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March 17, 2021
Mid-morning. You are at L. L. Bean waiting for Carol and Linda after breakfast at Scramblers with Kim. Yesterday while also at Easton, you stopped at Chico's and Tesla (viewing and sitting in the Y Model at the showroom). After this stop, Carol is returning to Chico's for two pairs of jeans. - Ms. Havisham
1107 hrs. I need to find a new theme and focus on writing something dear to my heartansoulanmind. Metaphysics (the Living and the Dead) has been my strongest interest. I would like to take the point of view of someone's point of view of dying, dead, and the days to include the burial.
How are you going to show the time-lapse in terms of the dead person? - Ms. H.
1116 hrs. I assume there is no time sense to lapse. Partition by thought event only as there would be no reference.
Habit and memory would demand one for continuity. - Ms. H.
1121 hrs. I could use a single space, double space, or triple space. Something akin to e. e. cummings.
** **
E.E. Cummings quotes.
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
―
“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)I want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant, and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)”
―
“To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
―
“Unbeing dead isn't being alive.”
―
“For whatever we lose (like you or me),
It's always our self we find in the sea.”
“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.”
―
“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”
―
“Whenever you think, or you believe, or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.”
―
“I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness.”
“Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.”
―
“I like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new.”
―
“Lovers alone wear sunlight.”
―
“listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go”
―
“and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you”
―
“Unless you love someone, nothing else makes sense.”
―
“I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance”
―
“I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.”
―
“The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.”
―
“since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis”
―
“The three saddest things are the ill wanting to be well, the poor wanting to be rich, and the constant traveler saying 'anywhere but here'.”
―
“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”
“Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star...”
―
“may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.”
―
“life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis”
―
“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit”
―
“The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.”
―
“i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)”
“One's not half of two; two are halves of one.”
―
“I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.”
“anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain”
** **
1243 hrs. Home. The best quote to begin with is:
“life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis”
―
Afternoon. Linda, Gayle, Carol, and you had a late lunch at Texas Roadhouse off Polaris Boulevard -- a good time enjoyed by all. - Ms. H.
1645 hrs. Life may not be a paragraph, but life can be a sentence. Death is not a word or phrase inserted as an explanation or afterthought in a passage that is grammatically complete without it; usually bracketed. It seems to me death cannot be defined other than saying that it is the permanent end-of-life process. [Oxford]
** **
Death
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Death is the permanent, irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism.[1] Brain death is sometimes used as a legal definition of death.[2] The remains of a previously living organism normally begin to decompose shortly after death.[3] Death is an inevitable, universal process that eventually occurs in all living organisms.
Death is generally applied to whole organisms; the similar process seen in individual components of a living organism, such as cells or tissues, is necrosis. Something that is not considered a living organism, such as a virus, can be physically destroyed but is not said to die.
Problems of definition
The concept of death is a key to human understanding of the phenomenon.[6] There are many scientific approaches and various interpretations of the concept. Additionally, the advent of life-sustaining therapy and the numerous criteria for defining death from both a medical and legal standpoint have made it difficult to create a single unifying definition.
One of the challenges in defining death is in distinguishing it from life. At a point in time, death would seem to refer to the moment at which life ends. Determining when death has occurred is difficult, as the cessation of life functions is often not simultaneous across organ systems.[7] Such determination, therefore, requires drawing precise conceptual boundaries between life and death. This is difficult due to there being little consensus on how to define life.
It is possible to define life in terms of consciousness. When consciousness ceases, a living organism can be said to have died. One of the flaws in this approach is that there are many organisms that are alive but probably not conscious (for example, single-celled organisms).
Another problem is in defining consciousness, which has many different definitions given by modern scientists, psychologists, and philosophers. Additionally, many religious traditions, including Abrahamic and Dharmic traditions, hold that death does not (or may not) entail the end of consciousness. In certain cultures, death is more of a process than a single event. It implies a slow shift from one spiritual state to another.
Other definitions for death focus on the character of cessation of something. More specifically, death occurs when a living entity experiences irreversible cessation of all functioning.[10] As it pertains to human life, death is an irreversible process where someone loses their existence as a person.[10]
Historically, attempts to define the exact moment of a human's death have been subjective or imprecise. Death was once defined as the cessation of heartbeat (cardiac arrest) and of breathing, but the development of CPR and prompt defibrillation have rendered that definition inadequate because breathing and heartbeat can sometimes be restarted. This type of death where circulatory and respiratory arrest happens is known as the circulatory definition of death (DCDD). Proponents of the DCDD believe that this definition is reasonable because a person with permanent loss of circulatory and respiratory function should be considered dead.[11] Critics of this definition state that while cessation of these functions may be permanent, it does not mean the situation is irreversible because if CPR was applied, the person could be revived.
Thus, the arguments for and against the DCDD boil down to a matter of defining the actual words "permanent" and "irreversible," which further complicates the challenge of defining death.
Furthermore, events that were causally linked to death in the past no longer kill in all circumstances; without a functioning heart or lungs, life can sometimes be sustained with a combination of life support devices, organ transplants, and artificial pacemakers.
Today, where a definition of the moment of death is required, doctors and coroners usually turn to "brain death" or "biological death" to define a person as being dead; people are considered dead when the electrical activity in their brain ceases. It is presumed that an end of electrical activity indicates the end of consciousness. Suspension of consciousness must be permanent and not transient, as occurs during certain sleep stages, and especially a coma. In the case of sleep, EEGs can easily tell the difference.
The category of "brain death" is seen as problematic by some scholars. For instance, Dr. Franklin Miller, a senior faculty member at the Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health, notes: "By the late 1990s... the equation of brain death with the death of the human being was increasingly challenged by scholars, based on evidence regarding the array of biological functioning displayed by patients correctly diagnosed as having this condition who were maintained on mechanical ventilation for substantial periods of time. These patients maintained the ability to sustain circulation and respiration, control temperature, excrete wastes, heal wounds, fight infections, and, most dramatically, to gestate fetuses (in the case of pregnant "brain-dead" women)."[12]
While "brain death" is viewed as problematic by some scholars, there are certainly proponents of it that believe this definition of death is the most reasonable for distinguishing life from death. The reasoning behind the support for this definition is that brain death has a set of criteria that is reliable and reproducible.[13] Also, the brain is crucial in determining our identity or who we are as human beings. The distinction should be made that "brain death" cannot be equated with one who is in a vegetative state or coma, in that the former situation describes a state that is beyond recovery.[13]
Those people maintaining that only the neocortex of the brain is necessary for consciousness sometimes argue that only electrical activity should be considered when defining death. Eventually, it is possible that the criterion for death will be the permanent and irreversible loss of cognitive function, as evidenced by the death of the cerebral cortex. All hope of recovering human thought and personality is then gone given current and foreseeable medical technology. At present, in most places, the more conservative definition of death – irreversible cessation of electrical activity in the whole brain, as opposed to just in the neo-cortex – has been adopted (for example, the Uniform Determination Of Death Act in the United States). In 2005, the Terri Schiavo case brought the question of brain death and artificial sustenance to the front of American politics.
Even by whole-brain criteria, the determination of brain death can be complicated. EEGs can detect spurious electrical impulses, while certain drugs, hypoglycemia, hypoxia, or hypothermia, can suppress or even stop brain activity on a temporary basis. Because of this, hospitals have protocols for determining brain death involving EEGs at widely separated intervals under defined conditions.
In the past, the adoption of this whole-brain definition was a conclusion of the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research in 1980.[14] They concluded that this approach to defining death sufficed in reaching a uniform definition nationwide. A multitude of reasons was presented to support this definition, including uniformity of standards in law for establishing death; consumption of a family's fiscal resources for artificial life support; and legal establishment for equating brain death with death in order to proceed with organ donation.[15]
Aside from the issue of support of or dispute against brain death, there is another inherent problem in this categorical definition: the variability of its application in medical practice. In 1995, the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) established a set of criteria that became the medical standard for diagnosing neurologic death. At that time, three clinical features had to be satisfied in order to determine "irreversible cessation" of the total brain, including coma with clear etiology, cessation of breathing, and lack of brainstem reflexes.[16] This set of criteria was then updated again, most recently in 2010, but substantial discrepancies still remain across hospitals and medical specialties.[16]
The problem of defining death is especially imperative as it pertains to the dead donor rule, which could be understood as one of the following interpretations of the rule: there must be an official declaration of death in a person before starting organ procurement, or that organ procurement cannot result in the death of the donor.[11] A great deal of controversy has surrounded the definition of death and the dead donor rule. Advocates of the rule believe the rule is legitimate in protecting organ donors while also countering against any moral or legal objection to organ procurement. Critics, on the other hand, believe that the rule does not uphold the best interests of the donors and that the rule does not effectively promote organ donation.
Signs
Signs of death or strong indications that a warm-blooded animal is no longer alive are:
· Respiratory arrest (no breathing)
· Cardiac arrest (no pulse)
· Brain death (no neuronal activity)
The stages that follow after death are:
· Pallor Mortis, paleness which happens in the 15–120 minutes after death
· Algor mortis, the reduction in body temperature following death. This is generally a steady decline until matching ambient temperature
· Rigor mortis, the limbs of the corpse become stiff (Latin rigor) and difficult to move or manipulate
· Livor mortis, a settling of the blood in the lower (dependent) portion of the body
· Putrefaction, the beginning signs of decomposition
· Decomposition, the reduction into simpler forms of matter, accompanied by a strong, unpleasant odor.
· Skeletonization, the end of decomposition, where all soft tissues have decomposed, leaving only the skeleton.
· Fossilization, the natural preservation of the skeletal remains formed over a very long period
Legal
The death of a person has legal consequences that may vary between different jurisdictions. A death certificate is issued in most jurisdictions, either by a doctor or by an administrative office, upon presentation of a doctor's declaration of death.
Misdiagnosed
There are many anecdotal references to people being declared dead by physicians and then "coming back to life," sometimes days later in their own coffin or when embalming procedures are about to begin. From the mid-18th century onwards, there was an upsurge in the public's fear of being mistakenly buried alive [17] and much debate about the uncertainty of the signs of death. Various suggestions were made to test for signs of life before burial, ranging from pouring vinegar and pepper into the corpse's mouth to applying red hot pokers to the feet or into the rectum.[18] Writing in 1895, the physician J.C. Ouseley claimed that as many as 2,700 people were buried each year prematurely in England and Wales, although others estimated the figure to be closer to 800.[19]
In cases of electric shock, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for an hour or longer can allow stunned nerves to recover, allowing an apparently dead person to survive. People found unconscious under icy water may survive if their faces are kept continuously cold until they arrive at an emergency room.[20] This "diving response," in which metabolic activity and oxygen requirements are minimal, is something humans share with cetaceans called the mammalian diving reflex.[20]
As medical technologies advance, ideas about when death occurs may have to be re-evaluated in light of the ability to restore a person to vitality after longer periods of apparent death (as happened when CPR and defibrillation showed that cessation of heartbeat is inadequate as a decisive indicator of death). The lack of electrical brain activity may not be enough to consider someone scientifically dead. Therefore, the concept of information-theoretic death[21] has been suggested as a better means of defining when true death occurs, though the concept has few practical applications outside the field of cryonics.
There have been some scientific attempts to bring dead organisms back to life, but with limited success. In science fiction scenarios where such technology is readily available, real death is distinguished from reversible death.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia
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1802 hrs. This is interesting in that the main character has to be shown to the reader as dying and then substantially dead through definition.
