Life And Death… Revisited

TUES., NOV. 1, 1994, 12:43 PM
EARLY LIGHT ROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C.

This is a conference about prolonging and promoting more functional life. Yet this always bumps up against death, that other adventure, if you push it hard enough. It was too bad, even if it was understandable, that you couldn’t formulate the important question in yesterday’s afternoon session. What it should have been is: can there be a better balance between the medical and public health view that death is failure and that more life is always desirable and the faith community’s view that life, in spirit form, continues on after bodily death… and that this continuing life may be an improvement over this present one. Christians have swung too far toward a humanistic position, overvaluing physical life, as if this is all there is. The public health and medical community should have more acceptance that life goes on and that death postponing activities should be curtailed.

Then the session this morning focused on advance directives and organ donation. The style was research with little advocacy, but it was another step toward accepting that older humans can elect to forego heroic treatments and enjoy the experience of dying… AND… that encouraging the transplanting of viable organs allows for a marvelous sacrifice in the last moments of bodily earth life. Such a sacrifice is a symbolic analog to My sacrifice as Jesus. You will die, but because of your “gifts,” others might continue to live and to live with better overall functioning. I continue to like and encourage such sacrifice.

Then the session on intergenerational conflict… or interaction… had the continuing implication, that was evident to you, at least, that the longer life of the elderly and the medical care that is given during the time of dying, is a factor in the whole dilemma. Death is one part of the solution, because the death of an elderly person signals the end of costs to the government for that individual. (It also is part of the solution when a baby, child, or young person dies, but that is less palatable.) You are not yet retired, so you still are generating income, including contributions to taxes and to pension and savings. After you retire you have some “comfortable” time when you’re just receiving back what you have “put in” over the years, plus some theoretical interest. But if you live more than a few years after retirement you begin to be a liability to society, with payments to you coming because of what younger workers are now paying in. You hope for no more costly medical care, but it could be necessary. All of this is money that must come in from those who are healthy and working, to maintain you, with the hope that you will recover health rather quickly.

Your parents have certainly not been a burden to you, and they have taken rather minimally from the government, though they probably are some who should have social security benefits diminished. They are being subsidized by Joanne and Howard, but that is their choice, and your parents could live as they do with their own saved and invested resources. Thus, their continued lives are not costly, and death, for them is not the “balancer” it could be for many others.

Likewise Mabel, though she has no financial resources of any consequence and is subsidized by her daughters, is not a burden on society, and her death would not be much of a “balancer” either.