The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life | 
pick@JenniferEgnor wrote a review of this book and posted several entries and I can‘t top them. So check those out. I‘m not a novice to this subject matter. I‘ve done the type of caregiving she recommends when someone is dying. What this book does so well is remind us that dying will happen and you really do need to prepare, for yourself and your family. She outlines pitfalls and possibilities. I‘m going to purchase the paper version to refer back to.
pickI can‘t recommend this book enough! It‘s a gentle guide to all the things you need to think about, prepare for, and take action on for how to plan a good death. It can seem overwhelming but it‘s worth doing. This is especially personal to the author due to the experience she had with her father. We all deserve a good death. It‘s up to all of us to keep working towards a world that is more loving and just for everyone. We can, and we must.
Late Fragment
And did you get what
You wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
Beloved on the earth.
—Raymond Carver, written not long before his death in 1988
Doesn‘t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver
Assisted Death isn‘t new. Throughout history, some medical professionals have quietly hastened death when they believed that their moral obligation to relieve suffering overrode a blanket duty to prolong life. Among them is one of the most admired people in Western medical history: the microbiologist Louis Pasteur, the father of the germ theory of disease, the inventor of pasteurization, and the developer of inoculations for rabies. In the mid⬇️
Leave a good emotional legacy. Enjoy the time you have left. Don‘t postpone joy. Go on an adventure. Leave loved ones in good shape.
Transience, sickness, aging, and death are not the signs of failure they‘ve come to seem in our can-do society. We are part of an eternal cycle of birth, growth, and decay.
The United States Supreme Court has affirmed and all major medical associations agree, that all competent adults have the legal right to refuse any form of medical treatment, or to ask for its withdrawal, at any time, for any reason. It isn‘t suicide, assisted death, homicide, or euthanasia. It‘s letting nature take its course, and it‘s your legal and moral right. For clarifying these constitutional rights, we can thank the parents of a young⬇️
There were many parts of this book that moved me so; this is one of them.
“But we do know what to do. Just think: If it were my body, what would I want? One of the worst things, when we‘re grieving, is the sense that I didn‘t do enough. But if you get in and help, you won‘t have that sense of helplessness.”
Others may find release from entrusting the one they love to the universe, or to otherwise saying “good journey” to what Shakespeare called “that undiscovered country from whose bourn no travelers returns.”
