October 13th, 2008
Orphan
One factor that keeps health bills high and rising is our collective attitude toward death.
It’s easy to accept others’ death, often impossible to conceive our own. This colors how we treat patients, and how relatives must deal with the toughest choices.
Last year at this time my own dear wife could sometimes become a child. By that I mean she could travel to her childhood home and become, for a time, a daughter. This comforted her, even while it disquieted me.
Now both her parents have passed on. I wrote about the first instance here. Today, as it often happens with the very best of marriages, her mom has passed away as well. My wife is, in fact, an orphan.
Her dad was very clear in what he wanted. In some ways he chose the time of his own passing, surrounded by loved ones and in the bosom of the Lord.
With her mom this is less clear. She died in a hospital, after a long struggle, and her loved ones were really conflicted at times over what to do. (Blogging here will be sporadic as I seek to give what comfort I can.)
The policy implication of this is what I call a “news hook.” The medical cost of our death can vary tremendously, depending on how we choose to handle it. There is a policy obligation to make that choice now, before you are unable to do so.
My friend Tommy says death is “the soul leaving the body,” and when you recognize it as such, regardless of your own faith, it becomes easier to take.
My point today is this is something we all must face. No one has yet gotten out of life alive. So it’s important to consider a living will, not for our own comfort but that of the people we leave behind.
If we know what you want we will do all we can to provide it. But we need to know. So let us know.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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