Gloria Levi lives in Vancouver
I’m 89, with a heart condition. I had open heart surgery 3 years ago. When I realized that I was having increasing difficulty breathing, I presumed that my heart was acting up. However, my granddaughter, the nurse, insisted that it was COVID-19. “It couldn’t be,” I replied. “I’ve been so careful.” Finally, after two weeks of increased breathing difficulties, I relented and agreed to go to the hospital.
I entered Vancouver General Hospital on April 1st, 2020. As I slipped off all my clothing and donned the hospital gown, I realized I was shedding my personality and entering that institutionalized depersonalized state of ‘patient’. In spite of my computer, iPad, and cellphone, I was alone. Health care personnel only entered the room when they had a specific function to perform, dressed in their protective gear, and then left. My three adult children FaceTimed with me every day. But I struggled for every breath, grew weaker and complications set in. I felt profoundly alone.
I was constipated and tried every suggestion to improve the situation, to no avail. I forced myself to eat food, which was atrocious. Walking with assistance three times a day from bed to bathroom was exhausting. Day turning into night and night into day made each day seem maddeningly long. A nurse suggested I might have sleep apnea. I worried about all the new diagnostic labels the healthcare system might throw on me. I needed oxygen and constantly looked at the oxygenation markers to see how low they were. I couldn’t go home until I could breathe on my own without oxygen. Try as I would, I could not take a proper deep breath.
Breath! What is this phenomenon ‘breath’? “God breathed into Adam’s nostrils and the creature became a living being.” Breath meant life! The last breath a person takes before death is an exhalation, to expire, not an inhalation. I could not inhale without help from oxygen nasal prongs. I was trying so hard. I was so tired of trying. I said to myself, “Could I just let go?” Just let the exhalation come and it would be over. I closed my eyes to see what that would feel like. Peaceful…but dark. I couldn’t be in darkness. I hungered for the blue of the sky, the colour of the inlet waters I can see from my window, the green of the trees, the dark reds of rooftops, the promise of the rainbow….the WONDER of this world! The preciousness and beauty of this planet. And I knew I wanted to live, to love, to engage.
By day 14, a physiotherapist worked patiently, teaching me how to control my breathing, to take air to the very bottom of my lungs. I could change the oxygenation markers on my own! On day 16 I left Vancouver General and returned home. I had overcome the coronavirus.
gordon friesen
Dear Mme Levi,
Thank you ever so much for that.
In a world of jealous resentment where nothing is ever good enough ; where privileged people don’t have the courage to reproduce ; where many of those, who do, take little or no responsibility for their own reproduction ; where we are taught that life without this, or that, is not worth living, in a world like that :
You come along and remind us of the unconditional value of conscious life. To be or not to be, that is indeed the question !
After countless millennia of virtually animal existence, where our ancestors spared no effort or suffering to at least perpetuate their genes ; after a handful of millennia passed in a pre-industrial civilization where the comfort (and hence the achievements) of the few, were virtually impossible without the oppression of the many, and where what we call slavery (forced labor under the threat of violence) was a constant feature of life, everywhere and at all times ; after a few hundred years of systematic scientific inquiry ; after a century and a half in which artificial power and mechanization eliminated the need for slaves ; after a few decades in which, (for a small favored geographic slice of humanity), the reality of REAL need and hunger disappeared from our society once and for all, after all of that :
Ignorance, idleness, jealousy and sloth have produced a couple of generations prepared to destroy what they do not understand. To repudiate traditional morality which is the distillation of human experience and the hard-won system by which we learned to overcome our worst impulses and reinforce our best. To attack the philosophic basis of civic life by nullifying the principal tenet of equality. To destroy the structural basis of civic life by attempting to eliminate the coercive components of public order which are nothing less than the T-cells of society, evolved to protect us all. And most amazingly : By attempting to roll back the entire fruit of the scientific era by vilifying energy-intensive processes and hence, placing the common goods and benefits we now take for granted, once more, beyond the reach of the common man.
It is as though the first ambitious amphibious sea-creature were to have dragged himself out onto land, taken one look around, said to himself “it aint’t worth it”, and then, swum away again !
It is nothing less than a dereliction of evolutionary duty !
And it is the work of profoundly superficial and ignorant people.
Epictetus, Greek slave and philosopher did not try to blame others for his condition, he attempted to invent a moral system which would allow all of us (all slaves in our own way) to overcome our individual and collective bonds, even in a society where slavery was inevitable due to technological restraints. And in the company of many others (when our society is compared to all that has come before), we can only recognize that he (they) have indeed succeeded.
Therefore : It is time (and more than time) to stop whining and carry on in those footsteps.
But behind any such resolution comes first the generous experience that you have recorded in this amazing text, Mme Levi : the unconditional attachment, not to death and destruction, but to life… simple life. Our heritage, our treasure, and our duty.
Thank you again. Speaking, I hope, for the great many gentle and courageous souls : we love you,
Best Regards,
Gordon Friesen, Montreal
http://www.euthanasiediscussion.net/