Inspired by the poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas. The general consensus of the poem is that it is about being on the threshold of an not conceding to death.
My twenty-year-old cat Rusty -- failing kidneys, deaf, little more than skin and bones these days -- had an incontinent episode this morning. I'm all too aware that this is the beginning of the end for the old girl.
I've had two decades to prepare for this, yet ... I'm not prepared for this. It's funny how we can accept that we ourselves are not immortal, but our pets? Not allowed to die, ever.
"Death rates for U.S. kidney dialysis patients are among the highest in the industrialized world. A CBS News Data Team investigation has found that one-third of the nation's dialysis clinics have failed to meet federal performance standards.
In Texas, where the number of dialysis centers is higher than in any other state, the I-Team discovered that the problem is especially severe."
"Patient deaths have been found to increase in U.S. hospitals after being acquired by private equity firms, according to one study.
The death rates rose in the emergency departments of these hospitals, in comparison to similar hospitals not acquired by private equity, the study says."
From Peter Handke's diary/journal, "The Weight of the World." A reflection on shared #mortality.
The old man in the shop today, who wanted to buy salt. They were out of the small-size box he usually bought, so he took a large one, remarking that the small box had lasted him three years. Eerie silence in the shop. Everyone realised that the old man had just bought his last box of salt.
I know it's more than one sentence; call it a #sundaysentence cluster.
Natural selection depends on death; little would evolve without it. Every animal on Earth is shaped by its presence and fashioned by its spectre. We are all survivors of starvation, drought, volcanic eruptions, meteorites, plagues, parasites, predators, freak weather events, tussles and scraps, and our bodies are shaped (and scarred) by them.
And then there is ageing. All animals tell a story of death through the way in which they age. There are animals that live for just a few hours as adults, those that prefer to kill themselves than live unnecessarily longer than is needed, and then there are animals that live centuries. There are parasites that drive their hosts to die awful deaths and parasites that manipulate their hosts to live longer, healthier lives. There is death in life.
Amongst all of this, there is us, the upright ape; perhaps the first animal in the history of the universe fully conscious that death really is going to happen to us.
The "Costs of War" project, based at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, estimates that the total death toll in post-9/11 wars – including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen – could be at least 4.5-4.7 million:
Stephanie Savell (2023) https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2023/IndirectDeaths