New Plan

I visited my grandmother again today. This is nothing terribly special or unique - I visit her everyday. Some days are more depressing than others, though, even though I'm not sure why. This was one of them, although it wasn't as bad as some have been.

Maybe it's the way she heard me come up behind her, thought I was a nurse and said, pitifully, "please help me", because she needed to go to the toilet and it had been some time since she pressed the button but no one had come.

There's something about watching someone succumb to old age that just sucks. Their life sucks, and you get to live a sucky life vicariously through them. We shouldn't have to get that old. We shouldn't have to live past the stage where we can take ourselves to the toilet without asking someone to help us and hoping against hope that they help us in time.

We shouldn't have to live past the stage where we can walk, breath and eat without feeling as if we've run an ultramarathon. Life shouldn't get to the point where the basic living of it is beyond us. Not if people are going to insist we keep on living.

If not for the marvels of modern medicine, my grandmother would have died years ago. She would have died with a lot more dignity than she has the way she's living now, and she wouldn't have had her world shrink on her so much for so long. It's been years since she has actually enjoyed life, and now she actively hates it. But she's still alive. All because we take her to the doctors when she gets sick, and the doctors find a way to stop her from dying from whatever sickness she has.

It's not their fault. We simply live in a society that has forgotten what death is for. We think life is vitally important, so we go out of our way to make sure people who shouldn't really be alive manage to stay in the game. Babies that would once never be conceived/never be born/never survive past the first few nights/never live past the age of five are now making it through childhood - even though they might not do it very well. Adults who would once have died while still with some quality of life after some illness or accident are now living long enough to see the quality drain away - and then go on living a few years more.

We weren't meant to live forever. Some of us weren't meant to live very long at all. It's sad, it's tragic, but it's life. Death is a part of life. It defines it, puts it in perspective and keeps the living honest. Yet, we try so hard to avoid dying, even when living isn't really the best thing we could do - for ourselves or for those around us.

But how do you die in this society, in this day and age? We're trying to stamp out death by natural causes and no one approves of death by intent. In the olden days, you'd get sick and die. That was reasonably normal. These days, you don't go down without a fight - even when winning the fight would actually be more like loosing. And when you do die, everyone says it should never have happened and tries to find way to stop it happening to others. We've lost the concept of a good death.

Except when it comes to our animals. We're quite happy to put our dogs out of their misery, but not our parents. They get to stay miserable (apparently it makes us all feel better).

I've been joking with some of my friends who have parents and grandparents in similar situations - saying I don't want to get that old, so after a certain age I'm just going to live recklessly and hope I get taken out in a motorcycle accident or something.

The problem with that plan is I'm likely to get "saved", so I'll be old and suffering from permanent damage that will stop me from base-jumping or engaging in other death-inviting activities.

I thought of a new plan today: Exposure. I've been reading a magazine on trail running and it mentioned things to do to avoid catching hypothermia and dying of exposure. It made me think of the RSPCA's recommendation for killing cane toads - putting them in the freezer. Apparently, their temperature drops gradually, they fall asleep and freeze to death in blissful ignorance. (Why they honestly think that anyone who isn't going to dissect a toad is going to bother catching them and putting them next to their steak and lamb chops is beyond me. I think they might be delusional).

From what I think I know about hypothermia and dying of exposure, it's a similar pattern. You get really, desperately, uncomfortably cold for a few hours, then you start to nod off. Once you fall asleep, if help doesn't get to you soon, it's all over bar the coroner's inquiry.

That doesn't sound like a bad way to go, all things considered. Find a beautiful spot somewhere really cold (Arctic Circle, perhaps), go for a nice, long bush walk in the middle of winter, make sure you've got enough supplies to get far enough away from civilisation that no one will come along and try to save you, and let nature take it's course. Sure, you'll probably end up being eaten by something - but at least then you're giving something back to the planet, I suppose. Circle of life and all that.

Beats dying slowly because people insist you should be trying to stay alive.

So, yeah, that's my new plan: Live a rich and full life for as long as I can and face old age as valiantly as I may until I feel I've jumped the shark and it's time to go. Then I'll take myself out into the woods somewhere (if there are any left by that time) and die of exposure. Hey, they say wild animals do it all the time, so it must be reasonably civilised.

Of course, I may change my mind by then - it may be quite a number of decades away.

How would you like to die?