| Live life like you're gonna die
Because you're gonna
I hate to be the bearer of bad news
But you're gonna die
– William Shatner, "You’ll Have Time"
So there I was, down at the doctor’s. I’d had this cough for the past three or four months and figured it was time to check it out. Nothing prescribed so far – lozenges, syrups or various inhaler devices – had managed to shift it, and I was beginning to wonder whether it would ever pass.
More than that, to be honest; I was also a little concerned. Recent building repairs where I work had raised fears of old asbestos insulation being released into the air. The longer my cough persisted, the more I began to worry that there might be some connection.
As it turned out, I received a clean bill of health. And though I still have no idea why the cough lasted so long, it’s now finally gone. Anyway, while I was there the doctor asked if I had any other questions. "Is there anything else at all you want to talk about?" he inquired.
There wasn’t, but I couldn’t help feeling that I should come up with something, if only to assure him that my "cough" had not been a cover for some more embarrassing reason for my visit. "Well, doc, there’s this thing on my balls…."
Thus it was, if only to avoid such a conversation, that I raised the question of death. "There is one thing," I confided. "Just what does it mean when someone – usually someone old – is said to have died of ‘natural causes’? I mean, you don’t just die of old age as such, do you? There has to be some specific cause, doesn’t there?"
And so for the next few minutes the doctor and I chatted about life, death and the essence of the divide between them. I’m sure he hadn’t been expecting this, but all the same he seemed quite willing to answer my questions the best he could.
This chance exchange was still fresh in my mind as I watched the coverage of last week’s two high-profile deaths. First there was Terri Schiavo, the 41-year-old Florida woman who had spent the past 15 years in a "persistent vegetative state" (PVS). Thirteen days after doctors removed the feeding tube that had been keeping her alive, she died on March 31. Then there was Pope John Paul II, who succumbed to heart and kidney failure on April 2.
Of the two instances, Ms. Schiavo’s was by far the more complex. PVS may resemble but is not the same state as a coma, from which there is usually some hope that the patient may recover. PVS victims lack consciousness or awareness and are unresponsive to external stimuli, with the possible exception of pain. However, PVS falls short of being "brain dead" and lacks legal recognition as being equivalent to death itself.
It was the fact that PVS occupies a legal grey area – placing the patient somewhere in the gulf between life and death – that made Ms. Schiavo’s fate the subject of so many court rulings and appeals during the last weeks of her existence. Everyone in America, it seemed, had an opinion on the matter. Even the Vatican weighed in, posthumously denouncing her "arbitrarily hastened" end as a violation of Christian principles. Yet having kept Ms. Schiavo "alive" in a PVS for 15 years, surely it is difficult to argue that the doctors who now permitted her to "die" had acted with any sort of haste at all?
How you answer this question depends, of course, on how you define life in the first place. In The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life (1999), physicist Paul Davies argues that "life seems to involve two crucial factors: metabolism and reproduction." He explains:
"The most basic things that human beings do are breathe, eat, drink, excrete, and have sex. The first four activities are necessary for metabolism; the last is necessary for reproduction. It is doubtful that we would consider a population of entities that have metabolism but no reproduction, or reproduction without metabolism, to be living in the full sense of the term."
Based on her continued ability to metabolize (albeit via a feeding tube) and even, as far as I know, to reproduce, Ms. Schiavo met Davies’s key criteria. Yet that she did so, completely unaware that she was doing so, and only courtesy of the continued efforts of the medical profession, throws into doubt that she was "living in the full sense of the term."
That the Vatican should protest the "death" of Ms. Schiavo is ironic, of course, for the Pope himself had insisted that he not be kept alive artificially, that his death – as and when it came – was part of God’s will and purpose as much as his life had been. And indeed, over the past few weeks, several commentators praised the Pope for allowing us to witness his acceptance of mortality and for providing the prospect of death with some dignity. It was dignity, above all else, that was denied to Ms. Schiavo in her final days, as her parents relentlessly pursued her "right to live" through the courts of America.
Which brings me back to the doctor. A different doctor. Eleven years ago this month, even as Kurt Cobain was preparing to blow a hole in his head, another singer decided not to fight death any more. Lee Brilleaux, longtime leader of the British rhythm and blues band Dr. Feelgood, had been diagnosed with lymphoma. A year of aggressive chemotherapy left him weak but able to return to the stage.
In January 1994, Brilleaux performed what turned out to be his final live performance. Covering the old Junior Walker song "Road Runner," he sang the lyric, "I live the life I love and I love the life I live." Weeks later, the cancer returned. Asked if he would submit to another round of painful treatment, Brilleaux simply replied "No."
He died, at home with dignity, on April 7, aged 41. |
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