my uncle is dying
June 19, 2006
My uncle is dying. Two years ago the doctor predicted that he only had six months to live. He was furious that his doctor had been so blunt, and his anger made him determined to prove the man wrong. At long last the end finally seems near. My uncle doesn't want to die, and for months he's been fighting for his life with all his strength.
Even though my uncle hates and fears death more than most people, he recently signed a living will. This took everyone by surprise. He was jolted into taking this step by a recent stay in the hospital, where he was confined to an oxygen tent. He decided that if he had to spend the remainder of his days trapped in an oxygen tent, that sort of life wouldn't be worth living.
If he has to live in an oxygen tent, life is meaningless. If he's weak and dying, but not in an oxygen tent, life is worth living. For him, the dividing line between a worthwhile and worthless life seems to be mobility.
What is it about life outside the oxygen tent that's worth living? Is it simply mobility? Is moving around the meaning of life? There seems to be more to it than that. In his case, struggling against the disease seems to give his life meaning.
Maybe each of us has to find a struggle that will give us a reason to stay alive.
September 26, 2006 at 2:36 am
I am doin a term paper on “Dying is Worse Than Death” and i thoguth this was a cool passage on dying. I am having some trouble on finding facts on why dying is worse than death but you should try and hold on the life you have because it is precious. But the flip isde to it is, is it selfish to want someone to stay alive because you don’t want them to leave? why put them in that sort of pain? If you have the time write back on these thoughts! Thanks Carissa
February 3, 2007 at 9:38 am
What is it about life outside the oxygen tent that’s worth living you ask?
I would say choice.
Living is nothing but a set of consecutive choices we can take in my opinion. Each beginning second is a chance to change. Yet most people live through their superficial lives by abiding their gridlocked routines, being nothing more than vegetating zombies. What is the difference to the oxygen tent then?
The illusion called choice.
Isn’t it so that we delude ourself into thinking that we are free to change when we want so that we are able to bear the monotony of life? So once the spell we cast on ourselves is lifted, and we start to realize that there is nothing but death (which we have been awaiting like a dog in our kennel/oxygen tent), life suddenly seems precious. Why?
Because we realize that we had lost our chance to chose, we struggle to regain the only real priviledge man has. Choice.
Whats the point of living then? Regaining the priviledge we are naturally endowed with but lose throughout life? I don’t know. Thinking about it only makes me feel much more of an absurd being than man already is. My raison d’être is all about trying grasp what has been in my reach all along? Absurd.
P.S.
I’m sorry for the bad english, it ain’t my mother tongue, plus I may have gotten lost and drifted a little to far away while writing. That’s what I get for being too young I guess…
June 2, 2007 at 10:55 pm
can’t place myself in your uncle’s shoes, obviously, and anyone who dares to say that is an ignorant, but if he would have chosen to live in an oxygen tent, then life would have already ended from the moment he found out he was dying.
living is taking the best of what you have left, near your family, in a friendly environment, as normal as it once were some time ago. that is true happiness and he should be grateful he gets to say goodbye and the others should be grateful they get to say goodbye as well.
May 9, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Mr Dprince has been around death all too often. Many times have I pondered the questions of life and death. This is what I know: 1) Living just to survive is not life a all but a more torturous death itself 2) Living to fight the disease is living life whether it is good or bad. 3) There is no honor in death, but rather, honor in living a long life that ended.