We are born, we experience, and then we die. That is how the “game” of life works. If it is a guarantee of life that living will at some point end, why do we have such a challenge coming to terms with a terminal diagnosis?
Yes, medical advances have been amazing in curing and healing, BUT death will still come at some point.
There are two ways to die. Fast is one way, where you have a heart attack or a stroke or you're hit by a truck. The body is alive one minute and dead the next. There is no process here. It is immediate. There are no signs, no warnings. A person is literally alive one minute and dead (for whatever reason) the next.
When death is not immediate, it will arrive gradually; and this is the other way we die. There will be signs, movements, bodily functions and changes that signal death is approaching. The unfolding of this process can give us a timeline— not a specific timeline, but a generalized one.
The timeline measures the months, weeks, days, and hours until death. When we know what to look for, we can “guesstimate” when death will occur.
“Guesstimate” is the important word here. There are factors that affect how this pattern unfolds. We die according to our individual personality. How we have dealt with living our life is how we will deal with the challenge of dying. We also have limited control over the time that we die. Not complete or indefinite control, but some.
Why did I write this? I think if we remember that all life ends at some point we can make better decisions about the timeliness of stopping treatment. And hopefully we will appreciate each day a little bit more.
Something More about… Why Knowing the Dying Process Can Change How We Live
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