Sophie asked me the other day, “Do you think it hurts when you die?” She’s at that age where these questions begin to bubble up. Thankfully, a few moments later she wanted to play a silly game with me (Go Nuts for Donuts), so such thoughts really do seem to be more of the effervescent variety than the slowly simmering. That age will also come, I’m sure, and I won’t be ready for it then, either.
My father only wanted pain management. He had a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate, to those unfamiliar) and I was given a copy. He spoke nearly incessantly about how truly terrible it was to age. How insulting. How patently awful in all the ways. He bought a book titled The Final Exit, hoping to take control when this aging shit became simply unbearable. As his youngest offspring (quite youngest - by nearly two decades) I balked at this, and I won that battle. He kept the book, but left it on the shelf. He didn’t buy the ingredients. Plan B, maybe. But he still constantly remarked about the shit show that was being an aging human. I believe he truly wished he were an animal who could simply wander off and die. So much more respectable.
(After his death, I ran into a woman in town who owned a bookstore which used to sell my father’s books. Rather than saying, “I’m so sorry for your loss,” or something of that manner, she said, “Well, he got his wish. I never met anyone who wanted to die as much as he did.” I remember being incredibly hurt by this, as I still recalled the fervently alive and loving and full-of-good-humor father I knew for most of my life, but I suppose she wasn’t entirely wrong. The thing is, he didn’t want to die ... Not really. He just didn’t want to be old ... That is such an important distinction.)
A few days before his death, the owner of his senior living home called and asked me to come take him to the emergency room. She said, almost apologetically, “He has had a fever for days that won’t go down.” When I picked him up, I knew. At the ER, I told the receptionist if they didn’t want someone dying in the waiting room, they needed to take him back immediately. They did, and it was clearly not an idle threat. It was pneumonia. Saving him would have meant a feeding tube and other invasive measures. But he was clear: He only wanted pain management. So my brother, who was also there and who was his medical power of attorney, declined. We knew what he wanted. He died two days later of pneumonia. Even knowing this was exactly what he would have wished (he had called pneumonia “the old man’s friend,” so in some ways, it was even the very manner he would have wanted), that was a decision I never stopped questioning. “What if,” can torture a soul worse than any other inquisition.
But did it hurt to die? I don’t know. I was there when he took his final breath, when his breathing changed to that which is known as the “death rattle” (aptly named, I might add). I am not 100 percent convinced that he never felt pain, despite our attempts at pain management. In fact, I feel quite certain that dying is painful. In whatever form it takes, how can it not be painful to leave this living body? But I do believe his departure was probably kinder than most.
Shortly after Sophie asked her question and right before requesting the donut game, she said, “I think it probably is painful.” Surprisingly, she did not seem terribly upset by this conclusion. I think, perhaps, because it is still not something even an anxious and thoughtful child such as herself can really, truly conceive of, just yet. I’m sure that day will come, and I most certainly won’t be ready for it.
I’ve never been ready for it, but there I am, each time. There we all are, no?
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