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Thursday, September 30.1976
University Daily Kansan
Comment on
Death
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Facing an inevitability
Most of you don't want to read this, because it is about death. But death is a universal human experience, and a mystery and even fascination for people.
What is so fascinating, and yet frightening, about death? What causes all of us to try to cope with it—whether by casually thinking about it once in a life or by constantly living in fear and threatening thousands of dollars on analysis?
MANY OF us shy away from the subject because it has affected us adversely—the death of a loved one has left our livers emptier. Most of us don't want to surrender the chance to keep living, doing, hoping, dreaming.
The fear of the unknown is prevalent, too, for even the Christian assured of his salvation doesn't know exactly what happens in death or in deaths seem unjust and make no sense.
There are good reasons to ponder death—even to fear it a little. But like other terribly important matters, death can provide good or bad motivation.
MANY TRY to avoid death. They change the subject when a conversation begins to deal with death. They either avoid funerals completely or spend large sums of money on them, as if a huge bouquet or a shiny coffin makes someone less dead. By not facing death, they must constantly run from it.
Some are so worried about the unknown, the unexplainable, about death, that they fail to really live. And that is tragic.
Thankfully, most people do a reasonable job of coping with death. God knows it's not easy. It is one of those things that large that one can never be smug about it.
Staff photo by DAVE REIGELS
BUT MOST people do accept it rather well. One must do his best to figure out what he believes about life after death and accepts that. Not an easy task, but possible.
Some contend individuals can't find meaning in life and death, but this notion is false. Those who say that life, and thus death, are meaningless and unable to have any own actions. Some say existence is all absurd, but they avoid speeding trucks
and deadly poisons—acting as if life made all the sense in the world.
And once one has a philosophical grasp on death and its meaning and significance, it is much easier to live with death. Property viewed, the inevitable of death can add balance and help one put things in their proper perspective.
THOSE WHO live carefree, day to day, will see the importance of some planning, because they won't always be around. And those obsessed with planning will see the importance of accomplishing tasks promptly and of implementing rather than saving all challenges and experiences for the future.
Death is one of life's most important questions, and those who live life fully and with courage are the people most able to answer it. By Greg Hack
Contributing Writer
In the 18th century, a nobleman asked Japanese Zen master Hakunin Ekaku: "What happens to the enlightened man when he unenlightened man?"
Death: a second birth?
the master replied, "Why ask me?" "BECAUSE you're a Zen master!" the nobleman said.
"Yes," said Hakun, "but not a dead one!"
Is there life after death? Do we retain our individuality and join the countless souls who have preceded us in death throughout the ages in some sort of way? We don't want to descend our individuality, shedding it like a husk, to let us re-enter a cosmic stream of consciousness—the Eternal Now? Are we reincarnated as flies, or dogs? Are we reborn as a demon or hell? Will we be conscious or will死生 be like a dreamless sleep?
CHILDREN AND philosopers are on equal terms when it comes to finding the "correct" answer to those timeless questions of humanity and modesty and humor of the Zen master's reply, for a people's belief in one version of afterlife or the other tells us more about the way they view and live their lives, and about what happens after death.
And faith in a god who will provide some sort of heavenly paradise to atone for the squater on earth, no matter how much one believes it can be no more than fervent bone.
Nobody knows, and the phrase "if
only we could know for sure" has eached through the centuries. Many of our ideas of immortality and afterlife have come to us from the visions and experiences of those who nearly have died. Although it can be argued that the phenomenal or supernatural experiences of the near-dead either are
the result of society's conditioning or are mere hallucinations, there are also aspects of those experiences that can't be explained so neatly.
John Fuller Contributing Writer
SEVERAL medical and psychological researchers recently have delved into the nature and causes of a child's death, found myself strangely reassured by their findings. One researcher, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who has done psychiatric studies on death and dying, said that she has proof that there is life after death.
Kubler-Ross and other researchers
report preternatural similarities in near-dead victims' accounts of their experiences. Many felt the sensation of having special memories flash before them in rapid succession. A feeling that death brought peace, calm and was nothing to be feared was almost totally what they were also repeated descriptions of a behavior that guided and reassured the person. Deceased relatives and friends also were frequently on hand to greet the person.
IN AN 1892 report by Swiss geologist Albert Heim, the experiences of 30 survivors of mountain climbing falls were studied after Heim had survived a similar fall. Heim said all survivors agreed that falling hundreds of feet was a blebsful experience after the initial shock and panic passed.
"Elevated above corporeal grief"
Heim said, "they were all under the sway of noise and profound thoughts,
of pain and a feeling of peace and conciliation."
Russell Noyles, a University of Iowa psychologist, studied Hisn's findings and added research of his own. He attained at many of the same conclusions.
HE SAID one woman's experience was a good representation of his findings. Recalling her rescue from drowning as a child, the woman said: "I was in danger by myself, and I tried not to come back. I was only seven, a carefree child, yet that
moment in all my life has never been equaled for pure happiness."
The being of light that was described by so many people could have been Jesus, Buddha or Allah. It could have been the angel in an alien spirit zone. The feeling of tranquility could have been the sweet realization that one was about to surrender to the majestic but intriguing world of life. People dogs and slip into a black eternal void.
I'm still mortal, you know. My thoughts or beliefs about life after death can't be compared with those who have experienced death more closely.
SCIENTIFIC reports like the ones I mentioned can be, strangely reassuring to one like me who has no religion. The desire that the individual personality should survive after death is rooted in faith. It is important for those who believe in .sav. Christianity.
Who wouldn't want to meet that mystical being of light and perhaps be assured of the peace that escapes us when we find ourselves in a world many described such positive and enlightening experiences after they thought themselves dying makes death, which is becoming an increasingly popular in modern society, easier to accept.
"After all." Voltaire said, "it is no more surprising to be born twice than it is to be born once."
Right to 'good death' a freedom
For a society that is supposed to strongly support an individual's personal rights, it seems odd that ours doesn't acknowledge an individual's right to die.
Nowhere does the law define, describe or prescribe the proper death. Death, life's only certainness, has long been pushed beyond the control set on with the business of prescribing the proper way to live.
it's mercy killing, the pulling of the plug that permits a comatose patient to die with dignity or the withdrawal of medication to permit a terribly ill patient to die without pain.
continues to be a controversy with no clear rights or wrongs. Questioning minds evaluate the moral two forms of euthanasia. "Passive euthanasia," they say, is acceptable, for it is used only to allow a person to meet the requirements of euthanasia," they say, is
BUT THERE are men, who think a proper death is, in itself, a component of a proper life. They are the people who endorses euthanasia, the quick death of a person who has such severe physical infirmity that there is no hope of recovery.
To many, the thought of our society sanctioning euthanasia is appalling. They say mortal
Euthanasia. In Greek it means a "good death." To us,
Mary Ann Daugherty Contributing Writer
TO OTHERS, euthanasia
man has no business willfully causing a person to die. Such action, they say, is reserved for some higher being. Religious doctrines firmly state that killing is immoral, and nowhere else does. This belief says that killing is permissible under special circumstances.
morally wrong, for it is causing a person to die when death isn't immediately at hand.
but to many others,
not to one. Rather, it is the only moral action man can take when he knows his fellow man wants his money.
Forseeing the possibility of
Funeral home tour a callous lesson
The one night I spent in a funeral home did more than anything else to convince me to be buried at sea.
The story of my night in the funeral home is rather tasteless by most standards, but it does show how one person in the undertaking business looks at death.
IT ALL STARTED when I went to visit an old high school friend. I met him at a party, and he told me we decided to call it a night.
My friend, Fred, directed us back to his place, and I braced myself for a night in what he called "the home."
'No, No! REALLY...I WAS, IUST LOOKING?
Fred was working his way through school as an understater's helper. He lived in the home, did a little repair work on the hearses and did other odd jobs.
"YOU EVER see the home?" Fred asked. I hadn't, of course, so Fred decided to show me the sights.
We started in the chapel No one was there except Fred, me and several bodies. One of the bodies, which Fried addressed to Donald, was in the chapel for his funeral in the morning.
Fred walked into the chapel, turned on the lights and told me to sit in one of the pews in front of him. Donald. Fred sat at the organ.
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"THE IS SHI*S old Mac's favorite."
Fred said as he launched into a faint rendition of what could be called Dracula's theme song.
There we sat, Fred hammering at the organ, me sitting in the pew, and Mr. MacDonald resting comfortably. Fred sat next to me on the organ and somehow made the lights grow slowly dimmer.
Fred was having a ball, I was feeling a little uneasy, and old
Carl Young Contributing Writer
Mac was beginning to look a little restless. I suggested that we move on.
"Okay Cal," Fred said. "Sit here while I go see if anyone's on the slab."
"I really didn't think you could take it if we were in the middle of working on someone." he said.
I WASN'T about to let Fet out of my sight, so I followed him down a hall. Fred opened a small door, stuck his head inside and said that it was okay for me to go in.
"See this thing?" Fred said, pointing to what looked like a cross between a vacuum and an atom. "This is what we use the most."
I was standing there, looking at the stainless steel table and thinking about the hybrid vacuum, when I saw Fred reaching for a package on one of the cabinets.
The room looked like a small operating room. Almost everything was stainless steel, and the place smelled funn.
THEN HE made a sucking sound and said, "That's how it works. Just cleans 'em right out."
package at me. I didn't quite make the catch.
"Cal, meet Betty," Fred said. Then he tossed a brown paper
I looked at the package on the floor, and sure enough, "Betty" was written on top.
"That's right," Fred said. "We don't have an incinerator here, so we have to send them somelace else."
"OH, CAL," Fred said. "You shook Betty up."
"LOOK AT this. It's been sitting here ever since I came to work. Nobody knows who it is," Fred said.
"it" was said, gray curn,
Pred handed it to me, and it
curned fuller. At least
when I about it, something
insided in me.
their own pain and suffering—or the undue grief they may cause their loved ones—these people are signing documents requesting that doctors not take them to appointments unnecessarily if one day they have an illness with no cure possible.
"You mean .
I gently handed Betty back to Fred.
"People forget about the damned things," Fred said. "I guess I can't blame them. Suppose you had somebody in your family who wanted to be cremated. Where would you put them?"
"Wanna try one out?" Fred asked. "It's great. They really are comfortable."
I agreed, mostly because I
We walked down the hall and went into a room that had about ten coffins on display.
"YOU DON't know what you're missing." Fred said. "Here. I show you."
"YOU GOTTA see this," Fred said. "This is the last stop."
Fred hopped into a black coffin, stretched out and shut his eyes.
"How do I look?"
"Fine, Fred, fine. Don't you suppose we could get out of here?"
"Oh, come on." Fred said as he climbed out. "Let me show you some of the different models. Check this baby out."
FRED SHOWED me around the room, pointing out the advantages of each coffin.
"Waterproof, stainless and guaranteed not to break open," he said. "These represent the work of many skilled craftsmans who want your loved one to have only the best."
He showed me the Cadillacs,
the Lincolns, and the mid-sizes
of the coffins, and he finally
to the one he called "the Pine."
"Fine metalwork here." Fred
said as he lifted one of the coffin's handles.
THE HANDLE was made of a metal similar to that on a cheap barbecue grill.
"Notice the excellent quality of the wood."
It was stained plvwood.
It was safe to promise,
"And to make sure that the beloved is comfortable, feel the fine satin."
Fred ran his hand over the coffin's lining. Then he reached underneath the lining and pulled something out.
THE COFFIN was padded with shredded newspaper.
IN SIGNING these documents while they're still of sound mind, these people assume they've given proper authorization to an act of euthanasia. Because it's possible they'll one day be unable to speak for themselves, they're simply presisting their wishes. Those wishes, they say, prescribe only what they'd ask them, if they had the ability to speak.
"Ain't it a great business?"
"And Cal, you know to you know that since you are my friend, I will have a guide. I can have all of this, including use of the chapel, for a mere price."
The Euthanasia Council in New York now is distributing these documents, called "living wills," at a rate of 50,000 copies in 1989. The council's initial price was 200,000 copies lasted an entire year.
Although these documents express firm intentions, they aren't legally binding and have no standing. The National Observer has reported, however, that legislation for the legalization of such documents has been introduced Kansas isn't among them.
IN KANSAS, as in most states, the law prohibits euthanasia, even at the patient's request. A mercy killer in this state would be subject to charges of homicide for failing to kill a Kansas law only says that a person of sound mind may, himself, accept or refuse life-supporting medical treatment. In effect, Kansas law says a person has no right to deter abuse if he isn't conscious at the moment when death is imminent.
But would such killing actually be murder? When the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled 7-0 last spring that doctors could辖留无法 Karen Quinlan from a life-supporting machine brought vividly to light. The court, in reversing a lower court decision, acknowledged a patient's right to make choices he hasn’t hasten or delay death. Most important, the court found that individuals have a right of self-determination in the act of dying and that allowing a doctor to commit irreversible of death doesn't constitute murder.
COLUMNISTS who have written about the court's landmark decision have suggested that there are several crucial questions concerning a person's right to die. Legal authorities, they say, must still explore whether religious convictions are or are not valid and must make decisions about what specific conditions indicate impending death with no hope of recovery. They must also question whether man is responsible for the machines he has created.
But the courts should continue to do as the New Jersey court did. They must examine the rights of people whose rights compared with the state's rights. In short, they must explore the notion that a person's own decision to die is not protected by a denation to have him live.
THE NEW JERSEY court took the first step by bringing the question of the right to die out of the realm of fantasy. The question finally has a name. The issue finally has its first precedent in a land in which even the dead are above all else, people should not be barred from the freedom to meet their own deaths.
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