Showing posts with label Devastation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Devastation. Show all posts

August 28, 2017

Thank You To The Rescuers

With all the devastation going on around Houston and the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Harvey...

I thought it would be nice to just take a moment to reflect.

First, the pain and suffering of the people affected. 

I couldn't believe last night when I saw this image of residents in a assisted nursing facility sitting up to the necks in flood waters.

Or this morning, when I saw a photo in the Wall Street Journal of a firefighter holding a mother with her baby daughter lying on her, rescuing them through the waters. 

With over 3,000 rescues performed for people stranded in attics, rooftops, in cars, and all over the city and surroundings, I also think it's important to recognize all the firefighters and other emergency workers who put their lives on the line to help others. 

The Houston area is expected to get 50 inches of rain in under a week, which is what their usual annual rainfall is. 

So there is massive flooding and damage from Harvey as well as 250,000 people without power. 

My prayers go out to the people impacted and gratitude to the people who help them. 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Huffington Post)
Share/Save/Bookmark

May 29, 2017

Things Still Happen

So I know that I'm stating the obvious, but still I can’t help but reflect…

No matter how successful people are, things—bad things—still unfortunately happen.

This weekend, I read about how tragedy struck Uber's founder and CEO—of a $70 billion company--and he lost his mother in a freak boating accident. 

A few years back, Facebook’s, powerful Chief Operating Officer and billionaire lost her husband on a treadmill in a hotel.

Other famous people, like superstar icon, Michael Jackson, died at a young age from an overdose. 

Life events can G-d forbid overtake us suddenly and with devastating impact. 

It’s scary, and it just never seems to end (B’AH).

No matter who you are or how rich and powerful, G-d is the most powerful.

While we can control only what we can control, there is no escape from ultimate fate that awaits when it is so decreed by the One Above—it should all be in His ever-bounding mercy. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Share/Save/Bookmark

July 12, 2013

Living Longer, But With Worse Quality Of Life

Watching my parents age over the years has been hard--and very painful. 

They are good people--they've worked hard all their lives (nothing was just given to them), they are devoted to serving G-d, and they are loved by their family, friends, and community. 

They have lived a good life and we are grateful for every day.

Yet as they are getting older, the body like anything physical, starts to get sick and break down. 

Both my parents have serious illnesses, and in the last two years my mom has become almost totally disabled and is moving from a rehab center to a nursing home this coming week. 

I read this week in the Wall Street Journal, what I've been watching with my own eyes...we are living "longer, but not healthier lives."

Over the last 2 decades, life expectancy has risen 3 years to 78 years, but unfortunately only 68 of those, on average, are in good health--meaning that people suffer for about ten years with various disabilities.

What is amazing is that people are being pressed to retire later in life with an increase in age to receive full social security benefits to 67 by 2022--giving the average person a healthy retirement to enjoy of just 1 year!

With the average working household having less the $3,000 in retirement savings, things are not looking too good for Americans to retire young and enjoy their healthy years either. 

Additionally, despite longer living, in the last 2 decades, the U.S. fell from 20th place to 27th place in 34 member nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for life expectancy and quality of life.

The leading causes of death remain heart disease, cancer, and stroke.  And disabilities are being driven by back, muscle, nerve, and joint disorders. 

Seeing with my own parents, the deteriorating quality of life and true suffering as they age, I am left questioning the real wisdom of keeping people alive, when the quality of life has so deteriorated as to leave them in pain and misery. 

While no one wants to lose their loved ones--the emptiness is devastating--at the same time, watching them endlessly and needlessly suffer is worse. 

I see my mom clutching her wheelchair, always in various states of discomfort and pain, and less and less able to help herself, in almost any way--it is tragic. 

So I ask myself is it also unnecessary and wrong? 

I call it forcing people alive. We keep people going not only with extraordinary measures, but also with day-to-day medicines and care that keeps their hearts pumping, their lungs breathing, and their brains somewhat aware. 

The patients are alive, but are in a sense dying a long and painful death, rather than a quick and painless one. 

I love my parents and mom who is suffering so much now, and I don't want to lose her, by does really caring for her mean, at some point, letting her go.

I tell my dad, "I just want mom to have peace"--no more suffering!

For the average person, 68 years of health is too short, but 10 years of disability and suffering may be too long. 

We use advances in technology and medical breakthroughs to keep people alive. But what is the cost in pain and disability, and even in cold hard dollar terms for a nation being gobbled up by deficits, longevity, and miserable disease and disability? 

People are living longer but at a significant painful price! 

Is this real compassion and empathy or a senseless fight with the Angel of Death? 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to wwwupertal)


Share/Save/Bookmark

December 14, 2011

The Elevator and The Bigger Picture


Some of you may have watched the HBO series called Six Feet Under that ran from about 2000-2005 about a family that owned a funeral home, and every episode opened with a freakish death scene.

In fact, the father who was the funeral director dies an untimely death himself and bequeaths the funeral home to his two sons.

The series, which ran for 63 episodes, evoked a recognition that life is most precious, too short, and can end in both horrible and unpredictable ways.
This week, I was reminded of this in all too many ways:

First, Brett Stephens wrote a beautiful piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about the graceful death of his father from a horrible brain tumor. Brett describes in vivid terms the operations, loss of sight, debilitating bouts of chemo and radiation, agonizing shingles, loss of memory, mobility, sight, ability to eat, and more. Brett writes: "cancer is a heist culminating in murder."


Then today, all over the news were reports of of a horrible accident in New York, where a woman was killed in an elevator accident when it shot up while she was still only about half way on and she was crushed between the elevator and the shaft in a 25 story office building on Madison Avenue.


Third, I learned from a colleague about a wonderful gentlemen, who served his country in the armed forces and was an athlete in incredible shape, when one day in the gym, he suffered a massive heart, which deprived of oxygen for too long, and he was left horribly crippled for life.


Unfortunately, similar to Six feet Under, in real life, there are countless of stories of life's fortunes and misfortunes, death and the aftermath (adapted from the show's synopsis--I really liked how this was said). Yet, in the end, we are left with the completely heart wrenching feeling of how it is to be without and sorely miss the people we love so dearly.


In the Talmud, I remember learning this saying that to the Angel of Death it does not whether his intended is here or there--when a person's time is up, death shows up and no matter how peaceful or painful, it is never convenient and always deeply traumatic in so many ways.


For one the elevator opens and closes normally and brings a person to their destination floor, and to another the door may close on them, never at all, or the elevator may shift right beneath their feet.


We can never really be prepared emotionally or otherwise for the devastation brought by accident, illness, and death--and while it is hard to be optimistic sometimes, we can try to maintain faith that The Almighty is guiding the events of our lives, and that he knows what he is doing, even if we cannot always understand the bigger picture.


May G-d have mercy.


(Source Photo: here with attribution to Chris McKenna)

Share/Save/Bookmark