Death ...and dying in America.

I was reading today on Challies.com something Tim had written a few years back regarding a discussion he and his son had about death and dying. In reading it, I was reminded of the way death is swept under the rug in North America.

In our modern culture, we go out of our way to avoid seeing people die. Most of the people we find at the funeral weren't at the bedside - but could have been. It is the way we have been culturally programmed - death is a private thing, and we ought not to intrude upon it. Death has moved behind the curtain; out of sight out of mind is the American motto when it comes to leaving this world.

If hiding our dying people were not crippling enough, we tend to medicate people who are dying - such that it is a very rare thing these days to die lucid. Most of us (unless we dictate otherwise beforehand) can expect to be zonked out of our tree when we die - unable to put two words together. Dying can be a noisy affair after all, and junking someone up makes it look more "peaceful" since they aren't screaming in fear and/or agony.

Nowadays we read accounts of death such as "Passed peacefully" or "left quietly" etc. We don't often read accounts anymore such as:

...he rose suddenly and opening his eyes, he seemed to fix them on some distant object, and half rising from his bed he shouted with uncommon strength, 'GLORY! GLORY! I SEE THE KING! Then the spirit left him, and he settled back into his bed, leaving behind that contented and even smiling shell that had once held him."

Likewise, we don't often read in the paper the other kind of accounts - the sinners desperately but ineffectively trying to find God as the clock strikes the final hour. Blasphemous cursing, wide eyed fear, visions of hell and torment. We don't see that because we immediately hide the passing behind a curtain, and thereafter, behind a soothingly quiet chemical lobotomy.

What a bizarre thing that is. I often wonder if we do these things because we are so afraid of death, or rather in order to make people more afraid of death. I confess, I am inclined to think it is by design and not accidental.

Anyway - that is just my take on it. I personally want to be lucid when I go, and I want to be at the bedside if I am planning on going to go to the funeral.