More Than Dead or More Than Alive

Our relationship with technology

A couple of weeks ago, I lost my brother. Over the last couple of decades, he had the kidney of a motorcyclist and then, if I remember correctly, a young boy’s. Transplanted kidneys last 7–9 years. It’s hard to get more than two. So, Ben had been living on dialysis for the last few years.

When living on dialysis, you know your clock is ticking. But, still, the machines are miraculous. External kidneys, pumping out blood, filtering it, and then pumping urine-free blood back in.

But when I imagine my brother hooking himself up to this machine every day, I wonder if he hated it, even though he owed the damned thing his life. I think I would. Strange. I never wondered about this when he was alive.

When people are alive, sometimes what is most “alive” about them are the things we fear; our resentments, or how we have wronged them — the guilt. Death has this effect of bringing their humanity blazing to the fore.

Suddenly, I found myself imagining Ben’s inner world instead of brooding on our strained relationship. What was it like to do dialysis every day? Could he bear to be grateful for that cursed plastic kidney?

Then, I realized something. We all have this ambivalent relationship with our machines. We’ve used…