In other family news...

My grandfather was going to die today, but he seems to have rebounded. I don't mean to be callous about this; it's just the way it is. When he was about 85 years old, he started telling me I should hurry up and get on with my life because he hasn't got much time left. That was almost 15 years ago. He's a couple months shy of 99 now, and it's hard for me to get worked up about it.

To be fair, he hasn't been giving me much grief of late about "achieving my goals," (his way of saying having kids.) But that has less to do with the fact that I finally bore him a great-grandson than the fact that he drifts in and out of a state of senile dementia.

This is how he looked when I saw him just last month in New York:


Not bad for nearly a century.

He recognized me and The Boy too, I think, but we weren't able to carry on much of a conversation. He just sat and smiled and slept and smiled and sat. One thing is clear: the man does not want to die.

A couple weeks ago, he went into the hospital because he had an ulcer, and while he was there picked up some nasty strain of pneumonia that has been resistant to all the antibiotics the doctors have sent in after it. A ventilator is doing all or most of his breathing, and they've cut a hole in his throat because apparently its more comfortable to hook the machine up to that than to his face. They've also put some sort of tube in his stomach to feed him. He can't talk, but he shakes his head to say "no" when my mother asks if he's in pain. He isn't interested in reading or being read to or watching television, and he wants everything done that can be done to keep him alive.

I don't understand this. I know it's not my place to judge anyone else's quality of life, but I can't help feeling we've gone too far to keep this man alive. At the same time, I know my grandfather is afraid of dying, and the thought of letting him die when we have the means to save him seems unbearably cruel.

Why is it so hard for people to let go? Is it because they're so attached to this life or so fearful of what happens next? That's the big question, isn't it - the Big Question that drives us toward God and accomplishemnt and whatever else we strive for in this world: what happens to us after we die? I guess the upside of believing that life is inherently meaningless is that you have no fear of death. At least I have that going for me. I may feel differently when my body starts to fall apart, but let's face it: that process has already begun, and there are worse things in the world than for it to come to an end.

Note: Just because I believe life is inherently meaningless, does not mean I think it has no meaning. I think we give it meaning by living it, in our actions and our interactions, in our relationships and how we effect the world around us. This is why you don't need God to make sure everyone behaves. That and the fact that we've evolved to uphold a social contract, since it's much better to live alongside your annoying neighbor than to fend for yourself in the woods.

Please excuse the philosophizing. That's what you get for thinking about death.