Merciful

A doctor friend and I have been exchanging emails about what it is about dying that is so hard for we humans. Every living thing dies. But we treat it as if it were a terrible assault on us, the breaking of a solemn contract. We both quoted Woody Allen's aphorism, "I don't mind dying; I just don't want to be there when it happens."

And my doctor friend said Woody is so right. We fear losing control more than anything and there just is no way to get from life to death without surrender. As he wrote, "At least we have morphene, valium and hospice," meaning that when the time comes to surrender, there are reliable aids in making the surrender peaceful and merciful rather than assaultive.

I am at that age (65) when there is a rash of dying among my friends. It seems that many chronic or perhaps hidden diseases, become active at this point and take out those who had coped pretty well when their bodies were still resilient. Those who make it through these next five years without serious incident have a statistical chance of living into ripe old age.

Ripe is the operative word, not old. A man in my last parish had his 110th birthday last Bastille Day (July 14). When he was 101 I asked him what it was like now.

"It's become a game," he said, "just to see how long it is going to last."

As you might imagine he is enjoying his aging even though he is about out of gas physically. He can still laugh, eat and read. I wonder if he still fantasizes about the things I still do. I bet he does. When I was 30 I assumed I would be done with sensuous and exotic dreaming by my age. I'm so happy to still be entertaining outrageous imaginings.

Here's to morphene, valium and hospice. And life-long fantasies. With that good a safety net, I'm willing to chance a long life.