"Death isn't what it used to be," says Guy Brown in a Guardian article worth pondering. In the past, people were usually "fully alive one day, and fully dead the next." Then "in the 20th century, the average lifespan in the world doubled." For the last 100 years, it has been increasing by a relentless 2.2 years per decade with no end in sight even in countries with the highest life expectancy. As a result "people in developed countries--and increasingly in the developing world--tend to die old and slowly from degenerative diseases brought on by ageing. Death is currently preceded by an average of 10 years of chronic ill health. The last decade of life has become a living death."
Both my parents died in their 90s in the drawn out fashion described above. It was their choice if choice is the right word, for theirs was society's default belief that one avails oneself of the medical profession in order to live as long as one can, whatever the cost. My parents paid the cost with great courage. Being of a more cowardly persuasion, I vowed never to buy into that belief, for I never want a life such as they lived in their last years.
We instinctively avoid death. Maybe that's why most of my contemporaries pop pills and monitor their cholesterol level, apparently unaware that there lies the road to the loss of mobility, the dementia, the depression of extreme old age as life crawls to its close. My university campus has just installed AED defibrillators around every corner. I would be most, um, disheartened should one of them be used on me. If my heart stops, it will be for a very good reason. It will be worn out, diseased in a way young hearts are not, clogged from years of enjoying life, at any rate, well beyond its best before date.
This is not a death wish, don't get me wrong. I'll rage against the dying of the light with the best of them, but I'd like to do it while I can still get myself to the bathroom and know my ass from a hole in the ground.
--Julian