As much as we’d like, it’s not so easy to die in a dignified manner. “TATTOOED white trash,” read the decal pasted on a car in Iola’s Walmart parking lot Tuesday afternoon.
Things can get messy as we fall prey to disease and the ravages of old age.
That we pretend otherwise only makes death’s grip the harder to accept.
That was the logic of Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland, a surgeon and author of “How We Die.”
Nuland passed away earlier this week at age 83 from prostate cancer.
His medical career as a surgeon put him in frequent contact with death, but it was his brother’s battle, and ultimate death, with colon cancer that inspired him to write the award-winning book in 1994.
Riddled with cancer, Nuland’s brother, Howard, agreed to experimental treatment, which did nothing to abate the cancer’s spread, and everything to prolong his suffering.
In hindsight, the surgeon, knowing the treatment had no reasonable chance of success, was remorseful for giving his brother hope of its success.
The disease, not death, was the enemy. Learning to accept death’s inevitability, Nuland wrote, can help doctors, patients and their families avoid overly aggressive treatments that do nothing to make a patient better but intensify their suffering.
As for dying with dignity, well, that “must be found in the dignity with which we have lived our lives,” Nuland wrote.
Notwithstanding the shock value, the message is particularly sad.
Kids, especially, get a kick out of shocking their elders with profane language, torn jeans, dreadlocks, or wearing the all-black Goth attire, including chains and studs.
We all go through phases of trying to appear more mature by pretending to be edgy or tough. But that’s a far cry from debasing ourselves.
The tattoos, fine. Today they are seen as no more than body art.
But the “white trash,” sounds like an excuse for degenerate behavior.
Yes, yes, I know. It’s supposed to be a pun, much like a hillbilly skit where “ain’t” and double negatives proliferate. Where we make our spouses the butt of a joke. Or make racist comments.
Every day we have the opportunity to show the world what kind of people we are by our words and deeds. These actions also reflect the tone of our community.
It can be one of dignity or disgrace.
Whichever, it will follow us to our grave, and beyond.
-— Susan Lynn
To die with dignity depends on our words, deeds of today
