#25 of 92: Acing Death & Dying

Do you set personal goals for yourself?

View all responses

What’s the meaning of life if you don’t regularly set and not meet goals?

We are supposed to be striving here not just passing the time of day! Are your crops all brought in? Your laundry off the line? Is everyone’s homework done? Including yours?

My goal today was to finish a presentation for my Death & Dying class about culturally competent palliative care for Jewish patients. Palliative care, if you didn’t know, is end-of-life or hospice care. It’s something that you get on your way out the door. There are books and seminars and institutes all studying palliative care. It’s an industry. Everything’s an industry.

Of course, being Jewish isn’t one thing, like being Baptist or Episcopalian. Being Jewish, at least in my experience as a ‘Jewish-adjacent’ person (don’t you love that?), is a complicated, intricate, cultural, religious, historical, tribal thing that is felt and studied and debated constantly. And there are way different ‘types’ of Jews – ultra observant, conservative, reformed, reconstructionist. One value held in common is that a Jewish person is obligated to do everything possible to sustain life. That makes it hard to end a life-sustaining but not curative treatment. 

I have a stack of books on my desk about Judaism from my time studying for conversion, a move I ultimately decided against, but I kept the books. I’ve leafed through all of them this afternoon looking for the perfect quotes for my presentation. Meanwhile, the rabbi across the street is raking his leaves. His children help him. When he’s done with his lawn, he rakes his neighbors leaves and mows his lawn. He sweeps everything into the street. He does all this wearing a white dress shirt and a tie. I could go talk to him about Death & Dying but I feel like I’d need to study for weeks to have a discussion. These rabbis don’t do casual conversation about religious principles. That much I learned in my conversion gambit.

So, I am left to read and sift and puzzle and make another PowerPoint slide and have a goal of getting a 10 on the assignment which may or may not happen.

But I am trying.