Quality of life should be considered to the end

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Joseph Bernardin sent his traditional thousands of Christmas cards earlier than usual in the final year of his life, because he knew he was dying and might not survive until the holidays. In fact, he succumbed in mid-November on his mother's 92nd birthday, 62 years to the day on which his father had died of the same disease -- cancer.More than many of us, the late cardinal archbishop of Chicago was blessed by faith, buoyed by hope, and even privileged in the knowledge that his case was incurable. As it turned out, he had three months to prepare for what used to be called a "good death."Like many another person so stricken, he wondered "why me?" and "why so soon?" But he was determined to greet death not as an enemy, but as a final friend that could conduct him home to eternal life with the God he had served for 68 years.The cardinal died as people used to die before antibiotics, chemotherapy, and expensive life-support systems -- relatively quickly, surrounded by friends and family, and lucid to the end, I wish my own parents had been blessed with such good endings, but each died alone in advanced age in anonymous nursing homes after years of pain, as well as physical and mental decline, reduced to shadows of the vital persons I remembered.The problem is that modern medicine has managed to extend life and postpone death without ensuring the quality of our final years. In times past, people died quickly of disease, infection, or accident while still in the prime of their lives. Today's longer life expectancy is too often marred by the anguish, loneliness, and incapacity of lingering illness for which death can only be deemed deliverance. Fewer than one in four adult Americans admit to fearing death, but two-thirds of us acknowledge we are terrified by the prospect of decline.When death was swift and faith was strong, sorrow was salved by hope. In full possession of their faculties and surrounded by their loved ones, the dying could conceive of the resurrection of their bodies and the permanence of their spirits. But what of the pensioners of today, with deteriorating bodies and minds, shuffled off to the solitude of nursing homes? Can they conceive of passing into eternal life in their condition? It is a heavy test of faith.One of Joseph Bernardin's last acts was to plead with the Supreme Court to reject physician-assisted suicide. "As one who is dying," he wrote, "I have especially come to appreciate the gift of life. Creating a new right to assisted suicide will endanger society and send a false signal that a less than 'perfect' life is not worth living."But if it is wrong for doctors to put the dying out of their misery, it is also cruel for physicians to artificially, expensively, and painfully prolong lives that are only living deaths. Death is not a medical failure; it is as natural and inevitable as life itself. If doctors cannot cure terminal illnesses, they should ease pain and afford patients the gift of a natural and peaceful death.("Growing in Faith: A Guide for the Reluctant Christian," will be published in a new edition by Seabury in January. David Yount answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount(at)erols.com)??