I was quite moved when I read the Socrates’ dialogue with Crito. I wondered if my father had read The Republic. His formal education ended in the third grade when his father died, but he read voraciously all of his life.
Socrates’ interaction with Crito was so much like my father’s interaction with me. When I was in elementary school I used to think I knew a lot about politics, and I enjoyed discussing my ideas with him. Now that he is gone, I muse in wonder at his attitude. Rather than dismissing me as an presumptuous child, he listened with respect, as though he was really interested in my thoughts. He certainly disagreed with me. He was a staunch conservative; I sided with liberals; but he never argued; he never made me feel silly. Like Socrates, he simply asked more questions.
In the dialogue I also heard echoes of the discussion I had with my father at his deathbed. His enemy was not evil men but the evil of cancer Several times throughout the dialogue Plato asks for Crito’s help: “This is what I want to consider with your help, Crito.” We know, however, that he had already made up his mind about what he should do. He simply wanted to help Cirto understand that his decision was the right one. .
The doctor had told my father that with aggressive treatment he could probably hold the tumor at bay, and extend his life for six months, a year – perhaps two. Without treatment he would be dead within 10 days. My father asked me, “What do you think I should do, Cora Lee?” I told him that he should take the treatments and hope for the two years. But he had already make up his mmind. “If I die today, I die knowing that I’ve had a good life.
He felt that his 81 years were an accomplishment. He'd had a wonderful wife, a loving family, and many, many great friends. "Should I trade a good and peaceful death now for what? Maybe six months. Maybe two years, and all that time sick, your mother having to clean up after me? Do you remember how pitiful Joe was those last years? Life has been good to me. I have no reason to fear death.”
Actually, my father had made his decision many years before that he would not suffer the indecency of extensive medical treatment, that he would die at home in his chair. Imminent death did not shake his resolve. He died peacefully in his sleep eight days later. At his funeral my brother said, “He taught us how to live, and now he taught us how to die.”