Old Enough to Die

When my mother turned 79 years old, she told me how much she missed her mother who died when she was 14, her father, her husband and her brothers who had all gone ahead of her. She told me that already, she was the oldest person she knew. And she feared that the prediction of an old Chinese prisoner at the Iwahig Penal Colony where she grew up (her father was the superintendent there and later director of prisons) would come true, that she would outlive her peers and die old and alone.

Two days after she shared her fears, she had a stroke and fell into a 32-month coma. I felt as if she had a death wish, but since it still wasn’t her time, she had to wait in the silence of her deep stupor, for the precise moment in God’s time when she could cross over to eternal life.

She would not have approved of the heroics we went through to keep her alive. She had told us many times when she was well that if she ever fell hopelessly ill, we should pull the plug and allow her to die with dignity.

Several of my mother’s siblings, now gone, refused to give up smoking, arguing that they had already lived past the expected lifespan of smokers and therefore deserved to keep puffing away in their bonus years.  Some of them suffered painful deaths but, in their hard-headed belief, they were old enough to die anyway.

I came across this phrase recently in an article I read online by Barbara Ehrenreich, “Why I’m Giving Up on Preventative Care.” She wrote that when she realized that she was “old enough to die,” she decided she was also “old enough not to incur any more suffering, annoyance, or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life.”

She argues: “If we go by newspaper obituaries, we notice that there is an age at which death no longer requires much explanation. Although there is no general editorial rule on these matters, it is usually sufficient when the deceased is in their seventies or older for the obituary writer to invoke ‘natural causes.’ It is sad when anyone dies, but no one can consider the death of a septuagenarian ‘tragic,’ and there will be no demand for an investigation.”

Thus, she decided, “I will seek help for an urgent problem, but I am no longer interested in looking for problems that remain undetectable to me.”

 Being old enough to die, she decided to spend her time doing what she likes to do.

What a novel and liberating idea! So, instead of spending hours lining up for expensive and time-consuming medical procedures, she suggests that we spend our time more fruitfully. I can think of a day at the beach, going to the movies with friends and playing bowling with the grandkids.

Ehrenreich’s beef is against the compulsive, profit-driven medical industry that tends to “over-diagnose” patients and require all kinds of tests that may or may not find something to worry about. Meanwhile, the meter is ticking, fear is growing, and time is running out for an elderly person to go out and smell the flowers.

I try to see a doctor at least once a year for my regular check-up. My body is mined for blood, urine and stool samples, a mammogram and an X-ray, and I am told to come back in a couple of days for the results. So far, each year, my vitals have impressed my doctors. When I was younger, they were “excellent,” but as I age, they have gone to “very good” and “good,” which is still age and lifestyle appropriate. 

I guess I am one of the lucky ones. I don’t over-indulge but I don’t deny myself a great pastry, an occasional soda, or even a platter of lechon. Daily, I take multi-vitamins, calcium with B12, fish oil, and thyroxine pills for my hyperthyroid that was zapped with radioactive iodine some 20 years ago.  I am in good shape for my age. But should my situation change and my health begins to fail, I think I would prefer to sit it out at my desk, writing my memoirs on my laptop, for as long as I am able. 

After all, I am a septuagenarian and chronologically, I am old enough to die. And when I do, I would like what Ehrenreich calls a “natural, nonmedical death,” and a happy one, accompanied by music and surrounded by love, and not by blinking machines, invasive tubes and cables.

As Barbara Ehrenreich concluded in her article: “Being old enough to die is an achievement, not a defeat, and the freedom it brings is worth celebrating.”