Death Bed Dilemmas

We all know that at some point, we’re going to get sick and eventually we will all pass away… We hope it won’t hurt when we have to go and depending on what you believe, you say your prayers and promise to change your life before every blood test and after every close call.

Many of us have to learn some hard lessons when the superhuman facade crumbles at the sight of a needle. We, men especially go through stages in our development, so just as you may have been a teen likening toddlers to drunk little people, so too does the 40-year-old see 24-year-olds and their ‘YOLO’ mentality as folly and a waste of youth.

Or they may be sitting there reminiscing on the fit young men they used to be and how indestructible it felt. They soon snap back to reality however when they realise it was the very same feeling of being invincibility that they rue everyday when they have to force down those pills or find themselves in those horrible backless gowns they give you in hospital to protect whatever modesty you’d care to protect.

All of us will at some point find ourselves in the cold comfort of a hospital bed. Being in hospital is no fun, it’s not meant to be, you’re there to get healthy or for what’s left of your days to be made comfortable. You can’t shake the eerie feelings of fear and death that fight the strong smell of disinfectants.

One also often has a lot of time to just sit and ponder your life. What was, what will be and what could have been.

What’s to come can usually wait, because what’s happening takes precedence mostly because that nurse with the worried smile keeps looking over at you while they discuss you in hushed tones and another enters the ward with an even bigger IV than before, complete with a needle the size of a small storm drain.

Thoughts of what was and what could have been have hijacked your thoughts. In those anxious hours listening to heart monitors beep, one is confronted by the past. You start to piece together how getting to where you are now started a long time ago.

Yes, a lot of ailments happen at the will of life’s lottery, that is to expected, but then there are those ‘Death Bed Dilemmas’ we bring unto ourselves.

These range from those daily beers after work, your 10-a-day habit or riding a motorcycle in plakkies and a vest.

Now of course there’s a thousand ways to die, but then there are also a million ways to nearly kill yourself and this we do incrementally each day. With that daily dop or that extra little bit of sugar or salt we take in. All our lifestyle choices add up and we may not be ready when nature calls to collect.

Besides just wallowing in your health woes, there will be so many things that come to mind, figurative scars will rise to the surface, forcing you to confront realities that you’ve long ignored, choosing instead to focus on a future you didn’t think would turn out this way.

These could be brought on by the sudden clarity you find when you realise how finite life can be.

“Most of my time I committed to work, I thought that is what a good family man does, but then I was hospitalised for high blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes. My children came to visit and kept asking me about work. Then I realised that used to be all I spoke about, they didn’t know me beyond being a stressed out contractor. I cried that night, not because I was sick, but that I had missed out on being a father by being my children’s boss.” related Kobus*, a successful contractor.

Time in hospital had stripped him of his always-on-the-move, hard man persona and has given him a new appreciation for life and what’s important.

From not taking charge of one’s life and its course, not telling someone how you feel, to not letting what everybody may think of you influence your life, there are too many ‘what ifs’ to mention, so before your stint is up, figure out what’s really important. Fill in those blanks in your life and let the rest go.

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