I Don’t Want to Die…

Who does.

Not you. Not me.

At least not yet.

Most patients I see in the course of most weeks, even if dying, only want to go home. Whether to some home you and I might think of as home; whether to a care facility; whether to the care of some caring son, daughter, sister, or, even more poignantly still, a mother, a father.

One and all, those patients all want to go home.

And you, who, wouldn’t?

Your home. Your room. Your bed. Your death. Your way.

For those of us in the business of shepherding the dying, ours is too often about the shepherding.

The dying itself is, after all, for the dying themselves.

Far be it from us to intrude.

And yet we do.

Want this?

We’ll crush your chest; we’ll crack your ribs. Not like TV, I tell patients.

Want that?

That tube down your throat. That tube to a machine. And you no longer you afterwards, even if you are, somewhere, still somehow you.

I don’t want that, most say.

“I’m 87,” one tells me, just the other day. “I’ve lived a long life. I’m done.”

And who am I, the palliative care doc, to say otherwise?

I’m not 87.

I’m not willing to say that my life, at almost sixty, is a long life. I don’t yet know when done is done.

Her choice, then, is not my choice.

“And if you die now. If you stop breathing now. If your heart all at once falls silent…”

Then, by your choice, I, standing nearby, stand nearby.

Watching death do what death does…

Me, cradling the rope to your small boat…

The pond beyond. That larger pond. And my hand opening…

The rope slipping from hand, my hand, slipping from my hand for good…

For good.

Surely, for good…



© 2011 Dónal Kevin Gordon