Not nice but natural
Dying is unlikely to be a pleasant experience for most of us and few of those dying in the early years of C21 will have an easy death.
(See for example a best selling American book, first published 1990)
“How We Die: Reflexions on Life’s Final Chapter”
by Sherwin B Nuland (Yale Newhaven’s principal surgeon in those days).
You’ll find new and s/h copies at Amazon.com from about $7, with audio cassettes from about $17. Amazon can also find you “Como Morimos”, the Spanish translation of Nuland’s book.
Caring Together’s aim is to address the anguish, the agony and the sheer indignity of dying which Nuland describes so vividly. Caring Together is here to make death as comfortable as possible within the limits set by the laws of Spain.
One of the things to be done is to bring death out from behind closed doors, where the living have pushed it on trolleys - for their own convenience. Most people, we think, would rather not be reminded that dying may be harder and more protracted than giving birth and perhaps without quite the same pleasures to look forward to.
Our culture has institutionalised death and left it to the experts to “fight” it. What we should be doing is recognising death as a natural phase of life and establishing the best possible conditions for patients as the time draws near.
It can take anything from a few seconds to several years to die, and within that range there would be plenty of opportunity for those about to be left behind to make things easier, if only the general climate of opinion were on their side.
We hope to change that climate of opinion and summarise our attempt by saying we are “Promoting the hospice movement in Spain”
This requires that we attend to the requests of those who turn to us for immediate care ; that we find the money to pay on behalf of those who are genuinely unable to afford appropriate care, AND that we squirrel away as much as possible to help to build the special care units (”Hospices”) that we believe should be in place.
There are 101 ways to find the money . See our donations and fundraising page !
henry on April 23rd 2007