The Earth is on Hospice

This morning when I woke up the first conversation of the day was about the pandemic. My partner Nancy was wondering if she should take back her downtown office or stay virtual. With the Delta variant of COVID so much is unknown. 

At the end of our conversation, I said, “If we didn’t have the pandemic happening right now what do you think we’d be talking about?”

“Climate change,” she said. 

Duh. Of course that’s what we’d be talking about. Through all of this mayhem that’s afflicting humanity on our planet —  the sickness, the death, the polarizing vax-anti-vax strife ripping apart families and communities — the very planet we are living on is dying.

We are back to a place of deep worry and fear about COVID. Our focus is there again — masking, distancing, getting vaccinated, or getting a booster. But while all of this is happening, in the background, the earth is on a respirator. I fear that we are beyond a cure for our beloved planet. The damage has been done and we continue to do it. 

During the first wave of the pandemic, I was among the group of people who believed that the grounding of humanity was a good thing for the earth. Our carbon emissions dropped. Pollution to our waterways decreased. Tourism dwindled, helping ecosystems recover. 

I wondered if the pandemic was our planet’s way of yelling at us humans, metaphorically and literally punishing us by sending us to our rooms and keeping us there until we shaped up. I hoped that maybe this virus was an indirect message to us all that would help us change the course of climate change. But has it?

In the last several years my family has gotten solar power, water cisterns, and an electric car. We’ve subscribed to an additional service that recycles items our local utilities cannot. We’ve stopped buying red meat. We’re trying everything we can to do our part. And I know so many other people are doing the same thing. I know there is good energy and focus going towards curbing the environmental devastation of the earth, but still, it’s not enough. 

The earth is on hospice. All the signs are there — the weather patterns, the fires and floods, and hurricanes and tornadoes, the extinction of animals. Our planet is sick and crying for help and more and more the research is saying that it may be too late. The earth is on hospice, in its final years.

I have a lot of experience with hospice. My father was on hospice many years ago and my stepfather is currently on hospice. When my dad was on hospice it was only for a few months. He had cancer and had tried everything — countless surgeries, multiple chemotherapies, radiation. And then it was clear. There was nothing else to do but accept that he would die. So we called hospice and waited.

We sat around Dad’s bed. We visited. We sang songs, told stories, held his hand, gave him ice cubes and sips of Hawaiian Punch. And we watched him die. Eventually, his breath slowed down. His eyes stopped opening. His body became eerily still. And then one morning he was gone. He was fifty-six. I wish we’d had a little bit more time. 

Currently, my ninety-three-year-old stepfather Al is on hospice. He has COPD and a blood disorder but is otherwise healthy. He is on hospice because he’s very old and because he’s very old, he’s dying. But he has no outstanding illnesses that plague him on a daily basis. There is no cancer in his body eating away until there is nothing left. He is simply old, coming to the end of his life. 

Al has been on hospice for a few years and then suddenly, a few months ago, he was removed from their care. The administrative team deemed him unqualified. They said there was really nothing wrong with him so they took him off of hospice. My mom felt abandoned — she had felt supported and understood by the hospice team. The nurse and the social worker helped her navigate Al’s care. His quality of life improved with hospice at his side and Mom depended on their expertise.

After two months of being off of hospice, they put my Al back on. I guess the administrative team realized that he was still dying and that he could still benefit from their care. 

When I think about our planet and read the depressing reports on the state of the environment, I sink into a state of paralyzing hopelessness. If our dear planet only has thirty years left where will that leave my daughter? What will happen to her and all of her peers? It’s too much to bear. Once my dad died, he was gone. There was no more Dad, just his memory and the feeling of missing him. I don’t want to accept that fate for the earth, not yet.

To get out of my despair paralysis, I have to have faith that we can make some change to the earth, that we nasty humans can be a force for good, that we can see beyond ourselves to care about something greater. The earth is on hospice. Like all planets, it will eventually die. But I hope the earth’s hospice experience is more like Al’s than Dad’s. I hope we have more time. I know we can’t turn the environmental destruction we’ve created completely around, but we have to try. 

We’re in another wave of COVID and that sucks. After a few months of freedom and ease, we’re back to being grounded. And maybe that’s what we need. The earth is on hospice and it’s the humans who are making our planet sicker. So maybe we should be sent to our rooms again, spend some time thinking about how we can do our part, all of us, to give the earth, and ourselves, a little bit more time.