Funerals are for the living
There is a debate going on about the content of the “Your Life/Your Choices” book the VA prepared for vets. It’s main goal is to encourage vets to draft living wills. Some consider it a death book; some consider it a useful tool for helping people make end of life decisions. I think the issue is much more nuanced than the book itself. Two things are really going on here. The first thing is the timing of the book into veterans’ lives.
As Chuck points out, one of the byproducts of being ill or injured is a very deep depression. If I were suffering from that type of situational depression, and someone gave me the book at that precise time, my starting point in answering the check list on page 21 of the booklet would be that a lot of things that are not painful or life threatening nevertheless fall into the “life is not worth living” category. Thus, sitting here, right now, in the pink (or at least pinkish) of health, I would never say that not being able to walk, but just being able to get around in a wheelchair falls into the life not worth living category. (That, incidentally, is question “a” on the check list.) However, casting my mind back to a period of deep depression following a major surgery, I know that I would have instantly answered that life in a wheelchair was unbearable. The same goes for item “r” which is “I cannot seem to ‘shake the blues.'” Intractable blues, are, of course, depression. The checklist implies that depression is a ground for euthanasia, rather than psychiatric treatment, the passage of time and, possibly, medicine.
It matters very much, therefore, whether the book is given to people when they are optimistic and planning a long life, or when they are depressed by illness or injury, and feeling badly beaten down by life. If the VA is handing this book out to wounded vets, I agree that it is subtly encouraging them to check out of life for conditions that, ultimately, are tolerable or treatable. In that case, it is definitely a death book. However, if this is just one of the routine pamphlets the VA makes available to service people as they make plans for their future, it’s no worse than any other book I’ve seen on the topic, whether from a doctor’s office or an estate planning lawyer.
The second issue is something I’ve thought about a lot since the Terri Schiavo case. Hers was the classic example of someone who didn’t make any plans for a catastrophic brain injury that left her unable to speak for herself — or even to think. Her parents wanted her to live; her husband wanted her to die. Her vote, since unexpressed, didn’t matter. At the time, I wrote that the Terri Schiavo who once was no longer existed and that the Terri Schiavo at the center of the storm, if she had a consciousness, might have an entirely different opinion on the matter than when she was healthy. I’ve said more than once that I’ve known people (my father among them) who always said they’d lie down and die, or commit suicide, if they got terribly sick but who, when the moment came, discovered an entirely unexpected urge to live. What separated my father and the others I’ve known from Schiavo is that the former retained their ability to speak for themselves — they could still articulate their present needs.
Living wills are really for those whose brains aren’t functioning any more at any level. And as to those people, since they’ve already checked out, I think it ought to be up to the living to make the decision. Even if I’ve said I don’t want to “live” as a vegetable (meaning without any brain function), once my brain has checked out, I no longer have an awareness of my status. The ones who are aware — my family — ought to be the ones calling the shots, since they’re the ones feeling the effects of my physical condition. I’m beyond pain and humiliation. They’re not. Now, if there’s a Schiavo situation, with feuding viewpoints, it’s very helpful if I’ve given some sort of an indication of my wants so that I can be my own tie breaker. Otherwise, though, they matter, not I.
That point of view explains my post title. Funerals honor the dead but they comfort the living. To be honest, even if my mother left a request that her funeral be a quiet affair, if my sister and I wanted to have a funeral that was a huge event, with all her friends and a horse drawn carriage, I’d go with the desires of the living, not the wishes of the dead. My sister and I would be the ones left to console ourselves for her passing. If a quiet affair dictated from beyond the grave didn’t cut the mustard for us emotionally, and if a wingding blow-out did, I think we count more than my mother’s wishes.
I should add as a caveat here that nothing I’ve said should be construed to mean I want to do away with Wills. Although those express a dead person’s wishes, societal chaos would ensue if wills were taken away. The only substitution would be government-mandated inheritance, which is a situation I’m not willing to countenance.
With that thought in mind, let me drag myself back to the VA’s book. The book is peculiar to me in that it doesn’t focus solely on situations in which someone’s brain has turned into mush and the person is unable to communicate or think. Instead, it seems to focus a bit too much on situations in which people are simply limited. And while it’s true that those people, if they can still communicate, can turn their back on their earlier wishes to end it all under those circumstances, it does seem to me that the book creates a very subtle pressure on those who are of sound mind but disabled or unhappy to end it all.
Anyway, I’m being a bit inarticulate here as I try to develop a more structured thought process on this, so I’d love it if you all would chime in with your thoughts on the subject.
