B"H
Our dog passed away this week. We know it's part of nature's cycles, without which the miracles of renewal would not be possible. (Really. We'd run out of carbon at some point, I suppose.) We had prolonged our dog's life with modern medicine -- lots of it -- for several years. Her life would have been more painful and shorter without our intervention. Yet because of this good, we found ourselves on the horns of a dilemma: When does the quality of life take precedence over life itself?
Our first dog had made the question simpler. She had a reasonable quality of life until a stroke took out her back legs. With her pneumonia set to recur due to her inability to move, as well as the fact that she couldn't take care of basic life functions on her own, we knew it was time to set her free.
But this dog, who was with us just six days ago, was still relishing life through the pain. She still loved bagels, walks, and cuddling. She had a habit of leaping and snapping at the air when excited, for which we nicknamed her the Yellow Snapper. And at the same time, her eyes grew more dull. She began to yelp if we tried to lift her. Her breathing was heavy. When I was fully convinced that she was in significant pain despite her 30 pills per day, I agreed to let her go.
The decision made me angry. How can it be that such a beautiful spark of life is allowed to burn out? It's easier, sometimes, to see the intrinsic good in animals than in people, with their ability to make (questionable) moral choices. How can that good expire from the material world, and how much poorer and less justified is the material world given its loss? Moreover, how far have we stretched beyond our reach in choosing to administer death? There seems to be no good answer.
This world is full of hard outer shells that block much good from shining forth. Yet its redemption is that it carries the good inside, making good tangible and actionable. The world falls again when a life ends. The only solution I know of is to retrieve the good that was lost. Use the good you knew to create more good. Dig through the pain and anger to make the good carry on. Do it so that you carry the lost life forward with you, rather than carrying only the loss. Immerse yourself in the knowledge of that particular good, and live it.
There are indignities like death that cannot be righted. But the source of goodness is unending. This seems to be a contradiction, just as balancing quality and quantity of life seems contradictory at times. Faith, to me, is that with all my uncertainty, conflict, error, and pain, I expect the good to take precedence. Despite the reality of loss, I expect goodness to matter more. I hope you can too.
