Health Bill & connection with Past Life..is there one?
Probably not. However, all the current 2009 town meeting furor concerning the current and chaotic efforts to create a common sense health bill and the claim that inherent in the legislation would be “death panels” which would decide who gets to live and who we consign to die is just plain silly. However, if it brings up dialogue on how the terminally ill should be treated, it is apt.
Rabbi Jack Spiro, who holds the chair and spearheads the department of Judaic Culture at Virginia Commonwealth University, is one of the few to shed light on the subject which he brings from his experiences as a hospice volunteer.
Rabbi Spiro noted that mostly we are in denial about death even though along with taxes it’s the most sure thing about life.
It’s the kind of denial that has families calling on extraordinary measures in the forms of medicine and machines to keep one who is terminally ill alive. Many have watched this protracted transition from life to death beholding the sorry, sad picture of a barely alive loved one with all sorts of tubes and devices protruding out of every orifice. It’s a disloyalty to our lives to die in such a fashion. In some cultures, there is celebration when someone dies because it means the end of pain that life often brings.
Rabbi Spiro said too often families take their dying loved ones to a hospice too late, that an earlier admission would’ve brought their loved ones into palliative care, a more gentle, kinder transition to the next stop in their journey.
Hospices can offer an opportunity to get out of denial about death and allow the dying to talk about their fears, their regrets. It’s also a place where loved ones give permission for the dying to leave which sometimes all it takes to pass on. And think how much easier it is to get a much needed hug without all those tubes.
Whether we live many lifetimes isn’t the issue here. Those who do believe we do can view the dying process as a place and time we can forgive ourselves for our transgressions and celebrate the idea that what lessons we learned, what compassion, kindness and integrity we formed this lifetime are not lost; merely taken with us into the next stop in the journey.
Perhaps, if we can really forgive ourselves for “missing the mark” with help of loved ones we could use our dying as a time to view our defeats as perhaps our greatest victories in moving forward in learning those tough life lessons.
Then we wouldn’t mourn death so egregiously as we do when we view it as the end and spend phenomenal amounts on caskets and flowers and headstones to honor the dead which all end up in the ground.