About 20 years ago, as my maternal grandmother lay slowly dying, my mother gave me very clear instructions: “if I’m ever like this, just shoot me.”<\/p>\n
I love my mother very much, but I’m really not interested in going to prison.\u00c2\u00a0 At the same time, I understand where Mom was coming from.\u00c2\u00a0 She was emotionally frayed from watching her own beloved mother dying a little bit at a time, over a decade or more, of strokes that progressively took more and more of her brain.\u00c2\u00a0 It was pretty awful.<\/p>\n
Just last week, my 89-year old mother in law told us, “don’t get old.”\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of strange advice given the alternative, but she’s on the opposite end of the problem as her body fails, while her mind remains strong.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no request for us to kill her, but she repeatedly said that she might not be around for Christmas.<\/p>\n
I’m guessing she could be around for several more Christmases, if she chooses to.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s hard for me to know if she’s in physical discomfort, or if she simply misses her husband (gone 10 years now) more than she loves what is left of life from her living room chair.<\/p>\n
Today, my friend G traveled a great distance to visit her ailing mother.\u00c2\u00a0 G’s mom has Alzheimer’s Disease, and no longer recognizes her own daughter.\u00c2\u00a0 G asked me the same thing (not so graphically, but nonetheless the same result) as my mother did: to kill her when that time came.\u00c2\u00a0 Just give her an overdose of something.<\/p>\n
What, do I look like Dr. Kevorkian<\/a>?\u00c2\u00a0 Of course not.\u00c2\u00a0 But maybe these strong women sense that I feel much the same as they do — that end-of-life care is too successful in prolonging the life not worth living.\u00c2\u00a0 That maybe we do need an out, a way to say “enough is enough” when we’ve long outlived anything resembling quality of life.<\/p>\n I do not believe in taking the life (or denying life-saving treatment) to one who wants<\/em> to live.\u00c2\u00a0 At the same time, is it not equally wrong to deny peaceful passage to those who are ready to go on their own terms?<\/p>\n I think it is.\u00c2\u00a0 I hope that by the time I am old and worn out, we’ll have a better option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About 20 years ago, as my maternal grandmother lay slowly dying, my mother gave me very clear instructions: “if I’m ever like this, just shoot me.” I love my mother very much, but I’m really not interested in going to … Continue reading