What Exactly Is A ‘Good Death?’
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The phrase “good death” may seem like an oxymoron — death is rarely a good experience for any party involved. The person doing the dying, friends, family, and even health professionals are impacted by the loss of life, so what qualifies one death as good and another bad? There are some obvious distinctions: For example, a…
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I continue to say that I don’t fear death but I am not crazy about the process. In any case I am much like Jess. I do not want some prolonged, drawn out process where I am a burden on others. I have a living will with instructions to take no heroic measures just to keep me alive. Since I am not Hindu I believe that we get one shot at this world. You do your best then go away and let others do what they can. I remember hearing some one say “death is part of the living process, the end part.”
It won’t really matter to me, other than I want to go quickly and preferably in my sleep so I don’t miss it 🙂 Should I get some disease or another that is terminal, I will be asking for the med that you can take at the time of your choosing for a dignified death. I don’t want to be that old person has to have help doing everything, nope I’d rather go out on my terms.
My father-in-law had, what I consider, a “good” death. He came from a family of short-lived men will generally had died before the age of 60. Dale had had a somewhat major heart attack just before I met my (now) husband, but he survived and he enjoyed exercising and working at making the rest of his life healthy. When he hit his 75th birthday, he decided that he had outlived his ancestors, and he was ready to actually fly in a commercial plane – which he had always avoided – to visit Africa, on lifelong goal of his. He saw amazing animals, and he and his wife participated in ministry work, which was important to them.
He had square danced most of his life, going up through the levels of challenge dancing, and enjoying it all along. He had just reached a point where dancing was becoming painful due to arthritis, and his wife couldn’t dance anymore, again due to pain. In the end, he and his wife were lying in bed having a conversation, he just stopped responding. Neva, his wife, discovered that he was no longer breathing. He had had a full and complete life. He had visited all 50 states – having saved Hawaii for the end, because of air travel – and he was able to achieve all of his major desires. He saw two of his three sons get married, as well as two of his three daughters. He survived his second daughter, who had died in a rafting accident; he had, I think four at the time, grandchildren; he was well-liked and well-respected, and he was ready for death, and he had said as much, but he WASN’T depressed. He did consider everything after 80 to be “icing on the cake”.
I don’t know how doctors reacted, but for the most part, although they did more, his family was accepting and able to deal with it (perhaps with the exception of his eldest daughter, who is bipolar and difficult to accept almost any major change).
But yes, I do believe there is such a thing as a “good death”. We do, after all, all die.
What a beautiful little story. Thanks for sharing that with us Marsha.