tumor led to a ruptured intestine and a series of operations. He recovered slowly, first in intensive care, and then in a regular hospital room, where something strange happened.

"I was sitting up staring intently into the darkness, although in fact I knew my body was lying flat," he later wrote in an essay called "Born Toward Dying" in his magazine, First Things. "What I was staring at was a color like blue and purple, and vaguely in the form of hanging drapery. By the drapery were two 'presences.' I saw them and yet did not see them, and I cannot explain that ...

"And then the presences — one or both of them, I do not know — spoke. This I heard clearly. Not in an ordinary way, for I cannot remember anything about the voice. But the message was beyond mistaking: 'Everything is ready now.' "

That was the end of Neuhaus's vision, but not his experience. "I pinched myself hard, and ran through the multiplication tables, and recalled the birth dates of my seven brothers and sisters, and my wits were vibrantly about me. The whole thing had lasted three or four minutes, maybe less. I resolved at that moment that I would never, never let anything dissuade me from the reality of what had happened. Knowing myself, I expected I would later be inclined to doubt it. It was an experience as real, as powerfully confirmed by the senses, as anything I have ever known."

Most scientists today would say that Neuhaus's vision was the product of him confusing an inner voice for an outer voice. He was suffering the sort of mental illusion that sometimes befalls epileptics before a seizure.

Neuhaus took it the other way. While most people might use the science of life to demystify death, Neuhaus used death to mystify life.

When he wrote about his experience later, his great theme was the way death has a backward influence back onto life: "We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already under way."

Neuhaus spent the next days, months and years impressed by the overwhelming fact of death. This made him, he writes, a bit blubbery. "After some time, I could shuffle the few blocks to the church and say Mass. At the altar, I cried a lot and hoped the people didn't notice. To think that I'm really here after all, I thought, at the altar, at the axis mundi, the center of life. And of death."

It also made him almost indifferent about when his life would end. People would tell him to fight for life and he would enjoy their attention, but the matter wasn't really in his hands, and everything was ready anyway.

He quoted John Donne who also was changed by a near-death experience: "Though I may have seniors, others may be elder than I, yet I have proceeded apace in a good university, and gone a great way in a little time, by the furtherance of a vehement fever."

Cancer returned, and Neuhaus died last week. In his final column for First Things, he wrote again about his mortality.

"Be assured that I neither fear to die nor refuse to live. If it is to die, all that has been is but a slight intimation of what is to be. If it is to live, there is much I hope to do in the interim."

This awareness of death, and of the intermingling of life and death, gave Neuhaus's writing an extra dimension — like a metaphysician who has been writing about nature within earth's atmosphere and suddenly discovers space.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

 

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"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."

 

--The Talmud