i’ve mentioned here before numerous times that i spent a good part of the academic year 1990 – 1991 contemplating throwing myself out a high window. and while i would never, ever want anyone to experience those horrific depths of despair, the one positive thing that period in my life did do for me, was completely inure me to any fear of death. when you spend day in and day out thinking about death, and planning for death, and imagining what it would be like to die, death loses any sense of mystery or taboo. you feel as if you know it intimately, having slept cheek-by-jowl with it for so long. it takes on the much more pragmatic role of something you have to eventually get around to preparing for. like taxes. or at least, it did for me.

which is not to say, of course, that that means i have any idea what it’s like to actually die. i may, in fact, be piss-my-pants terrified when actually faced with impending death – i have no idea, and am not so presumptuous as to believe i could possibly predict my reaction. i’d like to believe i’ll be very calm and graceful and accepting when my time comes, but may very well, in fact, kick and scream and tantrum like a toddler who won’t let go of his toy.

we don’t talk about death much in either the anglo or american cultures, though. i know a few things about what people in my immediate family want for their arrangements after they die, but not a whole lot about what they think it is like to die. if they’re scared of death. most of us don’t talk about death precisely because we are scared of death. death being that greatest of unknowns, and we fear the unknown. we don’t like to look too closely at the boogeyman in the corner. consequently, i don’t know if many of my friends and family believe in an afterlife, or souls, or reincarnation, or just dust. me? i’m a duster. i think when you’re gone, poof, that’s it. i’d *like* to believe in the recycling of a universal life force… but in reality, i think it’s lights out, game over. which is kind of harsh i guess, but i just don’t think human life is in and of itself, terribly special or precious, or worthy of some kind of karmic preservation after death. i don’t think plants or ants or fish have some kind of heavenly arrangements – why would humans?

which for me, is all the more reason to make the most of our time here whilst we walk amongst the living. to try to take every moment we have available to us and make the most of it. to *live* goddamn it, and to live by no half-measures.

why bring up all of this? well because i fervently and outspokenly believe that every person has the right to control the manner of their death. there have been a few court cases in the news of late, which underscore this point – an australian quadriplegic recently won the right to starve himself to death, and a british woman won her case to have the assisted suicide law reviewed. unfortunately in these instances, neither of these cases is a clear victory: the caretakers of the australian man will simply not be prosecuted for obeying his wishes, while the british woman will find out if her husband will be prosecuted for accompanying her to a swiss right-to-die clinic. but they are important steps in fighting for a growing recognition that part of living well, is dying well.

we often have very little control over what happens to us in life – call it fate, or god’s will, or random chance. in reality, as much as we like to believe we steer our own course, there is only one thing that we can predict with absolute certainty: we will all die. we are all progressing towards that finite moment in time when we will cease to exist. and many of us will die without control over that last moment – it will come at an unexpected time or place not of our own choosing, and not of our own volition. it is only natural, only *human*, therefore, that those who are able to see their own death on the horizon, can and do choose to exert some control over that final event.

to bestow a person’s last moments as a living being on this earth with as much dignity and respect as we can muster…isn’t that the kind of honor everyone deserves?

and yet, we as a society, allow our own multitude of fears around infirmity, death and dying, to pervade our culture and be instituted in law. we tell people that it’s not okay to plan for death, to think about things like pulling the plug, to consider issues around quality of life and what makes it worth going on. it’s almost as if we fear that someone else’s decision that their life is no longer worth clinging to, somehow devalues our own. we fear going gentle into that good night, and so we fight, tooth and nail, to ensure that our rules and our medicine and our cultural beliefs rage, rage against the dying of the light.

but we do so, at the expense of other’s humanity. we do so at the expense of being humane. people are forced to endure unimaginable suffering, unable to exert their last bit of will. family forced to suffer along with them. because we are afraid to confront our own deaths, we are afraid to confront theirs – if we could, we could perhaps begin to imagine ourselves in their shoes, and empathise.

empathy takes courage – a courage it seems we just don’t have yet as a society. we look away from those who wish to die, who discard their last scraps of privacy and place themselves front and centre, demanding that we see. we look away and pretend that it won’t be us.

but it will. one day, it will. we will all surely die. we can only hope that as we prepare to draw our own last breaths, that we are shown the same reverence and kindness that we should have shown to others.

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