Unnatural Death?

This time I'll give you pictures from my trip to Helsinki in early December (it's me in the last pic!), and some talk about death and old age, as it has been much in my mind lately because of my grand parents. I know my opinions are not to everyone's liking, but this is me being honest, and I definitely don't want to make everyone to think the same way either (:

I feel like in this modern culture the naturalness of the death has been forgotten. Surrounded by all these pills, medicines and machines the death is the unnatural thing that comes when you haven't treated someone well, long or strongly enough. I would never want to have a machine controlling my life or death, or even see a loved one get to that stage, because I don't think it is really life - at least not life worth living for. I know many don't agree with me, but I'm not ashamed of my opinion: when the time has come to someone, you should be able to let go. When someone can't recognise their friends and family anymore, or talk or think understandably, it doesn't matter much if the body is healthy. A relative of mine said this about my grandfather who has Alzheimer's disease: his soul (I would say mind) has gone in advance, but the body is strong and still hanging on here. You can't have any rational answers to even normal daily questions from a person in that stage, so who and how is in the position of deciding if the person still wants to live that way. I don't mean euthanasia here (that I agree with totally depending on the case), but that if an old person, whose mind isn't working anymore, has let's say a heart attack, I would think twice before trying to bring them back to life.

(Just to not have any misunderstandings: all this what I'm writing obviously only applies to someone, who's mentally not well for old age or some disease for example. So I'm not telling to kill every old person there is.)

The difficult question must be, who is to decide when someone's life is not worth living anymore. Even fully healthy people have very different points of view about "life worth living", so who's going to decide for those who can't have any rational opinions about anything anymore, or who can't express those opinions. I definitely don't have any answers to how to tell when the life isn't living anymore, I just think that when it gets there, it might be better not to live.

I always try to think my life and decisions by the golden rule ("Do to others what you would like them to do to you, and don't do anything you wouldn't like to be done to yourself."), and I do so concerning death and euthanasia also. Directly speaking, I would like to go quickly without years of suffering in the old age. Of course I would love to live to be an old lady, but only if I would be in good shape mentally and physically at that time too. And I highly recommend applying the golden rule to everyone, because that suddenly might make decisions easier and more logical, even though sometimes it is hard when there are too many points of view (:

I once read about some native tribe somewhere (well that sounds reliable :D) that used to send their elders in a canoe to the river to die when they either for the age of their mind or body could not participate in normal life anymore. According to their believes, this was the way they saved their people from the suffering of the old age, and from the shame of not being able to function normally. Death was not scary or unnatural, but something inescapable, and if I remember well, the ceremony had a positive  atmosphere unlike the sad funerals of today. It was celebrated that the soul is free now and the body isn't suffering anymore. Let everyone think what they like, but I would rather chose this destiny than lying in a hospital, nursing home or even at home extending the suffering.


I'll post more pictures tomorrow with no writing just to catch up with more recent pics!

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