Setting a Deadline on Death
WASHINGTON -- My friend Ezekiel Emanuel, in his typically smart, provocative and bullheaded way, has decreed that he hopes to die at age 75, which would give him just 18 more years during which to exasperate friends and family.
Zeke's wrong, of course. Yet he's wrong, as always, in an interesting way, one that usefully prompts the rest of us to consider not only our mortality but how we would like to live out the measure of our years.
"Doubtless, death is a loss," Emanuel, a bioethicist, physician and health policy expert, writes in The Atlantic. So, he argues, is living too long:
"It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic."
As a result, Emanuel's plan, on reaching 75, is to issue new instructions to his doctors. No life-prolonging measures. No screenings such as colonoscopies or cardiac stress tests; no treatments such as chemotherapy or cardiac bypass. Not even flu shots or antibiotics -- nothing but palliative care, to alleviate pain.
Emanuel's essay arrives in a fitting season, as Jews begin a period of repentance during which, we are told, God decides who shall live and who shall die. One of the Torah portions read during this time reminds us that Sarah gave birth at age 90, an event so unlikely she named her son Isaac, derived from the Hebrew "to laugh."
It is fitting, as well, that the traditional Jewish birthday greeting is to wish that the celebrant live 120 years -- the lifespan of Moses. Relevant to Emanuel's concern about descending into a doddering old age, the Torah relates that while Moses' years were advanced, his eyes remained undimmed and his vigor unabated.
These two stories help explain why Emanuel is wrong.
Emanuel says that by age 75 he will have had the satisfaction of seeing "my grandchildren born and beginning their lives." Why stop there, when you could dance at their bar mitzvahs or even, God willing, their weddings? Moses didn't just leave the Israelites at Sinai and wish them luck; he lived long enough to watch them mature and enter the Promised Land.
Likewise, advances in reproductive technology notwithstanding, nonagenarian births are not likely to happen to modern-day Sarahs. But her story offers the reminder that we cannot know what surprises, and joys, our later years may hold.
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Copyright 2014 Washington Post Writers Group
