ALLEVIATION

        Despite all attempts to the contrary, Edith Gairot was dying. 

        Time had been, for the most part, gentle to Edith. Her looks had held and she was handsome. Her wit was not only intact, but sharpened by the years. Her ability to live without a large degree of compromise, however, was becoming eroded with every treatment.  This, to Edith, was the most cruel of the treatment’s side-effects. This, and the erosion of the image of her family. 

        Her husband had passed away, as is traditional, in his sixties. This was roughly a decade ago. He had left behind a family comprised of his loving wife and three boys. She would be modestly taken care of, financially,  by his pension and a life insurance policy. The sons had all grown into, if not successful, at least self-reliant men. 

        She spent the last decade, since his death, living a life of friends and leisure. She travelled often, but not lavishly. Frugality was a style she admired. She would stay in modest hotels, slightly shy of five stars. The people she would meet there were always more to her liking. The food served was generally more to her palate. Her friends were several and they would occasionally join her for her trips, but playing bridge was their true purpose to Edith. 

        She would adorn her Sunday afternoons with doilies and glasses of lemonade. Her friends would nibble cucumber sandwiches and compliment her home. The ones with husbands still living would complain about their spouses behaviors.  Edith liked these friends less since losing her husband. It was a petty stance, but she understood and accepted it as a natural occurrence. As she aged, she noticed the irony of returning to a more child-like thinking. So much of her life was tea-party, and dress up, and holiday. 

        But those things were becoming more and more seldom. Her strength was being sapped. And like sand through a sieve, her desire to fight lessened grain, by grain, by grain. 

         The nurses and doctor’s treated her differently. They knew she was closer to the edge of her illness. She saw this as something altogether new, in her process of treatment. Her only steps now were towards palliative care.  The real fight was lost. Having lived a life filled with what she deemed ample joy, Edith was prepared for the inevitable and preferred a pro-active approach.  

        She remembered Norman. On top of his cancer, he had diabetes and lupus and was so filled with medicines that he wasn’t tolerant of additional ones. His neuropathy manifested in a shuffling gate and a cadence of grunts. He, apparently, would draw some obsessive’s relief by intoning certain simple mantra’s. 

        “Oh, I’m tired.” was a favorite of his. It seemed to be his most succinct.

        “Oh Jesus, Lord, help me ” was the longest of the options.

        During one of Norman’s family visits, Edith watched a scene she did not want to go through herself. Norman was attempting to move from his bed to a nearby chair. His grandson grabbed Norman under the arms, but in no way properly leveraged to take him if he fell. The appearance was of a baby being given to someone who has never held a baby. Very concerned, but untrained and utterly incapable to the task at hand. Norman lost control of his bowels at that point, apologizing as he did. The grandson lost control of his ability to take charge and simply stood there holding his grandfather up in a scarecrow pose, with shit running down the back of his legs. The look on every single one of their faces was just a taste of what the prolongation of life can bring. 

        Nature creates death. Science extends life. Somewhere along the way, despite the best intentions of both, they can create an avoidable hell on earth. 

        Norman’s family watched him die for twelve hours. Norman had lived with pain for the past thirty years of his life, but the pain on his face now should not be allowed to exist. At this point all balance of nature was lost. And nature could only catch up with science slowly, while Norman languished.

        His family prayed to God that the doctors would save him. But when it was time for Norman to die, they prayed exclusively to God. The doctors help was not considered. 

        What if God was not, on the individual level, involved? 

        What if God was involved early on, but angry at how far science had taken Norman past what could have been a mild passing? 

        If the doctors were the tools to abate death, then why could they not also be the tools to expedite death? 

        Edith would wonder, “Were they not culpable”?  With the responsibility of continuing life, should there not also be the responsibility of ending pain that is, by loose definition, an abomination to God?