Healing Death. Christopher Levan
to determine when, if ever, a divine hand is involved in closing down our living. Moreover, there is considerable doubt when our quality of living is more suitably called a stage of our dying. And the real question becomes at what point, and to what extent, do we help the natural course of dying to take over?
Having advanced the argument over dying to this stage, I will propose in the fourth chapter my central thesis in its complete form. By making a distinction between “curing the disease” and “healing the illness,” I will advance the argument that we can “heal” people as they die. Using a personal experience, I will argue that all human beings die of a disease . . . no matter the interventions of our medical system, eventually one disease or another will win. But the illness, which is the sociological and emotional condition imposed by the disease, can be healed even at the moment of death. Alas, most of our resources in the health system are used in trying to cure the disease, and very few are left over for the very important task of healing the illness.
In chapter five, I will outline the best arguments that favor medical assistance in dying, while in chapter six, I will outline a few general arguments against it. In this latter chapter, I will suggest that medical assistance in dying is a lamentable progression of our society. There is little question that the current legislation gives priority to individual rights over collective values, and that poses problems not simply for the way we shape society, but also has the unintended effect of placing some specific groups within society in a more vulnerable position. Once we have breached the unassailable ultimateness of life and made it a contingent choice, some vulnerable groups are placed in jeopardy. And as we move forward, some attention to this new dynamic is necessary. How do we place limits on the subjectivism that has been legitimized by this legislative change?
Chapter seven offers a few practical suggestions for pastoral care. Gathering the best advice from those who have passed through the process of medical assistance in dying, we can make some initial suggestions about ritual and pragmatic steps that will ease the journey of our ending. We are still so new to this approach to living and dying that we are having to develop an entire vocabulary, practice, and approach, to capture it with both dignity and efficiency. Currently, we are fumbling and clumsy in how we speak and administer medical assistance to help people have a healing death.
I conclude this text with a story that acts as an affirmation about the underlying principle of the Abrahamic tradition, which has always posited a “justice beyond justice,” or what some biblical commentators call a higher righteousness.21 Put simply, there has always been a law of divine compassion and grace that defines all other laws. In the declaration that God’s will is for fullness of life rather than its longevity, practitioners argue that we must allow certain circumstances to grant exceptions to the seventh commandment, taking life. In this regard, I was struck by the clarity of Martine Partridge, a Canadian woman who recently ended her life with assistance and made this step because she cherished life so dearly. Hers wasn’t a capitulation to death, but a declaration of living. In a letter to her family and friends she said:
I choose medical assistance in death because I love and cherish life. For me life is to be lived as Thoreau described: “deliberately. . . . I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear. . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”22
1. We are alone, in one sense. There is no other human being that walks with us through death. However, I am convinced by the United Church New Creed, which affirms that we are never alone: “In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone.”
2. One of the most moving commentaries on dying is a fictional letter written by a dog to his master and mistress produced by the American playwright Eugene O’Neill, Last Will and Testament. A great bedtime story.
3. See Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, in which he explains the process of coming to faith as the total relinquishment of self and self-will.
4. See: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2989-i-m-not-afraid-of-death -i-just-don-t-want-to.
5. One of the most haunting ballads about war is entitled “Green Fields of France,” written by Eric Bogle. We hear the haunting fear of how we die in the first verse, which is an introduction to a random soldier, Willie McBride, who died in Flanders. That verse reads: “Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean, or Willie McBride was it slow and obscene?”
6. Apparently, only about five percent of us will be granted the death during sleep scenario. The rest of us will face the grim reaper with eyes wide open.
7. See the groundbreaking work of a United Church member and doctor, Balfour Mount, in Montreal at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Mount.
8. Quote from an interview with Betty Mittler, June 2017, 10:20 a.m.
9. This is the haunting message of an old, classic music movie, All That Jazz.
10. One of the best explorations of the process of dying is found in Good Life, Good Death, by Christiaan Barnard.
11. The tune is sung by Flogging Molly.
12. Look up http://deathcafe.com/. There is a growing movement called “Death Café,” whose stated objective is to talk about death. “At a Death Cafe people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death. Our objective is ‘to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.’” See more at: http://deathcafe.com/what/#sthash.FofSqmoY.dpuf.
13. Maritime noon program CBC, May 18, 2017, 12–1 pm.
14. Taken from an interview held with Ethel Campbell on April 10, 2017, 12 pm.
15. Taken from Dylan Thomas’ poem: “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” first published in the journal Botteghe Oscure in 1951.
16. There is nothing to equal the words of Jesus expressed in the gospel of John 14:1. It is on Maundy Thursday, and he spends his final hours before his crucifixion with his disciples: “Let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me.”
17. An excellent, modern version of the planned, noble death was written by Kelly, Chasing Daylight.
18. Comments recorded from a phone interview with Kathryn, May 10, 2017, at 9 pm.
19. See the position paper published by the United Church of Canada, “United Church Opts.”
20. See United Church of Canada, “Medical Assistance in Dying.”
21. See Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 73–74.