Official portrait (Wikipedia)
John McCain did it right. Not just carefully constructing the last word in his acrimonious exchange with Mr. Trump, or in the countless ways he demonstrated patriotism, dignity & courage and pointed out how democracy is now being threatened. I disagreed with his political positions more than I agreed with them, but in the last few years I’ve sent him more than one thank-you letter. The thumbs-down elicited my most enthusiastic note. But here’s what else he did right:
John McCain kept control of his dying – which is to say, the last piece of his living. In so doing, he left one more gift to America: some suggestions about how to die.
We spend untold energies, and untold billions of dollars, on the national obsession with avoiding death. In exremis we go to the Emergency Room – where tests and procedures are undergone, suffering is often prolonged and increased, and costs skyrocket.
Talking about dignified death with Kathryn Tucker
Here is some food for thought from a recent Arcadia Healthcare study: Just looking at the costs (forget the pain & suffering) of the final months of care according to where that final month took place – for the 42% who died at home, $4,760. Another 40% died in the hospital: $32,379. Dying in a nursing facility came in second from the top at $21,221.
I have no idea where John McCain was when he died, but I’d be willing to bet he was at home. Home is where 99% of us say we want to die – but we don’t work very hard at making that happen. Instead, we put off making plans, writing advance directives, talking to friends and family about what we want, planning our funerals. Seriously now, do you have anything written down about what you’d like for your memorial service? Senator McCain reportedly spent eight months at the end of his life lining up eulogizers, specifying music, contacting speakers, saving his family that often burdensome task.
Kathryn Tucker
But it’s the business of dying – living as one chooses right up until the time of death – that McCain seemed to do so well. Not many of us pay such attention. He apparently didn’t need to hasten his dying, but we would all do well to know about hastening, whether we choose it or not. Even in states where medical aid in dying is legal, dying patients put off making their own decisions, or find out too late that their physician will not participate. Fortunately for us all, there are people like Kathryn Tucker, Executive Director of the End of Life Liberty Project, fighting to protect and build the movement toward death with dignity. (I was privileged to host an event for the distinguished Ms. Tucker recently, hence the photos.)
So maybe you’re not as strong-willed as John McCain. Maybe you don’t have access to the Navy Band for your memorial service. But you can acknowledge that dying is something we humans do and write down what you want (or don’t want, like painful, expensive last-minute heroic measures) for yourself as you’re doing it. You can TALK to family and friends. You can send a contribution to ELLP. Or Death with Dignity or any on the other organizations working to make death with dignity possible.
The official Ethiopian language is Amharic, but more than 80 languages are spoken. None of them are easy for English-speakers – although this writer is proud to have mastered the Amharic word for “good morning” (which I cannot spell.) This may be as far as I go. Ethiopia is also the only country in Africa with its own indigenous alphabet, but there are 33 main alphabets with each containing a row of seven different pronunciations . . . The Ethiopians I know speak English with beautiful accents.
I wrote about all this once long ago, on the late lamented news aggregate site True/Slant, and the vitriol that landed upon my page in response made me very glad that my T/S readers didn’t know where I lived. I mean, it was if the NRA had put out a worldwide hit on me. I’m now counting on the belief that most of my current readers are kinder and gentler – since you can sure find out where I live if you don’t already know. And I’m satisfied that most of my angry T/S readers long ago quit following this blog. We’ll see.
When I was a child of about 12 someone broke into our home – well, nobody locked their doors in Ashland, VA in 1945 so he probably just opened the door and walked in – and made his way to the second-floor bedroom of my oldest sister Jane, who let out a mighty scream. The intruder left multiple hand prints on the newly painted walls as he swiftly descended the stairs (and left by another door.) But by the time the Richmond police arrived they pronounced the fingerprints too dim to be of use, so our nocturnal visitor was never identified. My family (4 girls + parents) that night morphed from 6 people in five beds to 6 people in two beds – Jane in between my mother and father; the other three of us in one double bed. (It took us several weeks to expand back into our individual beds.) The next day, our father bought a gun. It went to reside on a shelf in the closet of our parents’ bedroom. We all knew where it was; once or twice my sister Mimi and I stood on a lower shelf and looked at it. But instead of making us feel safer and protected, the thing created more fear. Despite all his stories about working on somebody’s ranch in Texas as a boy, my sisters and I (and our mother, I regret to report) feared our father’s probable ineptitude with a gun more than we feared another intruder. We had belatedly also begun to lock the doors. All five of us – mother + 4 daughters – also feared the fearsome instrument on the closet shelf more than we feared anyone who might be confronted by it. Overruled by us all, my father soon (I think it took less than a couple of weeks) took the gun back to wherever it came from.
You need to swagger manfully around with a pistol on your hip? Fine. Swagger somewhere else – like, on a shooting range. Just stay out of my Starbucks. All I want is to drink my latte in gun-free peace.
I am (as you may know) Fran Johns, a fairly simple name that has worked for me since 1992. I live in Apt 704, 2400 Miller Street in San Francisco, CA 20020. I began to get mail addressed to Stephanie Yamamoto, who lives in Apt. 704, Two Cascade Hills Blvd, San Francisco 20020. OK, the ZIP codes are the same too – but still. Johns v Yamamoto? Miller St v Two Cascade Hills Blvd? You can’t mix these up unintentionally.
We met for tea. The very charming Ms. Yamamoto is not my new best friend, but close. The packet from Hawaii which the U.S. Postal Service would have sent floating around ZIP code 20020 forever contained essentials needed for a trip to meet her mother (the Hawaiian addressee) overseas, where she does remarkable nonprofit good work – but that’s another story.
