Redefining Death

Yahoo has published an interesting article about an ongoing debate that most of us are blissfully unaware of: how do you define, as a legal matter, who is dead? The debate is heated, and is occurring in the context of discussions about rewriting the Uniform Determination of Death Act (“UDDA”). UDDA, which has been around since 1981, is one of many uniform laws that were drafted by the Uniform Law Commission and submitted to the 50 states in an effort to achieve standardized approaches to common issues, like what constitutes a contract for the sale of goods. In most instances, the work of the Uniform Law Commission addresses uncontroversial topics where reaching consensus is not difficult.

Redefining death has turned out to be an exception.

Determining who is legally dead is one of those areas where advances in medicine have affected legal issues. For many centuries, doctors determined death by listening for a heartbeat or taking a pulse and pushing a mirror under the patient’s nose to see whether breathing was occurring. Medical technology developed over recent decades has allowed machines to substitute for the heart and lungs, however, and other inventions have allowed us to examine human brain activity, which means the focus has shifted to the brain. If there is no brain activity, but a human being continues to breathe and other bodily functions continue with the help of machines, is that person alive or dead? How do we know if the cessation of brain activity is permanent? Should brain activity be controlling, or should the activities of other anatomical parts that affect body activity, like glands and the hippocampus, be considered? And another relatively recent medical advance–organ transplants–also is playing a role in the redefinition process. Essential organs can only be removed from a patient who is dead, so having a clear understanding of what that means is crucial to the organ transplant system.

The original UDDA was adopted by some states, but not others, and the rules defining death in different countries are even more muddled. The Uniform Law Commission is working to rewrite UDDA, and thereby redefine what legally constitutes death, against the backdrop of the medical issues and developments as well as some high-profile cases that have raised issues about when the end of life occurs. It’s a topic that touches upon medicine, law, philosophy, ethics, and religion–and, as with everything else in our modern era, politics. When UDDA was first proposed and adopted by states in the 1980s, it was not viewed as a controversial topic. Does anyone seriously believe that a rewrite of the statute would be viewed as apolitical in 2023, when it is expected to be rolled out to each of the 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. for consideration?

You’d like to think that we can reach agreement on basic principles, like when someone is legally dead. The rewrite of UDDA will test that proposition.

Human Composting

When you get to be a certain age, some subjects begin to have a lot more interest than they would have had, say, 40 years ago. Thinking about what should be done with your mortal remains is one such topic. So it was interesting to read that a few states are beginning to allow human composting–also known by the much more clinical name “natural organic reduction”–as an alternative to the standard burial and cremation options for disposition of human bodies.

So far, the legalization of human composting is limited to Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, which always seem to be among the first states to legislate new approaches in the social arena. It makes you wonder whether legislators and lobbyists in those states sit around brainstorming about possible new laws that will send a jolt through the rest of the country. Washington, Oregon, and Colorado are a kind of holy trinity of experimenters that substantiate the notion that states are the “laboratories of democracy.” That phrase comes from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who in 1932 wrote in a famous dissent in New State Ice Co v. Liebmann that “a state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” 

In any case, human composting involves a process that speeds up what would otherwise be the natural decomposition of human remains. Recompose, one of the companies that provides the service, describes the process as follows: “After you die, your body will be laid into the vessel onto a bed of wood chips, alfalfa, and straw. Over the next 30 days, everything inside the vessel breaks down thanks to natural decomposition. The soil is removed and placed into a curing bin, where it is aerated for several more weeks. Then, it can be donated for conservation efforts or given back to the person of your choosing.” Recompose charges $5,500 for the whole process, which produces a cubic yard of soil.

What to do with a cubic yard of soil that used to be a loved one? You can read about one survivor’s story about the composting of her late husband, an organic farmer, and what she did with the soil here. Some people take it all, some distribute it among the friends of the deceased, and some donate it to reclamation projects. Not surprisingly, there apparently is a bit of squeamishness about exactly where the composted soil should go. The Colorado law, for example, prohibits businesses from selling the soil or using the soil to grow food for human consumption. (In the interest of legislative completeness, incidentally, Colorado also bans putting multiple bodies into the composting containers without prior consent from either the deceased or the person who has the right to dispose of the remains.)

Why would someone choose human composting? Recompose notes that it avoids producing the carbon dioxide that is generated by cremation, and some people like the idea of “giving back” and returning to the soil, in the “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” sense. Some religions object, but it’s hard to see why anyone would object to giving people another option in the disposition of remains category. After all, “human composting” is basically what happened to countless generations of humans in the pre-burial, pre-cremation days.

Death At The Grand Canyon

There’s been another death of a tourist at the Grand Canyon National Park.  The National Park Service is reporting that a 70-year-old woman fell about 200 feet from the rim of the canyon.  The incident is the second accidental death at the Grand Canyon National Park this year and the third death by a fall in the area.

In an article on the death, Grand Canyon park staff are reported to encourage all visitors “to have a safe visit by staying on designated trails and walkways, always keeping a safe distance from the edge of the rim and staying behind railings and fences at overlooks.”  That’s good advice, but it’s not exactly easy to follow.  The Grand Canyon isn’t fenced in, and the lure of getting close to the edge of the rim, to take in the canyon in all of its dizzying, magnificent vastness, is hard to resist.

When we made our visit to the Grand Canyon some years ago with the boys, I remember inching my way closer and closer until I thought:  “Okay, that’s really close enough.”  I was probably a foot or two from the rim, like the person in the picture shown above, but it felt like I was on the edge of the precipice, and I didn’t feel the need to have my feet touching the edge so I could look directly downward.  I also tried to keep the kids from going right up to the edge.  If you do that, you leave yourself no margin for error, and any stumble or misstep could send you plummeting to your doom.  And, if your attention to where you are carefully placing your feet is distracted because you’re taking a picture with your phone — which apparently is what happened with at least one of the fatal incidents this year — the chances of a horrible mishap are just increased.

If you make a visit to the Grand Canyon, Devil’s Tower, or other cliffs, canyons, or rocky outcropping sites out west, you immediately notice that there aren’t many fences.  Fencing in the sites would not be feasible because of their sizes and configurations, and would ruin the views, besides.  The National Park Service trusts people to be mindful of their own safety and to avoid taking stupid risks — but of course, the sites were developed in the days before cell phone cameras and people mindlessly moving around, without looking where they are going, to try to get the perfect shot.

A Big Hole In The Household

We lost our little pal Kasey today.  For six years, she has been a huge part of our family.  Now she is gone, leaving a big hole in our household, and an even bigger hole in our hearts.

We inherited Kasey from Kish’s Mom.  Kasey was a rescue dog that Kish and her siblings found at the Erie County Humane Society to serve as a companion for Kish’s Mom, who had just lost her dog and was dealing with her final illness.  It was a match made in heaven.  Kasey was perfectly suited for that role, and Kish’s Mom delighted in her company.  When Kish’s Mom passed, we added Kasey to our household.

Kasey immediately made an impact.  Even though she was much smaller than our other dog, Penny, who was a large, lumbering lab, Kasey immediately assumed the position of lead dog in the Webner pack.  And yet, her small size and big eyes inevitably caused Kish to pick her up, deposit her in Kish’s lap, and manipulate her paws to wave goodbye or do some hand jive or engage in other antics that made us laugh.  Kasey endured this terrible indignity with good humor and a perfectly deadpan expression that made us laugh even more.  From time to time she would puff out her cheeks in what we interpreted as a clear sign that her patience was wearing thin.  It was just one tiny, but memorable, example of her very distinctive personality.

When Kasey left the lap and got to be a real dog again, as when we took her on walks, she fearlessly strutted through the neighborhood as if she owned the place, barking at dogs 10 times her size with a raspy woof that one dog-sitter called a smoker’s bark.  She wasn’t a biter, but she wasn’t afraid to mix it up with any other member of the canine species, either.  When she first joined the family, as shown in the picture above, the brown in her coat was dark, and she was full of spunk and energy.  She stayed that way for years, as if she was somehow immune to the ravages of time.

Because she was a rescue dog, we never knew precisely how old Kasey was, although we think she reached the ripe age of 17 — which is pretty darned old in “dog years.” Gradually her coat got whiter and whiter.  It became too painful for her to put weight on her back leg, cancerous growths broke out on her face, and her eyes got rheumy and her hearing failed.  Her sleeping increased until she was dozing 23 hours a day, and she was losing all semblance of bowel control, besides.  As the end neared, she was more like a stuffed animal than a living creature.  Her appetite declined, and when it got to the point when she wouldn’t even bark for a piece of meat I was having for a meal, we knew the time had come.

If you have a dog in the family, you’ll know how difficult the decision is, and what a mixture of emotions it provokes — sadness at losing a great friend and companion, relief that their period of suffering is finally over, and hope that, somewhere, your dog is out romping on a grassy field, running without pain under a sunny, bright blue sky.  That’s what we’re feeling about Kasey.  We’ll never forget her.

Swedish Death Cleaning

Many of us have closets that are full to bursting.  They’re so tightly wedged that you get serious anaerobic exercise shoving heavy rows of clothing to one side or the other, desperately trying to clear a space to hang something, because you know if you don’t clear that space and try to wrestle free a hanger, it’s likely to come springing out of the crush and inflict bodily injury.

If this sounds like your closet, it may be time for a Swedish Death Cleaning.

That’s the grim name for the latest personal decluttering trend that’s sweeping Scandinavia.  The underlying, admittedly morbid “death” concept comes in because the goal is to try to make sure that your estate is as easy for your survivors to administer as possible.  Why make them tackle that jam-packed closet when you could just do it yourself now, and save them the trouble later?

Some of the tips involved in Swedish Death Cleaning seem pretty sound to me.  The author suggests starting by discarding or giving away bulkier items, like coats, to immediately clear space, giving you the feeling that you are already making progress and incentivizing you to continue.  Other tips are to adopt a “uniform” — i.e., accept and embrace what you typically wear, rather holding on to things that you might someday wear for a once-in-a-blue-moon event — donate the impulse purchases that you don’t wear anymore, rather than keeping them because throwing them out makes you feel guilty that you made a dumb decision in the first place, and get rid of things that have no “worth” for you.

It’s all good advice, but the trick is always with the execution.  What to do, for example, with those jeans I wore when I was 25 pounds lighter and hope, someday, to comfortably wear again?

And when you’re done with your closets, it’s time to give the Death Clean treatment to those drawers that are so full that you have to depress the clothes with your hand to push the drawers closed.

“Nobody Cares About Your Thoughts And Prayers”

The other day I ran across an interesting piece from a public relations firm called Hennes Communications about how companies respond to horrible events like the recent school shooting in Florida.  The piece is intended to provide some advice and guidance in a world where companies, like just about everybody else, feel compelled to take to social media to express their views on what’s going on — especially tragedies.

Entitled “Nobody Cares About Your Thoughts and Prayers,” the piece takes companies to task for rote, mechanical reactions to bad events.  The piece notes that “thoughts and prayers” has become the reflexive response, and states:  “’Thoughts and prayers’ has become a meaningless message, a quick toss-off for those too lazy, and too disrespectful, to stop, turn off their smart phone, close their office door for a minute and think about the tragedy at hand.”  The article notes that other trite, overused reactions are “Our hearts go out . . . ” and “There are no words.”  The article says the latter phrase is “mortifying” and responds to the “no words” reaction as follows:  “Yes there are. You just said four of them. And if you really believe someone’s tragedy is not worth more thought and human emotion than that, then prepare to be pilloried by the always-vigilant, ever-righteous haters who troll social media.”

And, speaking of social media, if you google “thoughts and prayers” you’re going to find lots of “thoughts and prayers” memes like the one I’ve included as the artwork for this post — all of which express the view that sending “thoughts and prayers” is pretty much useless.

It’s an interesting issue, because we’re confronted with the need to react to tragedy with unfortunate regularity.  Occasionally it is a huge calamity, like a hurricane or a mass shooting, but more often it is something that is more personal in scale, like a death in the family or a horrible medical diagnosis or development.  When those bad things happen, and you want to acknowledge the profound loss or anguish that someone has experienced, it is hard to capture the right sentiment.  Words often do seem inadequate.

Both of my parents have been dead for years, so my own experience with being on the receiving end of condolences isn’t fresh — but I know that I appreciated it when people took the time to add a meaningful personal note.  Whether it was recounting some nice personal memory of Mom or Dad, or speaking from the heart about how they dealt with the loss of their own parents, those little personal notes meant a lot, and I still remember them.  When dealing personally with grief, I appreciated all of the good wishes, and I obviously wasn’t grading the condolences I received on the “rote expression” scale, as apparently happens on social media these days — but all I know is that the more individualized notes really had the biggest impact.

So, I agree that words do matter.  Basic sentiments of support are fine, I think, but well-chosen, thoughtful expressions of concern and support can really make a difference.

Does Early Retirement = Early Death?

Kish and I turned 60 last year, and naturally the prospect of retirement seems a lot closer now than it was when we were in our 40s.  As we think about what to do on the retirement front, we’ve taken out books from the library and we try to read articles that look like they may have some relevant information.

Sometimes the articles can be a bit . . . alarming.  Like this one, which provides 12 reasons not to retire early and suggests that people who retire early often run out of money, are sick and depressed, lose the social network that they built up when they were working, and deprive themselves of a rewarding second career, which apparently involves happily picking flowers in a greenhouse.  The grim list of reasons is accentuated by even grimmer artwork of troubled seniors struggling with financial concerns and thinking longingly about the good old days at the office.  In case you’re interested, reason no. 12 cites statistics that indicate that people who work longer live longer and that there is a correlation between early retirement and early death, “even when lifestyle, health and demographic issues are considered.”  That final reason is illustrated with a nice picture of somebody placing a flower on a gravestone.  Yikes!

You kind of wonder who comes up with these lists.  Is the Social Security Administration, which would love to have people work longer for system solvency reasons, planting stories like this on websites?  Or maybe the Russians have pivoted from meddling with American elections and have now decided to meddle with the retirement decisions of hardworking Americans just for the heck of it.

Does early retirement = early death?  It’s hard for me to see how you could possibly control for all of the variables and determine that retirement was the ultimate cause of death for anybody.  And, these articles being what they are, there’s a little bit of inconsistency between reason no. 1, which says that Americans are living so long and life expectancies are growing so rapidly that people are likely to outlive their savings, and reason no. 12, which says that early retirement will produce a prompt visit from the Grim Reaper.

I know relatives, friends and former colleagues who decided to retire before 65, who decided to work until 70, and who wanted to keep working after 70 and enjoyed doing so.  They all seemed happy and reasonably satisfied with their ultimate decisions — and incidentally I’ve not noticed the early retirees keeling over, either.  Their experience teaches me that everyone just needs to make their own decisions based on their own circumstances, comfort levels, financial situations, desires, and dreams.  Scare stories don’t really advance the analysis.

 

A Good Man Down

We lost another friend yesterday.  A colleague from work, Tom passed away after a short but valiant battle with pancreatic cancer.  He was only 60.

We met 31 years ago when I joined the law firm and was assigned to an office next to his.  We shared the same curse, both being diehard fans of Cleveland sports teams, and became workplace friends.  Because I had worked for a few years between college and law school, he was already a seasoned associate when I was a raw rookie, and he happily served as a sounding board for the kinds of questions that inevitably arise when you start working at a new place.  It quickly became apparent that he was extremely smart, a very talented lawyer, and somebody who was viewed by firm partners as a rising star.  He invited me to join a group of older associates who went out for lunch from time to time and swapped stories about the firm at a place that specialized in apple dumplings, and it made me feel included, and a little bit more like a part of the firm.  He didn’t have to do it, but he was just that kind of person.

After a few years in neighboring offices he exercised his seniority and moved to a better office, and we saw less of each other.  He got married and we both focused on our families and things like trying to build our law practices, but he remained the kind of guy who would send along an article and funny observation about the latest crushing Cleveland sports disappointment or email a wry comment about national politics or a development at the firm.  Since his death yesterday, several people have said that he had no enemies — and that’s true.  He was a person who was happy with his wife, happy with his life, and happy in his work, content with his circumstances and satisfied with how things worked out.

And that’s one of the things that made the news about his discovery, only a few months ago, that he had already advanced pancreatic cancer so difficult to accept.  It simply doesn’t seem fair that such a friendly, mild-mannered, fundamentally decent person could be taken so cruelly and never given the opportunity to retire and enjoy the fruits of his years of very hard work.  But after you’ve seen untimely death take a number of good people, you realize that fairness really has nothing to do with it and stop trying to make sense of it.  The key thing is to live a life that, when the time comes, hopefully leaves those who must move on with fond memories of a good person who will be missed.

Tom Ruby accomplished that.

Tree Fail

When we moved in to our house we had our back yard landscaped.  Kish hates direct sunlight, so a key element of the design was a new tree planted at one corner of the patio.  It was supposed to grow tall, leaf out, and provide lots of the glorious shade that Kish likes so well.

For the first year and a half, things went according to plan.  The tree grew like crazy and looked to be doing fine.  Then late last summer, the tree started to visibly struggle.  Beginning at the top of the tree, the leaves wilted and died.  We hoped that the tree would recover this spring, but the top half remained dead and the only new leaves appeared at the base of the tree trunk.  As a last-ditch salvage effort, the landscapers cut off the dead top part of the tree — leaving us with the pathetic looking elongated stump shown above — in hopes it would spur new growth at the bottom of the tree.  Unfortunately, that effort also failed.  Our little tree has given up the ghost.

I like trees.  I hate to see them struggle and I hate to see them die.  This tree death is particularly weird because there’s no apparent cause.  It wasn’t struck by lightning, and every other plant and shrub in our back yard is thriving.  I guess sometimes death just happens.

I’ll miss our little tree.

In The Grand Scheme Of Things

Yesterday I received word that a friend and long-time colleague had died.  Even though I knew it was coming, the news still was difficult to take.

It had been about a year since my friend was first diagnosed with cancer.  He had one of those “bad cancers,” where the survival rates are low and the prospects are grim and there just haven’t been many treatment advances that can give the afflicted some encouragement.  Nevertheless, my friend was unfazed.  He’s always been one of those happy warrior types, the kind who approach everything, even a terrible personal illness, with optimism and enthusiasm and curiosity.   He learned what he could about his condition and his treatment, engaged in spirited and intelligent discussions with his doctors about his options, and could give you detailed, knowledgeable descriptions of what was happening, and why.  It told you a lot about his true nature.

There was something inspiring, too, in how he dealt with his condition.  He may have had private moments when he cursed his luck and the dread disease that had befallen him, but his public face inevitably was hopeful and confident.  He came to work when he could, and spoke of days in the future when he could take an even greater role, because he loved being a lawyer.  It was an amazing display of spirit and fortitude.  He unfailingly projected the positive mental attitude and willingness to battle, undeterred, that doctors often say can make a significant difference in a patient’s prognosis.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t an instance where the mental could control the physical.  When my friend got the news that the treatments weren’t working, he accepted it with a kind of awesome grace.  He would speak of how his illness had opened up new channels of communication, made his talks with his friends and family more meaningful, and brought his already close family even closer.  He actually seemed to feel that, in certain ways, the bad news had nevertheless provided some important benefits.

The last time I saw him, Kish and I visited my friend and his wife at their home.  The cancer was taking its physical toll, but his mental outlook remained bright.  We talked and tried to say the things that need to be said without making it seem like we considered this to be the Last Time Ever, and as our visit drew to a close he mentioned that we should see his “trophy room” — which turns out to be his dining room, filled with pictures of his family.  As the inevitable end neared, he realized that that was what was important, and the pride he obviously took in his family left us moist-eyed and with lumps in our throat as we left his house and walked to our car.

I’ve always liked the phrase “in the grand scheme of things,” because it captures the sense of perspective that we should all strive to maintain.  In the vast spectrum of possibilities that we may encounter during our lives, some are important but most truly aren’t, even though they might seem to be at the time.  My friend fought his cancer with courage, faced his prospects with dignity and grace, and could find positives even in circumstances that many people would find unendurable.  He was able to see the grand scheme of things and distinguish the crucial points from the petty reversals and the minor annoyances.  We should all hope that we can do the same.

Marine Mammal Deaths At SeaWorld

On Sunday the San Antonio Express News published a terrific, but immensely sad, story by Richard about the deaths of orcas, dolphins, and other mammals at the SeaWorld parks.  What’s Killing the Orcas at SeaWorld? takes a careful look at the statistics of creatures dying at SeaWorld and quotes trainers, SeaWorld employees, research studies, and animal rights activists in an effort to address the care of marine mammals in captivity and whether they are more likely to die than members of their species in the wild.

Infections seem to be a huge problem for marine mammals in captivity.  Richard’s story reviewed reports that SeaWorld filed with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and calculated that almost 150 orcas, dolphins, sea lions, and beluga whales have died of infections at SeaWorld since 1986, and five dolphins, whales, and sea lions have died of various infections — such as fungal infections, bacterial infections, and inflammation of the brain — since May 2014.

The big point of contention is whether living in captivity contributes to those deaths, as animal rights advocates contend, or whether the creatures at Sea World are no more prone to infections than members of the species living in the wild.  As Richard’s article reports, that’s tough to assess, because there aren’t many reliable studies of the lives of these mammals in their native habitat.  Animal rights advocates argue that creatures that have evolved over millennia to range widely over large areas of ocean, hunt their own food, and form relationships in the wild simply aren’t suited to captivity.  The advocates believe the orcas become stressed (and show it by breaking their teeth chewing on concrete and metal) and the stress makes them more prone to infection.  Richard’s article quotes some former SeaWorld trainers who talk about the constant medication that some of the mammals have received.  And while we don’t know the prevalence of infection deaths in the wild, we do know this — orcas, dolphins, and sea lions have somehow survived and thrived in our oceans for centuries without have to be heavily medicated by human beings.

I should note that SeaWorld has criticized Richard’s story, saying on its blog:  “The article is unfairly critical of SeaWorld and misleads readers with incomplete sets of facts that are presented in a biased way.”  I respectfully disagree.  I think the piece is a fair treatment of an important issue that employs the tools of great investigative journalism, like review of public records, getting quotes from people on both sides of the story and experts, and then trying to piece things together.  The reality is that the death of the marine mammals in the care of SeaWorld is just an uncomfortable topic for SeaWorld.

I’ve never cared much for zoos or places like SeaWorld.  I feel sorry for the animals that are caged, and I think it reflects poorly on us that we keep creatures that are meant to be in the wild penned up for our entertainment.  It’s particularly appalling that we confine marine mammals that show clear signs of intelligence, like orcas, and then have to dope them up to try to keep them alive.  Richard’s story just heightens that view.

My First Momless Christmas

Yesterday I was baking my cookies, thinking about who would be getting their holiday tins and plates, when I suddenly realized that I’m going through my first Christmas without Mom.

It happened when I was cutting out the sugar cookies.  Mom always really liked them — or, in a reflection of the loyal, unflinching support we kids always got from our mother, at least said she did — and this year will be the first time in a long time she won’t be getting to eat an iced Christmas tree cookie that I made or sample one of my new efforts.

Of course, it made me feel sad and wistful, and the feelings caught me off guard.  When a loved one dies, time helps you deal with the everyday sense of loss because life goes on, but then a special memory or event that you shared with them sneaks up on you and you feel their absence all over again.  I remember one of my friends talking about how difficult it was to watch the OSU-Michigan game for the first time after his father’s death, because they had always watched it together.  In my case, baking Christmas cookies is what brought it back.

So I sat there for a few minutes, listening to the holiday music that was playing and thinking about Mom.  I thought about how I was with her the first time I ever helped in making Christmas cookies, when I was a little kid and the Webner family kitchen was a madhouse of flour-covered people with rolling pins and cookie cutouts and icing and bright sprinkles.  That’s one reason I’ve always liked making Christmas cookies.  And then I thought about how most of the Christmas music I listen to during my baking days, from Bing Crosby to the traditional carols to the Nutcracker pieces to the Chipmunks’ Christmas song, and just about everything in between, were songs that Mom loved, too.

And I’m sure I’ll think of her when I watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation at some point over the next few weeks, because Mom was a movie person and it was one of her favorites that always provoked some loud and happy laughter, and when I look at the little Santa mug with “Bobby” painted on it that she gave me years ago and I remember how there were little Santa mugs with names of each of the five Webner kids painted on top that were lined up on the fireplace mantle for Christmas — and then I’ll remember how much Mom loved Christmas all over again.

It made me realize that, although she’s no longer physically with us, her spirit and sense of fun and the little family traditions she created and the memories of those shared holiday events will always be with us.  I may be technically Momless, but there’s still a lot of Mom in my Christmas.

Dying Alone

This New York Times piece on the lonely death of George Bell is one of the most interesting and poignant pieces I’ve read lately.  Interesting, because it dives deeply into the machinery of public administration and the sleuthing process followed when a person dies alone, and poignant, because George Bell died without family or friends.

Bell lived alone in his apartment in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens.  He died there in 2014 at age 72.  The authorities aren’t sure exactly when he died, because his body was found only after a neighbor noticed a rank smell and called the police.  When the police arrived, in the middle of July, they found a body that had been decomposing for days in an apartment crammed with the kinds of possessions and mystifying mountains of garbage and other stuff that hoarders inevitably accumulate.  The condition of the body was such that they couldn’t initially confirm it was Bell — which required some of the sleuthing described in the story — and he had no wife, or family, or friends to identify his remains.

The Times piece is a long one.  It carefully traces the steps that are followed when a person is found dead, alone, in New York City, and in so doing it also tells some of the back story of George Bell.  He was an only child.  He worked for a time for his father, served in the U.S. Army Reserves, and began working in the moving business.  After his father died and his mother became crippled by arthritis, he took care of her.  He drank, and was known to some friends as “Big George.”  He never married, although he came close.  He was a diabetic.  He was injured at work in 1996 and began living on disability payments and a union pension — and one by one, he began to snip away his connections to the world.  After thirty years of growing isolation, his last regular acquaintance was a person he had met at his regular bar.

I’ve always thought the most terrifying part of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol wasn’t the appearance of Marley’s ghost, or Scrooge’s visit to his gravesite, but the scene at his deathbed, where Scrooge lies, dead, alone, and unmourned, while his belongings are looted by people who felt no pity for him.  In that respect, George Bell was like a modern-day Scrooge, dying without leaving much of a mark on the world around him.

It’s a sad story, but also a compelling one.  One of the workers whose job is to ferret through the apartments of lonely people like George Bell, looking for evidence of relatives, has drawn upon his macabre job to consciously try to build his circle of friends and his connections to the world.  “I don’t want to die alone,” he says.

Death Drivers Of The Orient

It sounds like a bad urban legend, but apparently it isn’t:  in China, there are recorded instances of a driver striking a pedestrian, then backing up to run over the fallen victim again and again to make sure they are dead.  In two of the more appalling cases, drivers ran over a little girl, and a grandmother, multiple times.

Why?  Because the tort and criminal system in China provides a financial incentive to make sure that the victim of a hit-skip incident is dead.  The one-time compensation to be paid to the family of a deceased victim typically ranges between $30,000 and $50,000.  If the victim is seriously injured and requires ongoing care, however, the driver has to pay for the care for the rest of the victim’s lifetime — which obviously could run into considerably larger sums.

Hence, the death driver scenario.  In the split-second after an accident, Chinese drivers have to decide between their pocketbook and their humanity and decency — and for a number of drivers, the pocketbook wins out.

It’s discouraging to think that money could turn a distressingly large percentage of drivers into cold-blooded killers, but perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.  The historical record consistently demonstrates that people respond to economic incentives and disincentives — just ask anyone who lived in the old Soviet Union.  The Chinese death driver example simply shows how far economic incentives can go in influencing decision-making and behavior.  It isn’t a pretty picture.

The (Last) Penny Chronicles

My name was Penny.

I’m not sure where I am now, but for some reason I don’t mind.  I was in pain, but now I don’t feel any pain at all.  My legs ached, and my belly hurt so bad I could barely stand it, and I couldn’t eat at all.  Now all of that is gone.

The last thing I remember is getting a big hug and a kiss from the Leader.  I will always remember the loving look on her face and how good that hug and kiss made me feel.  Then I closed my eyes because I was sleepy, and the pain was gone.  Everything was gone.  And I moved on to this new place.

I will miss the Leader, and Kasey, and the Young Masters who played with me and gave me treats.   I will even miss the old boring guy.  Poor Kasey will have to keep an eye on him now.  I hope that I will meet up with them all again some time.  But for now I feel happy and contented, like I’ve just eaten the best meal I’ve ever had. I feel warm, like a puppy in the sunshine, and protected, like I am still nestled against my mother’s fur.  I think I may find her here.

I am in a good place now, and I feel like I am moving and heading in some direction that will be even better.  I am eager to find out.