Thanks, Dee. Prof. Curlin’s talk is thought-provoking.

“How to Die Well” … I don’t recall (and can’t imagine) encountering a Sunday School class on that in any of the churches I attended over 4+ decades. And it can’t be in high demand in present-day “youth-oriented” ministries either, I guess.

Come to think of it, I don’t recall intentional instruction on “How to Live Well” either. Perhaps that’s part of the problems of the churches in recent decades; we’ve taken our cues for “living well” (and perhaps also for “dying well”) from the wider culture, rather than seeking to image something more congruent with the Creator’s purposes.

Again, thanks.

One of my friends in Canada had untreatable and fast-moving lung cancer in 2015. She was terrified that she’d be forced to remain living against her will because of some health policies in effect under the then-current government. So she made the considered decision to go to Switzerland to commit suicide. She had to go round and collect all sorts of paperwork to prove who she was (not easy, as she’d come to Canada as a 15 YO refugee in 1964), she was in her right mind, her condition was terminal, etc. Then she went to Iceland first for a few days, and after, on to Geneva where she went through with it.

I still think she was enormously brave for doing what she did. It seemed a heck of a lot more active than the six days I sat in a room at hospice keeping watch, waiting for my father to die the year before. I still wonder if we couldn’t have done something differently.

Just My Personal Opinion.

Worth repeating:

Benediction: Jude 24-25
Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling,
and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,
to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever.
Amen.

From the discussion questions: “Basil warns against Christians putting all ‘hope for health’ in the hands of doctors. What is your experience?”

In the ICU with a family member, our family has seen, in ONE night, one doctor saying, “Now it’s time to pull the plug? People come here to die, you know,” AND then the doctor on the NEXT shift declaring, “OK, now we do a heart transplant?”

Ah, no to both. Our family declined both doctors’ recommendations.

Yes indeed, very thought-provoking. Thanks, Dee.

Honestly, I keep flip flopping on the issue and in regard to last wishes and final instructions I range from ‘they’re not going to get rid of me that easy’ (re: no extreme measures) to ‘do I really want family members, whose views are often very different from mine, make all my end of life decsions?’ Yet I realize, being in my 7th decade here on this earth, perhaps all decisions will soon be taken from me. I keep going back to the talk presented in last week’s echurch when the presenter said, in regard to medicine/health care, we must not only consider the how, but also the why.

a person’s choices . . . yes

as in that prayer of a child, this:

‘NOW I LAY ME down to sleep . . . ‘

and the resulting trust in God to care for the sleeping child

In our Christian faith, is it a perversion to seek suffering unnecessarily, especially when the severe suffering is that of ANOTHER, and not our own selves????
‘God’s Will’ is often used as an ‘out’ from our own responsibilities but when death is imminent and suffering is great, and a person has ‘had enough’ of painful agony,

what is wrong with a child of God saying ‘NOW I LAY ME down to sleep’?

I have thought about this. I have no answers. Just a childrens’ prayer to ponder.

Samuel Conner: This brings me back to the thought that in addition to thinking about “how to die well”, it may be very important to give careful consideration to “how to live well”.

Same here. Talk of dying puts living into perspective.

Also… that phrase “a good death” is really triggering. A good death for whom? For the person dying, or for those who love them and will be grieving them?

Death isn’t pretty. It’s a shock, a rending, as well as being a natural process we all must deal with.

When my mom passed from C19, i was allowed to sit with her, decked out in full PPE, before she left the planet. It was devastating and would have been much more so if a) i hadn’t been around my father when he was dying, many years before and b) if COVID had been hard on her. It actually wasn’t, and she was so frail (being almost 97) that it could have been any infectious disease, really.

But it’s still very, very hard for the folks who are losing someone they love to see the dying process as it progresses.

All that said, I’m SO grateful that i could be with her.

But i truly question this business of “a good death.” It can be agonizing for the dying person, after all. Setting standards to live up to seems like the exact opposite of what’s helpful for the one who’s dying as well as the folks left here to mourn them.

I have probably said too much already, but gosh. I do hope these thoughts count for something. It’s my experience – and every loss is different. Every experience of grief and the grieving process is different. YMMV.

Numo,
I’m so sorry about your loss. I know you loved your dear pet. I know you are grieving as you would for a child you cared for, yes. Please accept my condolences. I will pray for you to know the peace that comes from having done the right thing out of love for your dear one.

very sad for you

christiane,

Christiane, thanks so much. I do grieve, and I miss her tremendously, but I know I made the right decision for her and feel at peace about it. My 1st bun didn’t have an easy death, and I wasn’t there with her. Like Michiko (the bun who just passed), she was elderly and I’ll. If I had things to do over again, I’d handle it differently. This comes partly from having had to make palliative care decisions about my mom, a year in advance of when she actually passed.

My mom’s assisted living facility + nursing home is run by the Church of the Brethren – one of the German Anabaptist denominations here in PA. It’s an excellently-run place, and their end of life care is the best. Just the fact that they allowed me into their COVID isolation ward to be with her speaks volumes about their approach. So… they do try to help as much as they can for everyone, both the individual who’s dying as well as family members.

I just do see things that the medical establishment tends to do with many dying people that I don’t want for myself. And I’m at an age where I need to get the necessary paperwork together for myself, as there’s nobody here who can advocate for me in the way that I advocated for my mom for over 15 years. I’m the last surviving member of my immediate family, and the closest members of my extended family are over 1500 miles away. So… While I’m not necessarily an advocate of euthanasia per se, I do think that in certain cases, it should be an option.

The other thing is that I am physically so far away from any family that, like many people, I may well be on my own when my time comes. Which is related to how I was there for and with my bunny when she was pts last month. It’s likely that nobody will be there with me when I draw my last breath. That’s a hard thing to face.

But I do wonder if it’s time to reexamine some of the ways we perceive – or perhaps misperceive? – euthanasia and humans. I’m just throwing that out there; I have no answers, only questions.

numo: My mom’s assisted living facility + nursing home is run by the Church of the Brethren – one of the German Anabaptist denominations here in PA.

I know of the (many) “Brethren” Anabaptist denominations in PA; one of my writing partners is a United Brethren minister.

I think you have to be careful about the use of “Brethren” in the names of denominations, much the same as with “Baptist.”

Just b/c someone uses part of another denomination’s name doesn’t mean that there’s a relationship there.

I am of the opinion that heroic measures to preserve life is fraught with as many downsides as there are upsides.

My grandmother went through open heart surgery at the age of 86. Just so she could live another 6 months longer. I don’t know if the surgery was her choice, the doctors pushing that, or her children. Regardless, it seemed to me at the time to be a colossal waste of resources which resulted in bad outcomes.

The worst outcome was that she had to experience one of her sons take his life – which she would not have had to go through had she not had the open heart surgery. Prolonging life does not always allow for Good Things(TM) to happen.

That said, my father-in-law had open heart surgery in his early 90’s and lived for 12 more years. The open heart surgery enabled much good.

At the age of 94 when he could see that he was on the cusp of very bad (from his perspective) quality of life and could still do something about it, he took his life.

It is a long story, but his manner of death over the course of 48 hours or so was quite astounding and redemptive in nature.

When people are dying there are no simple, and certainly no pat, answers. Each situation has too many variables and nuances for there to be a one size fits all solution. Especially if the solution means that an institution is making the decisions and being guided solely by policies that cannot account for all possibilities.

numo,

As to the main subject at the link, many PA Dutch of my grandparents’ geberation were at least partly fluent in the dialect that’s referred to in the article. Some were fluent.

But theirs was the last generation where this was the case. They were born at the very end of the 19th c.-beginning of the 20th. Now nobody speaks the dialect outside of Amish and Old Order Mennonite circles, here and in some of the Midwestern states.

numo: United Brethren isn’t related to the Church of the Brethren. The latter, along with the Mennonites and the Amish,are the 3 German Anabaptist groups that emigrated to PA during the colonial period.

My writing partner explained it to me this way:
“You have Anabaptists.

Mennonites are one step beyond Anabaptist.
Old Order Mennonites are one step beyond Mennonite.
Amish are one step beyond Old Order Mennonite.
Old Order Amish are one step beyond Amish.
I don’t think it’s possible to go one step beyond Old Order Amish.”

Headless Unicorn Guy,

Well, he’s correct, though i wouldn’t put it the way he did, especially since anabaptists in general aren’t linked in any way other than them not practicing infant baptism.

The German, Swiss and Dutch Anabaptists who emigrated to PA in the 18th c. had similar views and beliefs.

The Amish are, technically, Amish Mennonites. They came into being due to a church dispute/split among Mennonites in the Old Country. Almost all of them are of Swiss descent, and the dialect they speak is a form of Swiss German. (I’ve met native speakers of Swiss German who can converse with them, although their respective dialects have changed a lot over the past 250+ years.)

The Mennonites in this country are *extremely* diverse, and that’s worth a book-length study in itself.

Both of these groups have, since coming here, had a whole lot of church splits – that’s still going on. Outsiders don’t really see it with the Amish, since they meet in peoples’ houses. There are a few “New Order” groups in my neck of the woods that actually have church buildings, but they aren’t viewed as being Amish by most insiders. As with other locations where the Amish have settled, there are a variety of churches, with different rules and different garb. The valley where i lived from 2003-this June is where the group that is closest to the original, 17th c. Amish immigrants in beliefs and practice is located – and i mean, the closest in the Western hemisphere. They have very distinctive garb, including pants with a single suspender for the men, made out of linsey-woolsey or linen, homespun at that.

Neither my mom nor i have ever seen anyone from this sect. They tend to keep to themselves.

There were Amish in Switzerland until the late 19th c., when they literally died out. I’ve seen photos of some of them, and their garb was very different than what Amish people hear wore then and wear now. The women seem to heve worn Victorian-style mourning for their entire adult lives, but their clothing wasn’t “plain,” unlike that of the Amish, Mennonites (Old Order) and Church of the Brethren in my locale and in PA as a whole.

The best sources on this are the lete John Hostetler (who grew up Amish but chose to be baptized Mennonite so that he could go to college) and Donakd Kraybill, who was one of Hostetler’s students. Hostetler’s diagram of the Amish, per sects and how conservative they were and still are (or not), is centered on the population where i live. Even us “fancy” Dutch are represented on the outermost edges of his diagram! It was quite surprising to see that, not least b/c Hostetler was very familiar with people and sects in large and small areas of Amish and Old Order Mennonite settlement all over the country.

Anyway, i think your friend exaggerated a bit for emphasis. It’s not the way I’d explain things (as you’ve already seen), and doesn’t really take the difference betwern sects within the same group into account, plus differing cultures. But that is super-complicated and i freely admit my ignorance on it!

* 18th century, not 17th century

My bad!

Muff Potter,

Hey, thanks. Two things, though –

– the reason the phrase is triggering for me has everything to do with having to sit through orations (“sermons”) on “holy dying,” as elaborated on by somf prominent English Puritans. The head honcho of That Church had a whole mess of Puritan treatises and pamphlets he’d bought in used bookstores while growing up, in England. There were a *lot* of expectations being placed on both the dying person, as well as their families and close friends, in the Head Honcho’s preaching. Perfectionism about some sort of “beautiful death.” He even shouted down Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night,” which is about the death of Thomas’s father. I guess none of us are supposed to feel anger sbout death and grief. Which is utterly unrealistic and inhuman.

– having a beloved animal friend pts is hard, no question. But i feel at peace about the choice i made, b/c i made it before my rabbit became too ill. My vet says that it’s not hard to pts when people come in when they should. It’s when people wait too long that it’s truly agonizing for everyone concerned. And, per her, that’s more common than any vet would want. But we all want to hang on too long, too, i think.

All i know is that my fears were dispelled by the way in which my Michi passed. And of course, i was right there with her. I’m so relieved that i was able to allow her a peaceful passing from this world to eternity.

Headless Unicorn Guy,

Comment from the above IMonk Archive posting:

“As a palliative care nurse I can offer some comment on all of the more hopeful stories that you are seeing about the peaceful deaths that others apparently witness. Yes, they do happen, occasionally. They are not the norm. In my experience these accounts are told because generally it is taboo to tell tales otherwise. People rarely want to hear the painful truth, and the grieving soon realize this. They realize that they are often isolated when others cannot face the grief in their eyes. Remembering these fleeting moments and extrapolating them to the whole experience of the dying process gives the grieving and those around them comfort and reassurance while preserving social relationships and the support they offer at a desperate, severing time.

“Another observation is that these stories become, to some, the new memories for the living. This takes time. Sometimes a very long time. Sometimes they are constructed for survival. I often see the families of those I have cared for years later. More often than not the recollections have grown and changed from what I witnessed. A similar thing happens with recollections of childbirth.

“For Christians I am often amazed at how many honestly believe that their faith somehow magically prevents them from suffering. They then assume that when a follower of Christ dies it is the culmination of faith that will result in a peaceful, kind death. When this does not happen they are sometimes immobilized with the double shock of loss and what seems pointless suffering for a believer.

“Each journey is unique and cannot really be judged looking in from the outside. I don’t want to sound trite or intellectual about what you are going through. I am deeply sorry for your loss and praying for your journey.”

numo: Perfectionism about some sort of “beautiful death.” He even shouted down Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night,” which is about the death of Thomas’s father. I guess none of us are supposed to feel anger sbout death and grief.

It’s HOMEGOING! HOMEGOING! HOMEGOING!
HAPPY! CLAPPY! JOY! JOY!
HAPPY! CLAPPY! JOY! JOY!

Just like all those Homegoing Announcements over at the Herman Cain Awards subreddit.
Right between the calls for Mighty Prayer Warriors and the GoFundMe appeals.

I experienced this sort of Egyptian River Cruise when my mother died of small-cell lung cancer in ’75. But at least that didn’t have God-Talk to raise it to Cosmic Importance.