Sailing to Byzantium

I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees--
Those dying generations -- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
-Excerpted from "Sailing to Byzantium" by W.B. Yeats

Death is a fascinating topic to me, from both philosophical and medical standpoints. How are we to approach death? What kind of attitude should we have towards it? Are we to be resigned? Scared? Welcoming?

In the past, before medical interventions could extend and prolong life, death was an accepted phenomenon. The diseases that killed, mostly infectious diseases, were fast; though there was suffering, it was not prolonged. Death was tolerable and familiar; one submitted to it. On the other hand, death now is highly uncertain; medical intervention can slow its progression and lengthen its tenure. The causes of death today - cancer, heart disease, stroke - are crippling over an extended period of time. We're afraid that medicine doesn't know its bounds or when to stop, that doctors will keep piling catheters and lines and drugs on top of each other even after the patient has crossed the threshold. In the intensive care units, the operating rooms, the emergency room, community is replaced by metal and steel and tubes and needles. With great technological advances, we have zoomed so far into this discrete endpoint of death that it is now a fuzzy blur, and we cannot say when it starts or ends.

One question of history I have is whether death is better today than it was in the past. I think that there is no doubt life is better today than in the past. People who would have been crippled by polio, incapacitated by accidents, dead at giving childbirth, now live full and rich lives. Our health is better, our lives are longer. But is the experience of death any better? That's a hard question. Certainly, pain medications provide great palliation in the face of such adversity. But I'm not so sure medicine has tamed death at all. We struggle to understand it, to define it, to come to terms with it. For all we know about the biological processes of life, we know very little about death and how to deal with it.