Is there such a thing as a good way to die? I believe there is. When a person dies with few or no regrets about the way they lived their lives, that is a good death. When a person can say as they lay dying, “If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t do it any differently,” that is a good death. When a person can continue to celebrate life right to the moment they draw their last breath, that is a good way to die.
Is it necessary to have gotten over the fear of death in order to die well? I don’t think so. In fact, I think it is impossible to completely rid ourselves of the fear of death unless, of course, we believe so utterly in Heaven and in a Life Everlasting that death itself is a mere interruption, and not an end. Unfortunately, most mortals do not enjoy that total degree of faith. Thus, because we don’t know what happens to us when we can no longer inhabit our physical bodies, we must experience an element of fear. Or, as my anthropologist husband says, “Everyone’s afraid of dying. It’s hard-wired into the species.” That does not have to deprive us of a good death.
Recently I came across a passage written by Oliver Sacks. Dr. Sacks was both a neurologist and a prolific writer who was fascinated by the workings of the brain and its ramifications on the way we live. Among his better known books are The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Awakenings.
In February, 2015, he learned that an ocular tumour had metastasized to his liver and brain. He was told the cancer was incurable and untreatable, and that he would be dead within a matter of months.
Like a true Sage, Dr. Sacks was able to momentarily transcend his ego and fears in order to observe and comment on the state of his own psyche as he prepared to die. His words inspire me, and make it easier for me to accept that I am a mortal being who will die. His words lessen the fear and, in so doing, heighten my ability to celebrate life right to the end.
These are his words as they appeared in The Opinion Pages of the New York Times, Feb. 19, 2015.
My Own Life
Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer
By OLIVER SACKS
Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life.
On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.
This will involve audacity, clarity and plain speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. But there will be time, too, for some fun (and even some silliness, as well).
I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming.
This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. I feel the future is in good hands.
I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
Oliver Sacks died at his home in New York on August 30, 2015.
Is it necessary to have gotten over the fear of death in order to die well? I don’t think so. In fact, I think it is impossible to completely rid ourselves of the fear of death unless, of course, we believe so utterly in Heaven and in a Life Everlasting that death itself is a mere interruption, and not an end. Unfortunately, most mortals do not enjoy that total degree of faith. Thus, because we don’t know what happens to us when we can no longer inhabit our physical bodies, we must experience an element of fear. Or, as my anthropologist husband says, “Everyone’s afraid of dying. It’s hard-wired into the species.” That does not have to deprive us of a good death.
Recently I came across a passage written by Oliver Sacks. Dr. Sacks was both a neurologist and a prolific writer who was fascinated by the workings of the brain and its ramifications on the way we live. Among his better known books are The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Awakenings.
In February, 2015, he learned that an ocular tumour had metastasized to his liver and brain. He was told the cancer was incurable and untreatable, and that he would be dead within a matter of months.
Like a true Sage, Dr. Sacks was able to momentarily transcend his ego and fears in order to observe and comment on the state of his own psyche as he prepared to die. His words inspire me, and make it easier for me to accept that I am a mortal being who will die. His words lessen the fear and, in so doing, heighten my ability to celebrate life right to the end.
These are his words as they appeared in The Opinion Pages of the New York Times, Feb. 19, 2015.
My Own Life
Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer
By OLIVER SACKS
Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life.
On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.
This will involve audacity, clarity and plain speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. But there will be time, too, for some fun (and even some silliness, as well).
I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming.
This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. I feel the future is in good hands.
I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
Oliver Sacks died at his home in New York on August 30, 2015.