My mother died last night.
We’d been expecting it for a long time and frankly, it’s a relief that she’s gone. She was diagnosed with stage 3 inoperable cancer two and a half years ago, along with a host of other failures, and had been in bed in a home ever since. She was never going to recover.
This is why I am so absolutely convinced that assisted suicide is essential.
To watch someone that you care about devolve into little more than a suffering sack of meat is horrible. She’d decided at the beginning that she wouldn’t seek treatment for her cancer. It wouldn’t matter regardless, it was throughout her body with no realistic hope of getting it all. That’s a terrible way to go regardless, but this might be even worse. We don’t know if it was the cancer that got her, eventually, or if it was just old age, but regardless, she spent nearly three years in a bed, cared for by paid nurses, without the slightest hope that she’d ever get any better.
So why in the world would you want to live like that? I know I wouldn’t. It’s why my advance medical directives are so stringent. If my doctor is ever convinced that my condition will never improve past a specified point, then absolutely no life-saving mechanisms are to be used to keep me alive. Pull all of the plugs. Hell, install some plugs, just so you can pull them if you think it’ll help. No machines. No IV feeding. Just let me die. Keep me out of pain and let me die, that’s all that I want.
Except it shouldn’t require that. If I want to die, as I would in that situation, then it ought to be my choice. It shouldn’t be staving off the inevitable slog through modern medical care as required by law, just let me decide, at a time and place of my choosing, to end it. It ought to be nobody’s business but mine.
That doesn’t just mean for end-of-life care. This isn’t Soylent Green territory. I mean that, if at any time during my life, I decide that I no longer wish to live, for any reason of my own choosing, then I should be permitted to die. No harm, no foul. I am 100% in favor of voluntary suicide, assisted or otherwise.
Of course, it has to be that, voluntary. You ought to have to sign the appropriate forms and we should make sure that the individual isn’t being coerced, but otherwise, whose business is it but the individual when they wish to end it all?
If you don’t allow it then you end up with what happened to my mother, trapped in a failing body in a bed for as long as your organs hold out, pumped full of an ever-increasing number of pain killers until you’re not even aware of what’s going on around you. I said goodbye weeks ago when she was still vaguely coherent. I couldn’t do it when t he end was actually in sight. She wasn’t even there anymore. She was just a sack of meat, going through the biological motions, poked and prodded by a constant barrage of nurses, but whatever she used to be, it was long gone.
Sorry, but that’s a really disgusting way to go and any society that allows that, they should be ashamed of themselves.
I’m so sorry. 💌 I know it is a part of life, but it is still horrible.
re: REINFORCES MY VIEWS ON ASSISTED SUICIDE ✔
re: just let me decide, at a time and place of my choosing, to end it. It ought to be nobody’s business but mine. ✔
-Absolutely, as long as you are of sound mind when the directive is put in place. Elder abuse is everywhere.
re: I said goodbye weeks ago when she was still vaguely coherent. ✔
Excellent. At least you still had a good relationship with your Mom and got a chance to say goodbye.
We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and —in spite of all the religious talk— we look back on our lives and see that, even in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes our self-respect so important.
She lasted a hell of a lot longer than we ever thought she would. Spent yesterday morning getting her burial all sorted out. Nice way to spend $10k, I guess.
As far as sound mind, who decides? That’s the problem with our current society, anyone who wants to die without kicking and screaming the whole way is considered automatically insane. I did mention coercion, but if you want to die, if it’s your choice, then I’m fine with it. We need to stop pretending that we have to keep people alive at all costs against their will, just so that others feel better about it.
It was kind of funny to watch all of the crap that the funeral home kept trying to sell us. My mother was pragmatic about it. At the end, she said “bury me in a cardboard box” because she was just tired of living. She wanted no ceremony, no viewing, just put her in the ground and be done with it and the funeral home didn’t understand that. They kept asking what makeup they should put on her. She’s dead. She doesn’t care. They even asked what color the hearse that picked up her body should be. Who gives a crap? Just stick her in the ground, but they don’t make a ton of money off of that, do they?
re: It was kind of funny to watch all of the crap that the funeral home kept trying to sell us.
Oh, I bet. It is amazing what they sell people.
Sounds like your mom was very practical about it and many people are that way but the funeral home obviously wants the opposite.
re: We need to stop pretending that we have to keep people alive at all costs against their will, just so that others feel better about it.
That’s a really good point. When it’s truly about others and not even the person’s wishes that is really not good at all.
She didn’t really start that way, but after years on her back getting poked and prodded, she was just sick of it. All of the time and the money and the pain and suffering, just so others can feel good that they tried, I’m sure she was tired of being in the middle of it. Now, she’s not. She was hardly even there at the end. That’s what I want to avoid. It’s my life and my body. Leave me alone.
—Absolutely.💯✔ good points all.