The month of November begins with the commemoration of the departed.

Sooner or later those who remember would also have their time to be remembered.  True enough because “No One Here Gets Out Alive”, so goes the title of the book written by journalist Jerry Hopkins on the life of James “Jim” Morrison, a charismatic and iconic American rock singer.

Death has been defined as the permanent end of life of a biological organism. Medically, death can be ‘clinical’, or the moment when the individual stops to breathe and his or her heart ceases to beat. Or it can also be ‘biological’, or when the electrical activity in the brain stops indicating a permanent end of consciousness. 

Modern science has found a way to revive back to life clinical deaths through defibrillation, life support devices, artificial pacemakers and even organ transplants. In brain or ‘biological’ death, getting back to life would almost be a miracle because it normally involves the irreversible loss of the person’s cognitive functions inclusive of the human thought and personality.

In America, the death of a person is legally determined following “The Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA)”, a draft state law that was approved in 1980 by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, in cooperation with the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, and the President’s Commission on Medical Ethics, and widely adopted by most US states to provide a comprehensive and medically sound basis for determining death in all situations.

The three-section Act provides: “An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.”

In 2005, the case of Theresa Marie “Terri” Schiavo of Florida, who for fifteen years of persistent vegetative state became dependent on a artificial life sustenance after suffering from severe brain damage due to a respiratory and cardiac arrest in 1990, hugged international limelight. Whether or not Terri should be allowed to die or kept to live became of the center of a unique political and judicial controversy in the United States.

Eventually, the decision of Judge George W. Greer of the Pinellas-Pasco County Circuit Court in Clearwater, Florida to have the feeding tubes of Terri removed prevailed. And apparently, the court’s decision was anchored on Terri’s wish not to continue with her life-prolonging measures.  But for pro-life advocates, Terri’s death was a case of ‘judicial murder’.

Coincidentally, Judge Greer and rock star Jim Morrison were for a time roommates while studying at the Florida State University.

The sufferings of Terri and all others who are terminally ill could provide the legal justification that the right to die is as much an option and deserves respect as the right to life. 

But regardless of the legal, moral, scientific and philosophical dimensions, death would always remain to be mystical event in human existence. Despite the continuing advancement in medical science, no one knows for sure when death will come, how one’s life will end and what exactly happens after life. Death is as mysterious as the origin of life. As they say, it is like a thief in the night.

Death is also the end of one’s human drama. “Life is a stage and all of us are mere players upon it”, said William Shakespeare. Every individual can rightfully choose to close his or her curtain on a happy or a sad note. But the choice should be done during one’s lifetime because that is how the departed would be remembered in times like All Soul’s Day.