The art of dying
Elizabeth Bishop might have been right when she wrote in her poem “One Art” that “the art of losing isn’t hard to master.”But in light of the recent events concerning the assisted suicide dispute between two cancer patients, Brittany Maynard and Kara Tippetts, one must wonder whether there is also an art to dying as well.The debate boils down to this: Maynard is choosing to end her own life through assisted suicide while Tippetts is choosing to let the natural process overtake her.Although there are bigger political implications to the question, namely the ones regarding policies on assisted suicide, I’d like to point out that perhaps this debate about these two specific people is unnecessary.No matter how we might want to judge others for their actions and arrive at conclusions about whether they are contemptible or praiseworthy, the thought of this happening to someone close to the brink of death is disheartening.One might be inclined to argue that we are all on our way to dying and that dying shouldn’t change our judgments on acceptable behaviors for society.
