Your message reminds me that our life on this earth is the most precious thing we have.
I get this take on things, and I'm not suggesting that it isn't genuinely how you feel, and might be how you'd feel in all circumstances. All I can say is that I can envision situations where I wouldn't feel like that.
People talk about palliative care - and I accept that there are failings in that area for a range of reasons, not limited to underfunding of health and social care budgets, but including those - but pain management and function are not the only limits of quality of life
As I sit here, in my very early 50's, facing up to the prospect of ageing and what might or might not come with it, it's not the prospect of pain or lack of the full extent of my youthful capacities that worries me. I do find myself saddened by the very real prospect of a diminishment of my mental faculties, at some point, hopefully far, far away. But what really disturbs me, what makes me fear ageing now in a way I didn't fear ageing when I turned 30 or 40 is the prospect of being incapable.
The loss of dignity in being dependent, on needing the basics of life done for me, like a toddler, but cognizant of the fact. Diminishment of my physical capacity - having to be cooked for or tidied up after would be bad enough, needing home help to come and run the hoover round or do the painting and decorating would be saddening, but I think I could live with it.
But if I were to need someone to bath me, or help with toileting... I don't know that I'd want to go on living with that. It's not pain, it's not the definitive impending death of a terminal diagnosis (arguably, the open-endedness of it might be worse), it's about the lack of dignity and self-respect. I might get to that situation (hopefully not) and find that I can live with it better than I predict now... but somehow I don't think that would be the case.
Every day may bring opportunities you could never have imagined. Opportunities to love, to be loved - in particular to discover the love of God which you have yet to experience. My wife and I pray for you every day, Gordon - we are not giving up hope, we hope you do not give up either.
It might. But if that possibility is set against the certainty of daily indignity and humiliation, would those admittedly pleasant possibilities be enough to make going on worthwhile? Would it make up for being not just less of a human for my wife than the one she married, but such a burden on her, and on my children, and on my community? They might not feel that, but I think I would. I wouldn't just be setting me free, I'd be setting them free as well - I can't avoid death, but death doesn't scare me like dying does, and as dying scares me it's not something I want to do slowly.
Larry Taunton, a friend of Christopher Hitchens claims this famous atheist may have turned to Christ before he died and wrote a book: The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist There is always hope for us all.
That commentary has been contradicted by just about every genuine friend and associate Hitchens had, and has to be seen not just in point of view of the hopeful Christianity of the author, but also in Taunton's inability to really see anyone else in their own right, but rather only in terms of their relationship to his interpretation of Christianity and scripture. See
here for more in depth denunciation of that particular piece of writing.
O.
