Dignity in Dying

Once again, the BBC have provided us with a convoluted article that forges no particular opinion and makes no particular point. Keeping up a mild suspense for close to two thousand words without providing any form of resolution is quite an astonishing feat.

Adam Gopnik wrote a piece recently on giving dignity to the dying. He supplied a few anecdotes, made a few unfunny quips and then tried to add some depth by adding a personal story of loss…but I failed to see his intentions.

I thought the article was going to make a point about the way in which the dying are treated by society, but all Gopnik managed to blather on about was how rubbish, sad and unfair it is to die. Well, duh.

Gopnik wasted the majority of his words proposing (somewhat vaguely) that we should try harder to provide dignity for the dying. Like him, many throw the word ‘dignity’ about when discussing death as if it is a definitive term or a desirable goal, but embracing the notion that there is an ideal way to die is ridiculous. Of course, we should try and make the dying feel as comfortable as possible in their last moments, but saying we are capable of providing them with such an undefinable emotion is bizarre – you cannot gift dignity, it is a personal achievement that one tirelessly fights for.

We speak so romantically about the end of an individual’s life, but it isn’t an easy process and it never should be. It can be agonising for everyone involved, and by the end of it a person is gone forever. It is so patronising and dismissive to declare that someone had a ‘good death’, even if they went in the way that they had wanted.

We need to stop pacifying everything in life. Why does it all have to be so manageable? Birth, death and everything in between is an indescribable mess, and attempting to make it ordered and sensical removes all meaning from it.

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