This is it

The pope is 84 years old. He has multiple chronic illnesses. He has had multiple life threatening illnesses in the last few weeks and window appearances aside, it's obvious he is failing and will soon die, perhaps even today.

It has been pretty clear to me in the last couple of weeks, ever since he came back from his last hospital visit, that he had decided, that this was it, he was going to die with dignity in his own bed rather than at the hospital. It was obvious because even tho his health continued to fail the Vatican kept insisting that no return visit to the hospital was planned and that the Vatican had more than enough adequate medical facilities to deal with his life and death condition. If that was so .... why did he go to the hospital in the first place .... not once but twice.

What continues to piss me off however is that even tho he has made the decision to no longer fight his own mortality, he still believes he can make similar life and death proclamations about OTHER people's choices in the manner of their death. The hypocrisy continues to absolutely amaze me.

My father is beginning the late stages of alzheimers. He no longer knows any of his family. He used to be a vibrant, healthy man in his youth. A doctor. I have always known his wishes not to live with the indignity of artificial means of support. When he was first diagnosed we all held our collective breath. He had made no bones about his desire to commit suicide rather than face the decline he knew was inevitable. Not only had he ministered to many many patients with this disease ... he watched his own mother succumb to it. There is a reason they call it the long goodbye.

He can still walk, can still talk. He knows my mother is someone familiar he just doesn't know why. Soon however he will stop talking, stop walking, no longer respond and if he is like my grandmother he will eventually be just a husk on a bed, drooling, crapping, vacant .... dying. It could go on for YEARS like that, it did with my grandmother. What possible purpose does that SERVE!!! He was as am I an atheist and he has NEVER feared death ... only dying. I used to be afraid that he would actually do it and kill himself, he knew how to, painlessly, and I think it was his intention to do so. But he waited too long, too late, he forgot how, he forgot he even wanted to. You cannot know how I wish now that, that were not the case. Now I wish he had and I realize how selfish I was before in not wanting him to.

We cannot ease his passing. We cannot halt his humiliation. Peeing in corners. Screaming at his own reflection, a stranger in the mirror. We cannot allow him to die in dignity. No. We have to watch his slow decline toward the inevitable. The man that was my father still breathes and yet he is dead. I wish I could hasten the death of his body, the shell. It would be the last most loving thing I could do for him. But I can't. Because of people like the pope.

I hate him.

IA