The grace to accept… the hour chosen by God

Pope Benedict suggests that the sick pray for “the grace to accept, without fear or bitterness, to leave this world at the hour chosen by God.”

Good advice.  It’s a safe bet that none of us are getting out of this world alive.  And while – in our hubris – we might want to control the time and manner of our going, we don’t live a day longer, or less, than God intends:

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.
(Psalms 139:13-16)

Bill Clinton thinks we should just get going already – these deathwatches are expensive!  And they are.  It’s well documented that end of life care consumes a huge proportion of medical resources – and as we get deeper into government-paid, rationed health care, more people are going to be receiving the Barbara Wagner heave-ho: you can’t have the chemo treatment your doctor advises, but we will pay to help you kill yourself.  The Covert Rationing Blog explores how best to “sell” this option to an unwilling public.  Is ritual death for older people a la Star Trek at the bottom of that slippery slope?  It’s a sad truth – money and resources are not unlimited, and the older and sicker you are, the more you use.  No matter what bill of good any candidate tries to sell about “universal healthcare,” it’s going to be rationed because technology is not free, and medical professionals are not slaves.  It all needs to be paid for somehow.  And since death is inevitable for us all, and usually because of some illness, it behooves us to consider where to draw the technological line.

Pope Benedict’s prayer is very much on target for that.  I still love this quote by The Anchoress:

The Anchoress » Jeff Jacoby, Terri, my living will, and a terrible eclipse
“my wishes are changed, and that is due to both Terri and my brother, S. Before S, I would have said, “just let me go – no life support of any kind – ” Now, I am not so certain. Now, I think…why deprive my family of the opportunity to love? Why deprive myself of the chance to be loved and to love them back? I am too grateful for those extra weeks with S, that no one, not the doctors, not the nurses, not the chaplains believed we would have. Those weeks were so precious, and I learned so much – so very much – about love, and about how as long as love exists, as long as someone is being loved and trying to love back, no matter how feebly…you are in the midst of a Holy Mystery.

If God is love, and that love is alive – in life, no matter how compromised…then it seems to reason that if life is destroyed, or ended too soon, then it is a kind of eclipse of love, an eclipse of God. I look at Terri Schiavo and I see S. I see Christ. I see the brain-injured people I used to work with, and I see Christ. I see something “there.” If I am wrong, I am wrong. But I might be right.”

As for me, I’m very much in favor of hospice, and it offends me that somehow food and water are often considered “medical care” these days.  I had a terminally ill family member who was essentially starved to death.  It wasn’t my decision, and it would have been fruitless to argue.  But I hated it.  Every single day she got weaker I got more angry at the person who made the decision.  Why not have palliative care – treat the pain and other symptoms and let the illness run it’s course?  I can understand the arguments to not keep someone on a breathing machine indefinitely, but withholding nourishment?

It’s time to have these conversations as a society.  It’s time to define palliative care. We don’t want some government bureaucrat to make these decisions. I wrote in Universal Health Care vs. Your Religion:

There has to be a free-market solution to this conundrum. At the advanced level of technology and medical knowledge that western society has achieved, there ought to be more options when recovery isn’t likely, but families don’t want to pull the plug. Some cross between a nursing home, intensive care, and hospice. And the potential to buy insurance to cover these events. Why can’t we support life until death?

The  baby-boomer generation is beginning to retire, and it behooves us all to consider the Pope’s prayer and ask ourselves this question: Who do we trust to make the decisions as to the time and manner of their death?