What if you have only 7 more days to live?

By Sim Kwang Yang

If you are told by your doctor that you have been stricken by an incurable disease, and that you will die in seven days, what are the things that you will do first?  This may be a hypothetical question, but give it a try.  See whether it will make you think about changing life’s priority.

This is a trick question I used to ask my philosophy class in the New Era College.  The diverse answers I got did show the different personality of the students.

People live their daily life without thinking about death and dying of course.  In fact, many people live as if they will never die.  The subject is so tabooed that whenever it is brought up, everyone will hush you down.  They think that life is good and death is bad.  They think that even talking about death and dying may bring bad luck.

My 31 year old young friend Fook Woon came to visit me last week.  He is a fisherman by profession, working out of the fishing island of Pulau Ketam in Selangor.  He visits me once a year.  With his rugged feature, his deep sun tan, and his muscular body, he looks more like a gangster than a fisherman.

He studied philosophy for a year with me once.  He is also a poet, a pretty good one at that.  He is one of the most insightful young men I have ever met.

He wanted to talk about Thanatology, the study of dying and death.  It is a multi-disciplinary study involving medical care personnel, priests, sociologists, and even philosophers.  I hear it is quite a popular course in the US, and has now swept Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong.

Thanatology is derived from Thanatos, the God of Death in the Greek mythology.  The study of this gruesome subject matter has become more popular because as people live longer lives, the care of terminally ill patients has entered public debate.

Fook Woon said that his neighbour is at the terminal stage of his cancer infestation.  He would die within months, and perhaps weeks.  But his entire family has kept the dying patient in the dark, giving him the false impression that he was going to live on for a long while yet.

Fook Woon was angry with the family.  The man has a right to know, he said.  It is his life, his dying, and his death.  He must decide how to die with dignity.  I agreed, though in my time, I have seen enough friends on the death bed.  Some of them really could not accept the reality of their impending passing and cried like a baby out of terror.

“The dignity of dying” – those are the right words to discuss the issue at hands.

People are obsessed with their standard and quality of life, but none would think about the standard and quality of dying and death, especially their own dying and their own death.  By the time their own dying and death approach, they are caught completely unprepared.

Fook Woon observed quite correctly that without dying and death, there would perhaps be no religion.  But then, can you imagine living an immortal life; it must be very boring.

So I had to tell him all over again how Socrates look at his own death, as is reported in Plato’s dialogue, the Apology.  (An apology is an explanation of oneself, and not saying sorry.)

Socrates was on trial for allegedly “misleading the youths of Athens” and “insulting the gods”.  He was convicted and sentenced to death by drinking the Hemlock poison.  The Apology ends with the following paragraphs regarding his view on death:

“Now as you see there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. But the oracle made no sign of opposition . . . I regard this as a proof that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of use who think that death is an evil are in error . . . .
“Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things:–either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. . . . Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night.

“But if death is a journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? . . . What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. . . . Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. . . . The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways–I to die, and you to live.” Which is better God only knows.”

Socrates’ point is this.  We all assume that life is good and death is an evil.  In actual fact, we know nothing about death, because nobody has ever returned from the other side of the Great Divide to tell us what it is like after death.

This is what he has tried to teach all his life, about how people make the mistake of thinking that they know, when in fact they do not know.  He was considered wise simply because he knew that he did not know.

By popular account, death is but an eternal night for pleasurable sleep, and that cannot be an evil.  If there was eternal life for the soul after death, that too would turn out to be a good, because he could then pursue his conversation with the poets and wise men who had died before him!

How did Socrates die in the end?  This was told in the dialogue Crito (Benjamin Jowett’s translation 1892):

“Then raising the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could not longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept, not for him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having to part from such a friend. Nor was I the first; for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up, and I followed; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out in a loud and passionate cry which made cowards of us all.

“Socrates alone retained his calmness: “What is this strange outcry?” he said. “I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not misbehave in this way, for I have been told that a man should die in peace. Be quiet then, and have patience.”

“When we heard his words we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel; and he said, “No;” and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said: “When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end.”

“He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said–they were his last words–he said: “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

“The debt shall be paid,” said Crito; “is there anything else?”

“There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth.”

So, what would you do if you have 7 more days — or 30 more years — to live?

(SKY can be reached at kenyalang578@hotmail.com )