Continuing on the theme of death and dying; and exploring the idea that the greatly extended lifespan in The West nowadays may have a spiritual purpose.
The thing about many of the super-old (which is, approximately, anyone significantly older than the Biblical "three score years and ten") is that for most who attain it, it is a longer life of decrepitude - of significant, perhaps extreme, mental and/ or physical dysfunctionality.
The modern extended life experienced by most people (a life that goes much beyond the seventies) is often explicitly unwanted by those who receive it.
In the sense that many younger people will state vehemently that they do not desire to live into their eighties or nineties - if that life is one of significant dementia, disability; if that life is one requiring massive support or residential care.
And yet that is exactly the extended life that many such people get; the kind of life that they always said they did not want, and which they may even continue to say they do not want...
But which, nevertheless, despite protestations; they act such as to extend, by seeking and accepting continual and escalating social support and medical treatment (even when at vast and crippling expense).
It is physically easy to die, especially if you are prepared to experience suffering at the end: yet these people (and there are a lot of them) Do Not Die.
Why?
My understanding is that their superficial personality-self in the "here and now" wants to die; but their deeper real-self retains an awareness that they are not ready for death - that they have unfinished business in mortal life.
So, what is the nature of this "unfinished business", that may be keeping extremely old and decrepit people alive - despite surface protestations?
I think the unfinished business is usually spiritual, usually an inner thing - and therefore we can only infer (or perhaps, in some instances, intuit) what that unfinished business may be. I shall now do this...
In one word, the major need is for repentance, in the broad meaning of the word to imply that people need to re-orientate their whole thinking and desiring; as they die, such people need to be pointed in a different direction.
More exactly, they need to want to be pointed in a different direction - because (thanks to Jesus) that is enough.
They need to let-go of their (perhaps) lifelong false and incoherent orientation towards seeking pleasure, avoiding suffering, and attaining material well-being.
They need to let-go of their besetting sins; which are nowadays is perhaps most commonly rooted in resentment; so this is the example I will describe.
Since the early 19th century, but especially since the 1960s, the West has been living in an Age of Resentment.
The basis of most politics is a resentment against some other nationality, religion, class, sex, or race - and this resentment is regarded as not just true but "good"; and forms the core of a system of values.
In extreme old age the reasons for politics have long since gone - nobody cares what you think, and it makes no difference to anyone else...
But too often the earlier-life resentments remain; may indeed be amplified, brooded upon; and in a moralistic way, with self-satisfaction.
Elderly people - even with significant mental pathology - may nurse their social and personal resentments, express them obsessively; and seem to approve their own anger, hatred and spiteful desires - perhaps regarding this as signs of their own vigour; signs that they have not "abandoned their principles".
To die in such a state has a bad spiritual prognosis.
And I think that some of the extreme elderly are kept alive despite the failure of brain and/or body; in hope (God's hope, Jesus's hope) that as life simplifies, as dependence increases - the individual may come to recognize the futility of resentment, the wickedness of resentment - and may attain some other spiritually-healthy attitude; such as humility, gratitude, a benign disposition towards others...
An honest recognition of the pervasive decay and evils of this world, which includes all of us...
A focus on the genuinely important things of life: especially love; and the beautiful moments nearly everyone has experienced in reality and/or imagination.
And perhaps a desire to move on, beyond death, to a world free of decay and evil, and wholly rooted in love.
Such is the kind of thing waited-for, hoped-for, in extending the life of the extremely elderly beyond what they say they want.
Such repentance may not happen... but it may.
After attaining which; the individual can die as soon as maybe, and with a vastly better prospect for life after death than would otherwise have been the case.
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