What is a natural death?

I like to drink Good Earth teas in the morning. The tag on the teabag always has a saying. This morning’s was “Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth or the only truth.” Charles A. Dana

When we try to reason out an imponderable question, like “What is a natural death?”, everyone has their own opinion. There is no one definitive answer. One person may say it’s when you die in your sleep. Another’s response may be it’s when you have a heart attack and your heart stops beating and you stop breathing. Someone else may say it’s when you take someone off life support.

Well, does a person die a natural death if they stop taking their medications? Or is that considered suicide? If a family member withholds medication is that considered assisted suicide? Certainly, as women with heart disease, we know the effect not taking our medication will have on us. If we choose to not take our nitrates, beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, lipid-lowering medications, or other pills for high blood pressure, heart failure, rhythm or vascular disorders, eventually our bodies will react and our organs will shut down.

Modern medicine has advanced remarkably in the last century and doctors and researchers continue to discover new and better procedures to save or prolong a person’s life. Yet at what cost? At what point do we say enough? Our nursing homes are overflowing with elderly patients who must rely on others for their daily existence. I am very much in favor of stem-cell research and the possibilities for ridding the world of chronic disease. It’s very depressing to see someone in a vegetative state. But what makes me ask this question in the first place, is the sadness I feel watching my mother slowly lose her capacity for living a normal life.

My mother has Alzheimer’s, emphysema, and heart failure. Bless her heart, she can still put one foot in front of the other, and she can still feed herself. But as the weeks and months go by, I watch her ankles and legs swell, I see her gasp for breath, and I notice dramatic memory loss. She is becoming a shell of the person I once knew. It’s heartbreaking to watch, yet I hear her talk about the beauty of her surroundings as she looks out her window, and I see a glow in her eyes when she tells me another cherry tomato is growing on her plant. Yes, her life might be limited in some respects, but she is still alive and appreciates the beauty of what God has given us.

When it’s time for my mother to pass on to her next life, she will leave behind her love. God will take her when it’s time and not a minute before.