…..they kept her alive because they had been granted stewardship over her medical care and had the capability of keeping her alive; this small subset of individuals possessed the means and the knowledge and the wherewithal. That’s it. Nothing more. There was no better reason than that. No valid reason and certainly no defensible reason. Capability equaled a mandate in their over-educated, faux compassionate minds, thus they exercised this godly “right” of theirs and insisted on keeping her alive in a semi-vegetative state for an indefinite period of time, all while there remained no realistic hope for a return to a quality lifestyle for the gravely ill patient and even as the hospital cash registers continued to ring “Ching-ching-ching!!” non-stop throughout the day—day after day after tedious day…..night after night after tedious night. Immoral? Inappropriate? Grossly irresponsible? One could make a stalwart case to support such semi-obvious assertions, but who other than God can truly answer that sort of question? Certainly not this scribe, although I am sure you can readily deduce by this point where my heart stands on the matter. Living and existing are not the same, especially if that existence is totally dependent on external equipment and nearly fulltime nannying. There is a right time for everything—being born, being parented, maturing, copulating, marrying perhaps, pursuing a career, parenting, getting drunk as a skunk, kicking the kids out the house, growing old (If you’re lucky!), and, finally…..dying. It is no shame or abject embarrassment or evidence of a character defect to accede to Death’s pernicious clutches when that cryptic entity comes banging ferociously on your front door. Contrarily, fighting like a crazed maniac at prohibitive expense just to (re)claim a few more days or weeks or months of compromised “living” is far more indicative of significant character deformation, namely selfishness and blind narcissism. The planet Earth can get by just fine without your saintly presence; it did in the past and it will in the future too. No single person is indispensable, and that’s the way the world should operate. Therefore when death comes to embrace you and lead you home and the arguments it makes are unerringly strong and persuasive, just submit to the obvious and agree to accompany the Grim Reaper to wherever it chooses to lead you. Granted, no one wants to die, but no one wants to go to the dentist for root canal work or pay exorbitant taxes to a pitifully underperforming government or host your impertinent mother-in-law for a long weekend either, yet those are odious things we must do regardless when the moment calls for it. Same thing with imminent death. Accept it when said becomes the obvious outlook, both for yourself but especially for someone who may be immoderately close to you and whose health you have taken ultimate responsibility for or been similarly invested with this improbable power. Don’t fight death irrationally just to claim a moral victory and to earn an additional pittance of time spent on compromised “living”, if one should even dignify artificial, kept-alive-only-by-the-miracles-of-modern-medicine purgatory by referring to it as that. You were not responsible for your creation, and you are not the architect who will orchestrate your eventual demise either. To think otherwise is risible. You don’t own your life; someone far mightier than puny, fatuous human beings rightfully lay claim to that distinction. Yes, you admittedly can delay the onset of death just a little bit, but at what cost? Yes, indeed, at what cost(s), both financial and otherwise??? Just so your loved ones have to worry ceaselessly and wind up being responsible for footing the mindboggling expenses and labor investments attendant to caring for an invalid or semi-invalid for a few more weeks or a few more months or—at the absolute best—a few more years? And that’s just you personally. I neglected to mention the gargantuan financial stake society is forced to shoulder in the form of Medicare subsidies (Yes, Medicare is for all practical purposes a federal government welfare program for all but the healthiest geriatrics) just to appease your blind intransigence and honor your foolish desire to mimic Ponce de Leon and start chasing after the Fountain of Youth at a point in time when, ironically, all hope appears (and realistically is) lost. So go ahead and believe that you are a hero for fighting like a grievously wounded tiger to live for every last day and second that you can coax out of your exhausted, irreparably broken body, but just don’t expect—Nor should you expect!—plaudits and thank-yous from those people and deities whose opinions matter the most…..
Fred's Soapbox 