It is April 19, 2041. I am 89 years old, and today is the day I will face the last enemy, as Paul describes it in I Corinthians 15:26. I am rolling down the hospital hallway in a wheelchair. A pleasantly acting young woman is walking beside me, and an equally pleasant young man is pushing my chair.
I should have known better than to come back to the hospital. I should have just stayed at home and waited there. It was foolish of me to think I could go to the hospital and come out again. After almost nine decades of life, I am saddened to say I am still doing foolish things. Well, at least this appears to be the last foolish thing I will do. I don't have to go in a wheelchair, but I don't want to walk voluntarily, as if I agree with the system. Besides, my lungs are so damaged I'm not sure how far I could walk. And I sure couldn't run far, if I wanted to make a dash for it. Of course, 89 year olds don't dash anyway.
There's no deliverance for me at this point, unless God miraculously intervenes. I realize that. My family realizes that. My lungs are shot. The doctors can't explain it. This is the way it is.
This time when I entered the hospital for therapy, word came from the Board of Responsible Care that further treatment for me could not be justified. No more treatments, no more oxygen, certainly no transplant. This is life in an age of rationed health care. Caring for me would take away treatment from someone younger and more capable of benefiting society. I am no longer a productive citizen, the board says. I am no longer of use to others.
So we roll on. We reach it. Above the double, sliding doors are the words: Life Passages. I am rolled into a reception room that may be the most inviting I have ever seen. A few others are already there. I pass on the punch and cookies. Others follow me into the reception room. Most are in wheelchairs. Most have family members with them. I don't, because my family and I oppose this whole regime, and the people in charge don't want anyone in here making a scene.
Soon someone else is rolled into the room without any family -- someone I know. She's a fellow member of Covenant Community Church, someone I've shared Sunday worship and a church covenant with for more than 30 years. She's 10 years younger than me, but she has Alzheimer's. I greet her, but there is no indication she recognizes me. Then, behind her, another person I know is pushed in. He's a 22-year-old member of our church, the victim of an automobile accident that left him severely brain damaged. They say he's in a persistent vegetative state. After all these decades they still haven't come up with a more accurate name for it. They probably haven't tried -- makes it easier to do what they're getting ready to do to my young friend. I think about their families and mine, and ask for God's grace for them.
Soon, all 20 of us are gathered. We are told it is time, and they begin moving us toward the doors at the opposite side of the reception room. We enter a huge, circular room with a high ceiling. Twenty chairs that look like the ones in the dentist's office face outward toward the wall in a circle. I am helped into the chair, and I assume everyone else is. We have three options -- take a pill, take a drink or take an injection. I have chosen the injection. I don't want to start being cooperative now. They say it works slowly, taking about 5 to 6 minutes.
I look to my right and my left and realize I can't see the person on either side, though each is only 15 feet from me. They are viewing the scenes they have chosen to be the last images on their minds. I can't tell what they are seeing -- maybe waves soothing the sand on the seashore or majestic, snow-capped mountains. I don't know how they do it, shooting images onto thin air. I'll never know. They are listening to the music they have chosen as well. There is a little bleed-over. I can hear some faint strains. Me, I don't have a scene or any music. It's that resistance thing again. Besides, I couldn't find any music I liked on the list anyway.
I'm starting to get tired, my eyelids heavy. Then I hear a voice I recognize but have not heard in a long time. It's my friend, my sister in the faith. And she's singing. Maybe the drug made her lucid. Maybe God is going to let her go out singing. It's a song I know, one we have sung as the church of Christ many times over the years. I join in with her. Then I get too tired even to sing. Yet, she goes on. The last thing I hear is her voice, like balm to a weary soul. The last words I hear are: "One with Himself I cannot die; my soul is purchased by His blood; my life is hid with Christ on high, with Christ my Savior and my God."
* -- Photo attribution
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