Everyone, especially veterans and senior citizens, aspire for a dignified death.
Earnest Hemingway shot himself dead with dignity when he was diagnosed with chin cancer. Dignity in death is a matter of personality glorification and one of the gratifications of life. Such demise brings venerability to the bereaved and bequeaths an ideology to the living.
There is an analogy in the dignity in death and the concept of self living and self-existence. Self-existence is less comfortable an area that leads to pondering to improve living. There is a tinge of despondency in self-existence, the reason being that it is a passivity. Veterans can’t tolerate strictures and sermons or their mundane activities being monitored. The suggestions put forth by the young to their parents tend to be less wise and inexperienced to the aged. Their subordination is reflected in their personality. The old are left to float between the state of existence and living, casting a thought on dignified death, especially those who go through divorces and other debacles.
Rampant achievers in real life go for it. Their performance ability leverages them for a dignified life and death.
Terminally ill patients look at death with dignity and try to create a rapport and realisation with death. Aruna Shanbaug is in a vegetative state at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai for the past 37 years. Pinki Virani, a social activist, approached the court to administer euthanasia on the ground that it is a violation of right to live in dignity. The court declined it on March 7, 2011.
In the United Kingdom, Dignity in Dying is a nationwide campaigning organisation.It has started campaigning to have greater choice and more control over end-of-life decisions. But Indian culture and religions do not advocate it. Hindus believe in life after death and perform rites to pacify and salvage the souls. Ancient Egyptians embalmed the dead bodies and preserved them. Suicide of a patriarch is counted as a great sin to the entire family. So it is not propitious to either legitimise or practise it.
The very concept has the tendency to instil suicide and senior citizens are a treasure trove to society.
Religious believers do not endorse this premature death. They envisage care but not killing. No culture in the world imparts killing but care, until the patient attains natural death. It is not proper to delve into it or anatomise it. None has the power to take another’s life. Sin does not spare anyone.
Philanthropists and right minded citizens can exhort society easily to foster family unity and cooperation to care for the sick unto a natural death. Taking life in the name of dignity has no legal ground. Let us be prepared to endure sufferings.