Dying with Dignity
by Daniel Septimus • November 2nd, 2007 12:40 PM
Category: Lifecycle
The most recent issue of Moment magazine has a powerful and moving article by Rabbi David Wolpe about his conversations with a friend dying of cancer — as well as his own grappling with mortality, his own cancer.
A beautiful, sad, and profound piece of writing from one of our most gifted rabbis:
We talked about the strange gratitude we felt for the medicinal poison as it coursed through our veins. There was a moment of solidarity, then sadness returned. Battle stories are not nostalgic when they end in death.
“But at least you understand,” he said. It reminded me anew that my cancer was a gift; as a rabbi, it validated my compassion. People knew that I really did understand, that my family and I were not unscathed. Needles seemed forever to be dangling from my arm and I was always being shoved into metal tubes for scans and pictures and tests. Enduring the elaborate technology of survival creates a kind of tribal solidarity.
“So,” he asked, “why did it happen to you?”
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