Reflections on old age, life choices, and parenthood

Note: If you’ve been patiently wait­ing for the ‘Video of the month’ post, please accept my apolo­gies for the delay. Unfore­seen events have pushed out the date of that post. Next week I will be back with the next video of the month for your view­ing plea­sure. But now, let’s get on with an impor­tant reflection.

Image: Never grow old cour­tesy of who.log.why

Today I found that the Mother of a dear friend of mine passed away. I was sadenned by his loss, and amazed to see that he turned his story into a blog arti­cle to dis­cuss the real­i­ties of euthana­sia. Before you con­tinue, I strongly rec­om­mend you read the arti­cle at Dan Millman’s blog. In case you don’t have the time to fol­low my rec­om­men­da­tion, here are a cou­ple of excerpts from his article:

My par­ents lived far from us but closer to my sis­ter, who called me one evening to tell me that mom had taken sleep­ing pills and was uncon­scious.  Left alone, she would have qui­etly passed on. But even though she had a DNR (do-not-resuscitate) order in her Liv­ing Will, the facil­ity was required to call the para­medics, who revived and intu­bated her and took her to a hos­pi­tal.  I flew to Los Ange­les to join my sis­ter who was stand­ing vigil at the hos­pi­tal.  My mom’s first words to me were:  “I love you.”  Her sec­ond words were, “I want to die.”  Under the cir­cum­stances, we under­stood and respected her wishes. She had lived a good life until the past few years. Now she wanted to go.  She might have died qui­etly with­out the benign inter­fer­ence of those doing their duty to “help.”

We asked the doc­tor to remove the IV (intra­venous) line that was hydrat­ing her and help­ing to keep her alive.  Since my mom had been beg­ging him to do the same, it was done.  She ceased tak­ing any food or water.  Grad­u­ally, slowly, her kid­neys and other sys­tems began to shut down.  It took two weeks, with some med­ica­tion to ease her pass­ing, before she died.

Some say that sui­cide is a self­ish act, even a cow­ardly one. But I don’t feel that way about my mom’s dying. It was her right and her choice. In some cases, the sui­cide of a par­ent, a child, a sis­ter, a brother, a friend, can inflict bring great sor­row and psy­cho­log­i­cal suf­fer­ing to fam­ily or friends who grieve that loss. Our actions, even though they may seem to affect only us, touch others.

(…)

Let me reit­er­ate and make clear:  Sui­cide to escape trou­bling thoughts or emo­tions (includ­ing depres­sion) is a tragic waste of life.  Like drop­ping out of school too early.  But there are times, for purely phys­i­cal rea­sons, as in the case of ter­mi­nal, debil­i­tat­ing ill­ness or other con­di­tion — that if some­one has decided, after an extended course of delib­er­a­tion (rather than on impulse) decided to end their life at a time of their choos­ing, oth­ers should honor (or at least accept) that choice.

As I fin­ished read­ing Dan’s story I had tears in my eyes. He is, has been, and will always be my teacher. At a time like this, Dan reminded me through his actions why I have always fol­lowed his teach­ings to the best of my abil­ity. Not only did he deal with the sit­u­a­tion in an admirable way, he also chose to make his pain pub­lic because he believed his story could enrich the debate about Life Choices. He chose pub­lic good over pri­vacy. And for that I decided to write a response to the arti­cle in his blog:

Dear Dan,

thank you for the gen­eros­ity you dis­played by shar­ing such a per­sonal story with us, your peace­ful war­riors in train­ing. As I read it, tears welled up in my eyes. Per­haps it was because I had just fin­ished read­ing an email from my own Mum with some reflec­tions on old-age and the fal­li­bil­ity of our heroes from younger days(I have tran­scribed the mail at the end for your read­ers). Per­haps it was because I could feel the pain and seren­ity with which you had to go through it all. Or per­haps it was because, once again, you showed us the way to deal with painful and dif­fi­cult times by exer­cis­ing our choice to act as peace­ful war­riors at heart.

As I read your story, I was reminded of many of the Uni­ver­sal Laws of Spirit, and of many of the lessons you’ve been teach­ing us through both your books and your sem­i­nars. I was com­forted to see you and your Mum exer­cise the Law of Choices at such dif­fi­cult times. I was inspired when I saw  the law of Action in prac­tice as you chose how to act despite deep and con­flic­tive emo­tions. I was brought to tears by your mas­tery of the Law of Com­pas­sion in sup­port­ing and lov­ing your Mum through her final choice. But more than any­thing I was in awe of the power of train­ing: through your behav­iour in these dif­fi­cult times, you reminded us all of what it really means to be a Peace­ful War­rior: to exer­cise our power of choice and act in a calm, bal­anced, com­pas­sion­ate, and deci­sive man­ner even under the most trou­bling or most emo­tional circumstances.

Thank you for being my teacher. In these last lines I want to offer you my con­do­lences for your loss, from the bot­tom of my heart, and say Thank You for shar­ing your sad­ness with the world in such a pub­lic man­ner. Thank you for inspir­ing us all to live more peace­ful lives. If there was any­thing at all I could do to sup­port you and your loved ones through this period, you know where to reach me.

With a sad heart and inspired soul,

Diego
The crazy  Colombian

***************
OUR PARENTS
**************
(A trans­la­tion of a for­warded email pow­er­point presentation,originally in Spanish)

Our Moth­ers and Fathers were the heroes of our ear­lier years. But we con­tinue feed­ing these stereo­types until much later in life. Then one day Dad starts mum­bling, talk­ing of things with­out head or tail. Mum starts hav­ing trou­ble fin­ish­ing sen­tences and remem­ber­ing lit­tle (and big) things). And we ask our­selves — What hap­pened to them, our heroes?

They reached old age. Yes, our par­ents are now offi­cially old. And no one, absolutely no one (espe­cially not them!) pre­pared us for this event.

It is such a big sur­prise! One day, out of the blue, the lose their gait, show their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and weak­nesses in all their splen­dour, and acquire silly traits. They are sick and they are tired, and the time has come for them to stop look­ing after oth­ers and start being looked after. Their day has arrived, and now it is our turn to return the Ten­der Lov­ing Care with which they spoiled us all these years.

It is a long road they have walked, and their expe­ri­ence has given them some unique yet uni­ver­sal wis­dom. They share with us what they know, and what they don’t know, they make up. Long-term plans are a thing of the past, and now they devote all of their time to small and excit­ing adven­tures — like hid­ing from us and their doc­tors the unhealthy plea­sures they’ve been for­bid­den to continue.

While this age is some­time dif­fi­cult for them to deal with, it is much harder for us, for they remind us we’re never truly in con­trol of our lives.

So let’s show them their efforts were worth it. Let’s show them their love and com­pas­sion founda new home inour hearts, and let’s carry out any and all actions we can to share our love with them. Let’s do as much as we can so that when tomor­row , when they no longer are with us, we can remem­ber them with love; remem­ber their smiles and for­get the times we caused them to cry.

At the end of the day, our heroes of yes­ter­day will for­ever be our heroes. Thank you Mum for the love you show­ered me with every day. Thank you Dad for the guid­ance you always gave me. Thank you, Mum & Dad, for being my heroes, for­ever. Thank you.

I hope Dan’s story, my response to it, and the arti­cle I tran­scribed will pro­vide you with some food for thought. If you wanted to say ‘Thank You’ to either Dan or to your par­ents, I encour­age yo to do so below in the com­ments sec­tion of this article.

Tagged as: Dan Millman, old age, Peaceful warrior