When is a good Time to Go?
How old do you want to be when you die? Im talking about those that would have a choice. I have made a choice myself which is late 60’s-70’s with a specific number in mind. I do so because if Im giving the choice to die speaking only for me, I think is the right option for me, in a field where options are very limited..
What does it mean?
It means that regardless of what ever sickness or closeness to death I have been since born I might be given the opportunity for better or worse to be alive in the ages mentioned above. Knowing what old age will bring and because I have no one to take charge a nursing home would not be a good choice for me. As I proceed along in this path I am very aware of what life means and I am very curious about when I pass from having a body to be not having one and be dissolved into soil for the earth. My mom did not go until 92 and I wish she would have lasted more. She had me and she had lots of grand kids. For her I think 92 was way too early. So you see there is no particular age for everyone because we all have different circumstances.
I think Ive done everything I could and Im sure I missed opportunities to do better for me and others but the important thing is that Im going with clear mind that I’ve done the best I could and further I am proud that I did well and better than anyone in my family, It was not for a long time and sickness and living without very little fear brought it’s toll. But here I am thinking of what disaster old age could be for me and single gay men in my position.
As I seat here and write to you, suicide has not cross my mind not even once. I do believe that when the heart tells the brain it’s time, it will be time. Scientifically the heart wants to pump for ever do its only job programmed to do, pump until it can no more because of aging muscles and other reasons beyond it’s control. The mind wants to live for ever and does not want to stop even when the heart does. Give it oxygen and the mind will go on for ages until it’s electrical conductors become inoperative because of prolong use and it stops conducting the electric pulses. I believe though that the heart is always in control and I don’t mean a pump inside your chest but that in you, that you recognize as you, even without a reflection, that part that carries the happiness and the sadness and the love for others. That part no one knows if it ceases or if its a geneses for more creation.
Adam Gonzalez, Publisher
When is a good age to die? Perhaps 80, like the heroine of the 1971 cult film Harold and Maude? Or maybe 85 or 90? Or are you one of those hardy souls who hope to make it to 100?In this month’s Atlantic, the oncologist and author Ezekiel J. Emanuel, 57, makes the case that, for him, 75 will be the best time to die.
Collective gasp. For some of us, 75 doesn’t feel all that distant.
“I won’t actively end my life,” wrote Emanuel (brother of Chicago mayor, Rahm), a bioethicist who opposes assisted suicide and euthanasia. “But I won’t try to prolong it, either.”
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At 75, Emanuel said, he will stop seeing doctors, decline medical tests and avoid any treatments except those to ease pain. If he is diagnosed with cancer, he will opt not to treat it. If he contracts pneumonia or a UTI, he will refuse antibiotics, letting nature take its course — and take him out.
Why 75? By then, Emanuel believes, you’ve had a life. You’ve seen your children grow up (if you’re a parent), traveled, enjoyed professional and creative successes. Your active life is behind you. Ahead are the mental and physical debilities of extreme old age.
Moreover, he argues, you’ll be doing your children a favor by letting them become the heads of the family and not turning them into your caregivers as they approach their own retirement years.
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And oh yes — you won’t outlive your money.
What Is A Fair Share Of Life?
Emanuel insists he is not proposing a scheme to ration health care. He’s not even asking anyone to agree with him and knows that most people (including his family members) won’t. He’s simply looking at the quest to extend the human life span and asking how much is enough. How many years do we wish to accumulate, and how many experiences? Does the time come when we can say we’ve had our fair share?
Certain Eastern yogis and holy men are said to have left their bodies when they felt it was time, nonviolently finessing their own deaths. Is 75 a good time for that?
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The Atlantic article brought me face-to-face with my own measure of denial about aging — my belief that if I adopt the right diet, exercise and take supplements I can stave off the worst of it. Emanuel has a phrase for people like me — he calls us the “American immortals.”
The sad truth is, it’s all going to all fall apart in the end, no matter how much mangosteen and maca I consume.
Nor is it useful to point to the exceptional elderly, those who are still pursuing higher mathematics, running marathons or weaving tapestries at 90. These “outliers,” as Emanuel calls them, are not the norm.
For the vast majority of us, physical abilities atrophy and creative output stalls at a certain point in life. If you haven’t written the great American novel yet, you’re probably not going to write it at 75.
The Mysterious Importance Of Aging
Emanuel makes an interesting case and raises some provocative questions. But there’s one thing he gets wrong, I think — and it’s a biggie. He makes the mistake of assessing old age from the vantage point of youth, applying the values of productivity and accomplishment to a period that might better be suited to contemplation.
Perhaps the life task of extreme old age is not to contribute in the ways we are used to thinking of as important. Maybe the job is to downshift and, I don’t know, breathe.
Maybe old age is a prayer and the nursing home, a cloister. Maybe all those old folks who look like they’re doing “nothing” are in fact doing something mysteriously important.
Sean Strub in Body Counts, his memoir of the AIDS epidemic, described a dying friend who felt that suicide might be an option if things got too bad. But in the end, a shaft of sunlight coming in his bedroom window proved so beautiful and beguiling that he felt life was still worth living so long as he could see it.
Maybe we, too, will experience these small moments of grace more fully as we age. Maybe they will give us reason enough to live past 75 — even if we are no longer able to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
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acqueline Damian is a writer and editor living in Milford, Penn. She wrote Sasha’s Tail: Lessons from a Life with Cats, and pens Lost in the Sixties, a weekly column for boomers for the Pocono Record.
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