DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS:
I reckon most everyone thinks about death; it is always there in our peripheral vision bouncing in and out of our consciousness throughout life----more so at certain times in our lives, and never more so than in our terminational years. Death, in my conception, is not like birth, some sort of singular event which happens and is over with. Rather, death seems to be a process, and for most people, a kind of long drawn out process---death by a thousand cuts. I can't pinpoint at which age we begin to die; most likely it varies just like the onset of adolescence, menopause, failing health etc. For the religious right---death, like life, is crystal clear with sharp demarcations---living cells and YOU are ALIVE, no living cells and YOU are DEAD and only God has the right to determine the time of death. Any other meddling with life is a sin. Since many notions about life and death are beliefs, there is no real basis to assign any dogmatic statement of fact to any of the beliefs. The battle with the religious right of any religion is basically around opposition to anyone's beliefs being made the law of the land. Why anyone's religious beliefs should be made the law of the land is a logical absurdity. Beliefs are not facts, and non facts should never be forced on anyone. But that is another musing for another day.
We seem to be what we are by genes, environment, and luck. Our very existence to begin with was a crap shoot among sperm racing to an egg. Short of claiming God was directing this race, there is nothing overly special in any personal way, about our arrival on this planet. Of course it is natural human tendency for all of us, in varying degrees, to hope or believe God is with us, with His arm around our shoulder, guiding us through the land mines of life. Some people would probably be frightened to death if they could not believe that. Fair enough. While beliefs may not be facts, we all need beliefs to sustain us. Even sports are entertaining to us only because we can believe our team or our sport heroes are better than the other teams or players. Of course, in any objective analysis, it is a comical absurdity. We believe in the players or teams, the players believe God is on their side, and if all this had any truth, why watch a game if God is determining the winner? No matter what we are up to at most any moment, we often envision God being involved. In fact most religions teach that God made humans in an image of Himself. Please.
I cannot precisely remember when I stopped praying for God to help me through the battles of life. I prayed most earnestly earlier in life, at one time for most any challenge I faced in life. God was always the ace in the hole---a brazen "help me here God and I will win this battle". I was always generous enough with thanks to God when things worked out well, and stifled myself if they didn't work out----there was no belligerent "Dam you God, how could you be such a Bastard to let this turn out this way? I hate You." After all, tomorrow would be another day and another need for His assistance.
With time and considerable thought I saw more clearly the obvious influence of genes, environment and luck in my life and the life of others. Had the evolutionary wheel of fortune been different, I could just have well been born in a tent in Darfur. Or a Palestinian refugee camp. Or one of a litter of kids being raised by some crack mother in a small dingy tenement with bars over every window and door. I think I tried for years to believe that for some reason God really liked me and would reward me if I just thanked him to death and didn't go out and steal or commit murder, etc. Fortunately for me I never had any real reason to do those kind of things. My sins were those of omission and complicity. I didn't oppose the Vietnam War. I didn't particularly care if some kids got a poorer education, or some women were discriminated against, and on and on it goes. For the most part, I personally had a level playing field---well, not really in the area of romance----but there was enough on my platter for me to thank God.
For complicated reasons, my life bought me in contact with many people who didn't have environment or luck or genes on their side. It is best not to listen to these people. At some point you begin to feel their pain, react against the injustices they face-----and over time you begin to see the vast numbers of these hapless souls living lives of quiet and hopeless desperation. If you sense their pain they will be in your face. Depending on your position in life they will seek help in life for problems overwhelming them. Worst, even if you solve a particular problem here and there, seldom does their life substantially change. For me, all this brought human lives into a broader perspective. The belief that God would listen to my prayers to make my life even better, and not answer the prayers of those living lives of hopeless quiet desperation was simply an ethical absurdity. Whatever God is, He is not a pompous Fool or Sadistic Evil Hateful God. Eventually I resolved in my own mind that God was the creator of the evolutionary process---a great and good process---but God was not, for the most part, calling any shots in this evolutionary process which is ongoing, self driven, and forward going over millions of years.
But back to death. We are what we are due to genes, environment, and luck. And who we are varies at different periods in our lives. We change. Others change. Our priorities change. Our looks change. Our health changes. Our friends change. Often spouses change. Pets come and go. Our lifestyles change. Our family relationships change.
Our economic situation changes. Whatever we are, we are momentarily. Tomorrow we will be different. Tomorrow others will be different. For most of what we acquire we tend also lose some of what we once had. This loss of what we had, to me, is the dying process. No one dies suddenly. Oh, that might be some sort of physical description of death, but we were always more than just some functioning cells. A person lying in a vegetative state is less of a person than a pet. To define life as some functioning cells is to trivialize life. If you want to worship living cells, collect tissue cultures and wallow to your heart's desire among the 'precious' living cells.
With every loss of family, friends, and pets we lose a bit of ourselves. That part of ourselves is gone---gone forever----and these losses accumulate---and at some point we feel a bit tired, a little less bounce to our step, a little less eager to battle anyone about anything---and we begin to value contentment and solitude more than challenge and social commotion of any sort---winning becomes almost irrelevant and those who persist in that mode become a nuisance. When these personal losses first begin to occur in our lives we get angry, somewhat depressed, and in the case of divorces or lost friendships, we place blame. With time, at least with me, I have accepted these losses as inevitable (like death) and in the case of fading friendships---well blame is pointless, the real cause is change. We all change with time and to insist relationships will stay the same in the case of change is irrational. Friendships should be valued for what they once were, not trashed because of how change tore them asunder. The loss of the old versus the acquisition of the new becomes lopsided with age. The losses outnumber the gains and by my definition, we are then dying. The real choice is to die at peace with life, or die angry and bitter about all the losses. Genes matter, environment matters, luck matters. It is what it is. Others matter too, especially those with a life left to live, and the most serious ethical obligation, by the measure of almost any pure religion, is to share any good fortune with those less fortunate at some point in our lives. One of the most subversive traditions to the purity of almost all religions involves the distribution of earned wealth. The vast of amount of inherited wealth goes to those who don't need or didn't earn it----and in the process more families become dysfunctional over inheritance matters than any other issue. There is no singular more important way to help the lives of the less fortunate than to have acquired wealth be distributed at death to those less fortunate in the society from which the wealth was taken. Fair is fair. What you take out you should give back. Count your blessings, enjoy your good fortune, and return the money to the same pot from which you yourself sought some sort of monetary jackpot.
My cat Keisha is dying. This means nothing to anyone else, and fortunately, doesn't mean a damn thing to Keisha. She doesn't know she is dying, or that death awaits her shortly. Animals are lucky. They can't conceptualize death. Keisha is lucky because I can ensure she has a good death. There are no right wing laws in existence which prevent her from having a 'good' death. Keisha started out life as one of two kittens who survived being abandoned by someone in a forest preserve in March weather. It took her several months to regain her health, during which time she bonded to me as some sort of fifth appendage. It seems the trauma of the time left her with the belief that I was the only one she could trust. Like most pets Keisha is non judgmental. She likes me no matter what kind of jerk I am from time to time. She doesn't criticize me, harass me, demand much of me. This of course is why pets are so valuable in life. Medical care could try to save her, in this case carve up her face, remove half her nose, radiate her, and attempt chemotherapy. But Keisha and I have this bond, and she expects me to protect her from harm and misery. She has had a good life, never needed a substantial medical intervention for anything since her trauma as a kitten. Maybe her struggle against death as a kitten gave her a really strong immune system. But no matter, she will not be tortured or suffer for months before her death. She is almost 15 years old, and I have long ago committed to ensuring that she have a good life and a good death. Some day it may be possible to use the same concept for human beings---a good life and a good death. That would sure make death more palatable, knowing that each person could control their own dying process via directives at the time or advance directives written out in advance. We inch that way as the ability to prolong the dying process gets to the point where modern medicine can prolong pointless suffering and/or the expenditure of vast sums of money to give people some sort of tortured existence for a few more months. One day Keisha will start not to eat much food. The vets tell me loss of appetite is the best sign as to when she is no longer feeling well. That will be the time Keisha and I will say goodbye and I will remind her that I had promised her as a kitten things would get better and she never again would be allowed to suffer needlessly. Keisha is lucky---she is not lying around worrying about impending death, she will not be left to wonder why I took her to vets and let them carve up her face and force her to suffer through the effects of surgery and radiation and chemotherapy for months. Good life, good death---sometimes it can work out that way. For me, this scenario is just part of my own death by a thousand cuts, another piece of my existence and being gone with the wind, just like the many cuts before. You pause, you say thanks for the memories, you cry, and you move on. We all do, some handling it better than others, but with a little less bounce to our steps. We move forward, we adjust, we find ways to enjoy life and find contentment, but we are dying, the cuts are mounting up, and if we live long enough life becomes mostly a nothing left to lose proposition. In that sense death is not that scary. This Deistic evolutionary process, including death, is really the ultimate wonderment. In fact, technically life is a continuum---there is no death, the same DNA molecules keep on getting shuffled around and evolution proceeds. After all, no form of life on our planet arises from anything except living cells. Life is really forever. IT IS OUR BEING, a separate entity from life itself, which is gone forever, barring an after life. Tis' a pity. Jimmy Durante had it right when he would end his show every time with, "Good night Mrs Calabash wherever you are." Maybe each night we should remember the departed from our lives with similar acknowledgment. Some night soon I will say, "Goodnight Keisha wherever you are".
