TAKING THE NEXT STEP IS ALWAYS THE BIGGEST STEP

OK, so we can agree the health care proposals have kicked open a Pandora's Box of troubles. However, it's eventually better to deal with troubles than continue to deny them...!

In the critic's frenzied lexicon, the proposed "consulting panels" for the aged are actually "death panels." If they're right, then at my age I'll soon be hearing young docs hot on my trail figuring out how they can convince me to die sooner rather than later. What's more -- you can always count on it!-- some of these critics yank Hitler out of his grave for their proof. Crazy Adolph is used anytime you want to stir up a mob.

The critics have the right concerns, but the wrong conclusions. The person they should be resurrecting isn't Adolph, but Cicely. Dame Cicely Saunders who in England during the 50s helped launch what we today call the Hospice Movement. The world renowned concept which blessedly counsels and cares for the terminally ill. You know that bit about death-with-dignity...? Well, these are the folks in your own local community, who help make it happen!

What a lot of citizens on both sides of this debate have done is at long long last taken this next step -- facing up to the fact that even in America science doesn't have a cure for death. Terrific. It make good sense to start thinking about it while we're still alive.

But wait a minute. Isn't there one more next step? The step most everyone avoids as long as possible. That is, facing the question of what happens after our death. Oh sure, many of us attend churches and temples where we hear about that on the weekends; but then we damn well try to forget the rest of the week. Hey, this is America where people are big on living not dying. So lets not get grim here!

As it turned out, I was visiting a dear hospiced friend recently. Outside her door I met a clergyman checking in on patients. I can't help myself, I just had to ask him. Clergymen, of whatever faith, always stir in me the itch for the ultimate scratch. What can you, a man of God ministering to the dying, tell me so I can better understand the death the follows the hospice....?

His quiet reply was one of the simplest yet best my heart has ever heard: "I believe there is a life after death...one in which none of us is denied the mercy of God...and if there is no God, then slipping away peacefully with family like this is a permanent peace hard not to welcome."

And I never even caught his name....