The Quality of Life

To watch someone dying slowly over a span of years leads inevitably to a contemplation of the meaning of life. It has led me s well to consider some of the issues and phenomena surrounding death these days. Almost all of them seem to ignite both passionate support and furious opposition: living wills and powers of attorney, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's explorations of the stages of dying, the current emphasis on a so-called "good death,? right-to-die legislation, the hospice movement, and several states' legalization of assisted suicide for the terminally ill. And what about pulling the plug on people attached to life support?In 1976, that issue began to recieve wide public debate with regard to Karen An Quinlan. Opponents thought that removal would constitute neglect, if not outright murder. To let a grievously incapacitated person live or die--my elder daughter and I know that dilemma by heart, for we were forced in 1995 to decide yes or no on maintaining life support for my younger daughter. These ways of trying to cope with our certain mortality are, every one of them, apparitions of confusion. How do we deal with life's end? How might we best approach it? Is quality of life a meaningful concept, or is it a purely subjective construct? Does human life hold an intrinsic sacredness? I watched my once proud mother;s witless decline, pondered these questions, and found many others. This is the story of my quest for answers to the hard but absorbing questions posed by our mortality, a condition that is as sure and immutable as the wheeling of the planet around the sun. * * * In my mother's long, slow dying, she taught me how to live. And she taught me something else as well. Just as all life can be considered sacred, so, too, is deathy. It holds a sanctity no less than that of life.