A Good Death?

In this week’s New Yorker, columnist Michael Kinsley describes what he calls the last competition of his aging boomer generation, i.e. who can live longest and die the best death, {Read “Mine Is Longer Than Yours”.) You win if you can live longer than your peers and stay in good enough health to remain a player in career and family life. When death can no longer be staved off by modern medicine the best death is the quickest and most painless, providing just enough time to tidy up your affairs. Kinsley is an ironic cultural observer, as well as brutally honest about his own struggle to stay alive and in the game despite Parkinson’s disease. His discussion is also quite faith free; there is no mention of spirituality, or God, or any life hereafter. I note the chilly religious void in its complete contrast with the depictions of a good death in historian Drew Gilpin Faust’s new book, “This Republic Of Suffering: Death And The American Civil War.” She analyzes in detail the accepted conditions for a good death held by northern and southern soldiers and their families. Ideally, the dying person should be conscious of their fate, be willing to accept it, give signs of belief in God and their own salvation and be able to leave messages and exhortations for those left behind. Christian fortitude, hope and resignation set the standard for dying well. Facing death does appear to clarify the mind in every generation. So what do we come up with in our own case? Sidney Callahan