Death always makes us pause
Alfie Evans died
Friday, April 27,
2018, in Alder Hey
Children's hospital in Liverpool, five days after doctors and medical staff removed all life support, including water, food, and ventilation, from the
23-month old baby.
Alfie had a degenerative brain condition.
Charlie Gard died Friday, July 28, 2017, seven days before his first birthday, in Great Ormond Street Hospital from an exceptionally rare genetic condition, encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome (MDDS). Charlie's parents abandoned their four-month fight against UK and European courts and doctors who had ruled against the parents' seeking medical care elsewhere.
Could either of these babies have overcome diseases with which they were born? Medical staff overwhelmingly agreed neither child had much of a chance of living. Sadly, situations like this happen everyday around the world. Even sadder, thousands of children die everyday around the world from preventable diseases and physical afflictions in nations unable to prevent or treat such diseases.
In the cases above, UK and European courts (in the case of Charlie Gard) played deciding roles in denying parents' rights to care for their own children. The issue in both cases was not so much medical as it was the right to life itself. Indeed, courts ruled in both cases the babies should be allowed to die without medical support inside hospitals, and not in parents' homes. In essence the courts and the government ruled when, where, and how both babies would die.
Both cases attracted worldwide attention from the Pope, international medical specialists, and even President Trump. Supporters of both sets of parents around the world raised money to pay for treatments that might have helped the children.
The Bible says, “the wages of sin is death….” Philosophers have philosophied and thinkers have thought about death. Death is more common than any of us would like. Death always makes us pause.
Why have many of us mourned the deaths of these two children? Governments and courts overruled parents who were hoping against hope for miracles. Even the most cynical among us hope for miracles when dire situations become personal and desperate. Fiction depicts struggles between good and evil, often offering nothing more than hope for a miracle to win.
When we're not wrestling with life and death issues in our own lives, we turn mundane issues into questions of good and evil, absolutes that must be reckoned at all costs. At night we turn on TV and see battles resolved in sixty minutes or a season. It can be done! And, it will be done if the show and its writers and performers are worth their salt!
I suppose nothing reminds us of the importance and brevity of life as much as death. What is important? Former first lady, Barbara Bush, advised those around her to be kind. That's not easy! Life is not easy! We shouldn't wait until death to practice kindness that makes all the other days easier to abide.
These days in America, life is a blame game. Someone is always to blame for whatever is ailing everybody else. I'm not a Parrothead, but some of my friends are. Nevertheless, I love Jimmy Buffett's song, “Margaritaville.” Buffett draws the same conclusion I suppose we'll all admit in the end: “Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I know it's my own damn fault.”
Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at PJandMe2@gmail.com, or interact with him on the Clarion-Ledger web site http:// www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/