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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Markoff who wrote (30211)	4/23/2000 9:20:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39621

I am sorry Nancy, but I think followed that event. My impression, although not firm and unchangeable, was that your father might have been subjected to religious interference on his death bed when he was not strong enough to assert his lifelong opinions. I remember thinking how one person's strong faith might interfere with the autonomy of another's death. I am not criticizing you, for each of us must do what we think right. I am sure that you think you did right in converting him. In contrast to your experience, I was sitting with my dying father in the hospital. He had uremic poisoning and blood poisoning from a botched surgery. He had momentary periods of clarity, and as I was washing his face with a damp cloth he asked me what I believed. He knew that I believed nothing about god, the immortality of the soul, of an afterlife, or heaven. I knew exactly what he had believed, and I said to him that I believed that there was nothing after death. He said "That's what I believe," closed his eyes anf fell asleep. Two hours later, he had a heart attack and died, with my brother in room. My brother said he had never awoken while he was there. I've thought about it often. I suppose, being an act utilitarian of the purest metal, that I should have lied. I know all the magic words as he did. But had I lied, I would have merely earned his contempt. I think he would have argued with me. He was a very brave and truthful man. I have always thought he asked me because he knew I would tell him our shared truth. My brother, a churchman, might have told him something else, but I think not. We've never discussed it of course.