Lets talk about the right to life and the right to die. Every day
scientists create ways to keep you and me alive. What about DIGNITY?
What about RESPECT? What about the right to decide one's own fate?
As you read this, somewhere out there, doctors are doing everything
medically possible to keep someone alive. A child, for example:
Here is child A and here is child B. Both have been in terrible
accidents, and are in comas. Child A comes out of this coma completely
normal, with no side effects, maybe a scar or two, but otherwise fine.
Child B on the other hand comes out brain damaged, has to be fed, and
treated like a baby. Is this what you would want?
Need I even mention the terminally ill. The one's who know that their
demise will be slow and painful, not just for them, but for their families?
Then there is Grandma.
As a child, she loved you, and hugged you, let you eat ice-cream for
dinner. She treated you so well. She always remembered your birthday with a
ten dollar bill in the card. When you went to her house it would
smell like cabbage and cookies (for those of you with Irish
grandmothers) and in the summer her house smelled like the flowers
she had planted lining her walkway . Those were great days, especially
Christmas, when the whole family would get together for a big turkey dinner,
and presents, swilling beer, and just having a good ol' time.
But you notice that Grandma is getting a little forgetful and confused.
She gets you mixed up with your father, her beloved son. She forgets her
keys, and where she lives. Your parents get numerous phone calls from
the police because she is found wandering around town in just a bra and
panties.
So your family puts Grandma into a nursing home. In the nursing home,
she starts beating the shit out of the other residents and nursing
staff. This is a person who never killed a fly, and she's walking around
beating people like dogs. Then one day, she falls and breaks a hip.
You go to see her in the nursing home, and you go to see her in the
hospital, but she has no idea who you are. She thinks that you are her
neighbor from when she was a girl. You deal with this the best you can,
but you wish she would die. The guilt you feel for thinking those thoughts
are overwhelming. You love her with all your heart, but you have no
idea who she is anymore. The depression feels like a house sitting on
your chest. The holidays just aren't the same anymore. There's an
emptiness at the head of the table.
The doctor tells you that her diabetes is complicating her hip healing.
She's crawled out of bed, numerous times, prematurely damaging her hip,
and she refuses to take her heart medication.
One night, you get this ominous phone call, from the hospital saying she
has had a stroke. You rush down there to see how she is, and there is
your uncle Joe telling the doctors and nurses to do everything medically
possible to bring her back to normal. He wants her to be able
to feed herself, and bathe herself, and to use her right arm and leg again.
You are furious with your uncle. You know that Grandma never wanted to
be like this, but he has power of attorney over her affairs, medically and
financially. You confront Uncle Joe and he tells you a life is a life.
You fight for it as much as possible.
Uncle Joe has forgotten, or never knew about the right to die. He has forgotten
that everyone deserves respect and dignity. He is thinking only of
himself since he can't let her go. He will take quantity over quality. He has
forgotten the most important thing: he never listened to
his mother's own wishes when she said she wanted to decide her own fate. Even
a confused and disoriented person knows when they want to die.
This month's Snarl is by J. Lowe: