An Ill-Father, a Life-or-Death Decision

An Ill-Father, a Life-or-Death Decision

Reflection

I can relate with this essay because making a decision between life-or-death is a difficult reality that we are to face when the time comes. This also tells me about how a family member would make a tough decision for the life of their love one. This fact makes me puzzle if I am in the position to decide upon the life of any in my family member, as to how I can go about it and how I can stand for my decision whether it is right or wrong. 

The essay revolved around on the cold January night, when the daughter rushed up to the hospital because of her father, who was very ill and very weak. The doctors confronted her about her father’s condition that his heart was weak, his kidneys were failing and his lungs were filling with fluid. Then, the doctors came to the point where she was asked about her father’s living will and for her to make decisions upon her father’s life. During this point, she made measurements towards her own life that she sacrificed many things for her father but she suddenly remembered that once her father said to her that everything possible be done. So, she asked her father if he still want to be intubated. Unexpectedly, her father, who was very weak, nodded. Though, six months later her father died due to heart failure. In her thought, her father’s decision was a mistake and she as a daughter had to support his father no matter how hard it would be. 

As I was reading the essay, I got sad about her father’s condition and I was also confused of what she will decide towards her father’s life. The part where she thought about all her sacrifices made me think that if I were in her part will I make that the same thinking, counting things that I did for my father or any of my family members. But all of a sudden when she thought of her father’s words, she asked him and her father answered her, I felt something about her love and sympathy for her father’s desire to do things possible that can help him. Following her father’s will even she thought that it was hard but she still considered it. The innovation came in this point to reach her father’s will but at the end it resulted to be in retreatism state because her father died. Truly, it is heartbreaking but it is the reality we are to face. 

This situation also helped me to make my own measures about life and death. As I said, death is a reality we are to face when the time comes like the death of someone we love or even our own death. No matter how hard it would be for someone like me who has a very strong family ties and give big importance in life, I need to prepare myself whenever it comes. This also tells me that I must be strong, calm and clear especially in this circumstance. Indeed, it is need to accept what things will result into. 

“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained” (William Churchill). 

The first primary group we have is our family. In my family I can say it is where I first learned how to value people, how to give empathy to other people in our place. It is where I first learned simple norms and appreciate others culture. I say “my individual personality” is first shaped through my family’s guidance. In connection to the essay, this why I value my family because they are the start of my life before I learned various things and knew how to socialite and have been involved to many social institutions to learn new things and develop myself more. Developing myself is preparing me in facing new beginnings and giving ends to it. From what I read, I can say that she followed her father’s will because that is the way how she was built up and she also hoped to add his father’s life. 

Other things may change us, but we start and end with family. (Anthony Brandt)