I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week to fill up with gas and to check on how Jake was getting along with his campaign to protect his new American Elm from the vicious predatory deer. As I drove up and parked in front of the store I saw there was a protective ring of wire fence around the little sapling. I went inside and Jake was nowhere in sight, but he immediately came bustling out from the back of the store soon as he heard the door open. He asked if I needed any gas and I told him he could fill it up. Jake likes to hear that. Normally, if Jake does not come out to put in gas as soon as I drive up, I put the gas in myself, but I had been interested in asking Jake about his tree. I followed him back outside and he began to put gas in the tank. I asked Jake about his American Elm sapling and he told me the soap he hung on the tree to keep the deer away had not helped at all. Maybe it was the wrong brand. So Jake had decided to put a fence around his tree. A fence doesn’t really do much to stop a deer. I’ve seen a buck come running across an open field and up to a fence. That deer did not even break stride. He just took one leap over the fence and kept on running. In the case of the fence around Jake’s American Elm, the little fence was so close to the tree there was not room for the deer to get inside the enclosed space if he tried to jump and the fence was just far enough from the leaves a deer could not push against the fence and reach the new shoots, Jake was right pleasured with himself. He thought he had solved his problem and was looking toward years of watching that sapling grow into a big tree. Once it had grown tall enough the deer would no longer be a problem.

Jake had finished with the gas and I followed him into the store. Jake asked if I needed anything else and I said I might pick up a box of crackers and a few things to make sandwiches with. I wandered up along the displays, gathering what I needed. I saw Hurshel Ledbedder over by the pot belly stove along with Hermann Spencer and the Reverend Johnson. I heard the talk of life support and walked over to see what the conversation was about. Hurshel was telling about his mother who died about five years ago. He was explaining she had a sudden blockage of the flow of blood to the lower part of her body and, by the time they finally got her to the hospital in Jackson TN where there were the facilities for a surgical procedure, the damage was irreparable.

It seems Hurshel had several conversations with his mother over the years in which they had discussed the measures taken to prolong life after any practical hope of meaningful recovery was long past. It was his mother’s opinion that sustaining someone by artificial means was not so much a matter of keeping them alive as it was a matter of simply extending the process of dying. Both Hurshel and his mother had agreed such procedures were not for them. They had no wish to have their deaths drawn out in such a manner. To them such procedure fell under the heading of cruel and unusual punishment. Then of a sudden, with the blockage of the flow of blood, Hurshel’s mother was in the very real circumstance in her life of a condition that had only been the topic of an abstract conversation for a quiet Sunday afternoon when they had made their wishes known to each other.

Hurshel said he was well aware that a decision made in the full bloom of health can come to be reconsidered when a person actually comes to the edge of the black abyss of death. One can sometimes feel the need to reconsider decisions made under more casual circumstances. However, when Hurshel’s mother spoke with her doctor, she was insistent that her commitment was in no way altered. She still did not wish to have her death prolonged by mechanical methods. Hurshel’s mother was a woman of deep religious faith and she saw no reason to cling to a life that had deteriorated into a painful burden when a much better world awaited her on the other side. It was her time and she was willing to let go.

The Reverend Johnson has been a pastor for most of his adult life and, in such capacity, has seen more than his share of family members face the prospect of death, both for loved ones and for themselves. He has tried to comfort them and to see them through their time of crisis, but he has never truly understood what drives those who profess belief in a paradise after this life to draw back with such horror from the prospect of natural death. Often people will endure unending pain and torture to cling to a remnant of life that has become quite obviously unbearable. The Reverend can understand the reluctance to part with someone loved and who is an essential part of this life. Of course parting is heartbreakingly sad, but to those who believe in life afterward, parting is in no wise permanent. In just a few short years those left behind will cross the great divide to be rejoined with the loved ones who have gone on ahead. If one truly believes in life after death, the parting of death holds no great terror. It is simply a minor irritation that will be swiftly forgotten on the other side.

The Reverend admitted the sentiments he was expressing there in Charlie’s were not those people who were facing the loss of loved ones wanted to hear at the time, so the Reverend had made comforting noises but still was able to remind those saddened by loss that they would see again those they loved soon enough. Luckily when the Reverend’s brother died a few weeks back, he had gone peacefully with a heart attack and both parents had passed on after a short illness. There had been no decisions to make about withdrawing medical support. The Reverend expects such a decision would be a difficult one to make.

Hurshel looked the Reverend square in the eye and said his decision was not difficult to make at all because he wished to spare his mother unnecessary pain and because he loved her very much.

END