Advance
Directive
My late spring bout with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever got me thinking that it might be time to set up
one of those Advance Directive/Power of Attorney things. It wasn’t just that Girlfriend was the only
one to notice I was really sick—my next of kin and I agreed that, if it had
been up to us, we would have thought it just a nasty flu, until the day the
ambulance arrived.
But it wasn’t only that. I had a lot of time to lie around and think
those days when I couldn’t manage anything much else. I also had a chance to watch dear
Girlfriend—see her worry, notice how she watched me, receive her willingness to
get me anything I wanted in the way of food and drink and entertainment. I knew—because I’d had the hospital doors
swing shut on me—that if I didn’t act, Girlfriend might end up keeping vigil
one day, in the hall. And that didn’t
seem the right response to all her sweet and scared attentions.
So off I went into the Internet and
printed off a form. I signed it before a
couple witnesses, and had it scanned into my doctor’s database.
And now, I want to change it.
The Power of Attorney bit is fine—it says
that I want Girlfriend to make decisions when I can’t, and if she can’t then
the responsibility can work its way around my family tree. That was the part I wanted most, after my
That’s the way the form came off the
Internet; it is the choice most friends of mine have made. I’ve heard repeatedly that folks don’t want
to live if they’re “a vegetable,” “if there’s no hope,” if they might be “a
burden.” I thought I felt the same—I thought
it really didn’t make much of a difference—until I signed the paperwork and
sent it into cyberspace and started thinking about cereal.
Years ago, I had another girlfriend, and
she had this blonde surfer friend who knew a little carpentry. We needed a closet, and Benny was bouncing
from couch to couch, and so we offered him a deal: a weekend of free meals and our couch, in
exchange for framing out a tiny closet.
But somehow, Benny got the message wrong—or he decided that he could
stay until the closet was completed. Did
I mention it was really small?
Months went by, and surprised good will
turned to annoyance and impatience, turned to irritation, then into something
like a grudging kind of welcome. I still
remember the Saturday morning when I noticed I’d pulled out another bowl for
cereal and set it down at what I’d come to know as “Benny’s place” at our small
table.
It’s a bit of a stretch from Benny’s
goofy charming surfer dude persona to the way we usually picture Death, but
Benny’s bowl of cereal is what came first to mind when I started really
thinking through worst case scenarios:
I’m in a car accident/plane crash/I slip in the
shower bad, and there’s no time to call Girlfriend—or she’s turned her cellphone off again—and it’s hopeless and the doctors can
stand back and let me die or they can hook me to machines that someone else
will have to choose to disconnect.
I thought about the call I got one
night, ten years ago: my Dad was dead.
I thought of Girlfriend, picking up the
phone.
I thought: Somehow people do still die—our machines
aren’t all that good—or else there’d be somebody 142 years old, still hooked up
to a ventilator.
I thought: I don’t know where my soul is…is it brain
waves or a beating heart, the warmth of skin, the light of recognition…
I thought: Every morning I try to meditate, pursuing stillness
of my mind and body…who’s to say if this is different?
I thought: If the me of me is
gone, what do I care what happens to my body?
And if something that is me is still around, wouldn’t I want the chance
to say goodbye?
I thought: If it comes to this decision, maybe its an opportunity for Girlfriend to come to peace with my
departure, before its said and done with.
I imagined her some morning, waking up alone and realizing that she
thought of me as gone—the way I knew that Benny wasn’t going anywhere.
I asked Girlfriend if she’d rather see
me warm but broken into bits, than get the call that I was dead. She told me that she would, and she has
worked in hospitals and knows of what she speaks.
I thought: Greater love has no man than this, to lay
down his life for his friends. I thought
it was too bad I didn’t know a gender-neutral version, and I wondered how
offering your death to someone else might fit.
What does forgiveness have to do with
all of this? In Beyond the Mirror, Henri Nouwen writes
about facing his own death. He could
come to peace at leaving those he loved—but the folks he’d not forgiven, those that had not forgiven him—those were the
relationships that tugged at him the most.
He sent urgent messages out, offering forgiveness, asking for it. It’s that whole, what’s held on earth is held
in heaven thing, perhaps…it may be that we don’t want
to arrive in heaven carrying a list of grievances.
I am revising my Advance Directive,
asking everyone to take heroic measures, in order to give Girlfriend the chance
to say goodbye. This may call for
heroism on her part, and maybe even mine.
The thing is: we’re not heroes. What I ask or want may be too much; it may be
much too little. In grief and panic,
fear and suffering, she may not do her best; her best may not be right, or be
enough, if that time comes. This is why
we need forgiveness, starting now. This
is why forgiveness sits there at the heart of my advance directive: my deep regrets for leaving her, and all the
loving-kindness I can muster, for any steps that she might choose.
© 2008 Melissa Capers