Living single and the end of your life

Last week was one of those weeks, of feasting on input. On Monday night I went to the CCL lecture on Beauty, as mentioned. Then on Thursday night I went along to the first night of a course at my church called 'Living Single'. The marketing of this course went along the lines of ‘in the same way that we run courses on marriage and courses on parenting, we are running a course on living as a single person’. Excellent! So, much as single people probably have some reluctance to go along to such a course, I thought, if single people want churches to be a little more single-friendly (I actually think my does very well at being church single-friendly), then they should support such efforts. So I went. And it was a very good night, with a large turnout. Ben Adamo, who is in 4th year at Moore College, primarily spoke and his introduction made us all smile, just a little, on the inside, that being that ‘if there is one thing in the Christian life we don’t want to do well, it’s living single, because we think that if we do badly at it God might take pity on us and give us a spouse’. Then we went through the challenges of being single, the purpose of singleness, the blessings of singleness and the key to thriving as a single person, with time for small group discussions along the way, and a Q and A session at the end. Steph Menear also spoke briefly about grief in singleness, and how people need permission to acknowledge it and to talk about it, which was good to hear. Last week it was mostly at the personal level, and apparently this week it is looking at things mainly from the ‘community’ or fellowship perspective. All good.

Then on Friday night I went to the Ensemble Theatre and saw David Williamson’s new play At Any Cost?. I have a friend whose mother is something of a patron of the arts, and when her mother can’t attend plays, I am occasionally the lucky beneficiary! So, I felt quite privileged (and have now seen two David Williamson plays on the generosity of others – you know who you are). This is an ‘end of life’ discussion play, and succeeded well to that end; making people talk about the subject. It was written by David Williamson and a medical doctor named Mohamed Khadra, and went through what is apparently not an uncommon scenario when families are faced with the decision of what to do about ongoing treatment when a family member is very elderly and unwell. I was captivated and enjoyed it a lot.

There was a forum afterwards, and it was quite clear from that that many people still confuse the decision to not continue treatment with euthenasia, which is perhaps half the problem with this current debate. Mohamed Khadra actually said at one point ‘this is not a pro-euthenasia play, and we don’t support that’, though I am not sure everybody heard him. And it was interesting that when someone asked the actor Martin Vaughan, who is 80 years old and was keeping quiet, for his opinion on the subject of the play he said “I’m too close to the bloody end”, and then muttered almost under his breath, “I probably disagree with everyone in this room”, which was telling. With the fashion in which he dies being a very real possibility for him, he didn’t appear to so much like the idea of being shuffled off by his family and medical staff.

There was lots of discussion about ‘advanced care directives’ and talking to your relatives before faced with this situation. One line of argument presented in the play was the idea that, even if they could cure the patient’s kidney infection (this was the scenario set up), was it worth it if that would just return the patient to her previous state, which was as a stroke victim. This raised the question of who it is that gets to decide on a ‘quality of life’? In response to that the doctor did make the point that the medical staff are always there to respect the wishes of the patient, but that knowing what those are, when the patient is unable to say, is the difficulty.

All up, it was quite intriguing. And I actually really appreciated all the family dramas that came out in the course of the play as well. As someone interested in psychological out-workings, I found it fascinating to see the reasons manifest for why there was an element of resentment between these two, a discord between those two etc. And supposedly all this spillage does actually happen in hospital waiting rooms!

So, I finished the week with a good serving of food-for-thought.