Death & Dying
With the Pope dying quite a different death from Terri Schaivo, the issue come to the front of public concsciousness again. He seems, as an old, sick man who has accomplished a full life of achievement, to have succumbed willingly. God love him. It is daunting enough to have to live 26 years in the public eye. To have to die in the same way is more than any of us should have to bear. He seems to have, so far as we can know, done so as we wish we might.
The right to die is sometimes challenged, not on the basis of whether one should be permitted a merciful rather than a painful death, but much more fundamentally, on the question of whether anyone has a right to take life. Anyone's life, including one's own. I think it is a good question and perhaps the only question once one reaches the bottom of this quandry. Some have said living wills and expressions of one's wishes to friends, doctors and lawyers are inappropriate, both because none of us can really know what we will want when the time comes, and because even I do not have the right to determine when my life will end.
In fact it is a dicey matter, all right, and the public debate tends to diminish the gravity of the question. Having tended the deaths of many people over the years, I can say that it is true that people often see the matter differently when they face death imminently than when it is in the abstract future.
And it is also true that some people choose to die and find ways to do so which inspire awe in me. The Oregon assisted suicide law has resulted in the death of very few people. But the reports of physicians who have assisted those people report that they have been as one would hope.
How to settle the matter is an impossible dilemma. Therefore, like abortion, which is, as the Episcopal Church has described it, a necessary tragedy, hastening a death ought to require elaborate procedure and safeguard. But it ought to be possible.
The right to die is sometimes challenged, not on the basis of whether one should be permitted a merciful rather than a painful death, but much more fundamentally, on the question of whether anyone has a right to take life. Anyone's life, including one's own. I think it is a good question and perhaps the only question once one reaches the bottom of this quandry. Some have said living wills and expressions of one's wishes to friends, doctors and lawyers are inappropriate, both because none of us can really know what we will want when the time comes, and because even I do not have the right to determine when my life will end.
In fact it is a dicey matter, all right, and the public debate tends to diminish the gravity of the question. Having tended the deaths of many people over the years, I can say that it is true that people often see the matter differently when they face death imminently than when it is in the abstract future.
And it is also true that some people choose to die and find ways to do so which inspire awe in me. The Oregon assisted suicide law has resulted in the death of very few people. But the reports of physicians who have assisted those people report that they have been as one would hope.
How to settle the matter is an impossible dilemma. Therefore, like abortion, which is, as the Episcopal Church has described it, a necessary tragedy, hastening a death ought to require elaborate procedure and safeguard. But it ought to be possible.
posted by Blayney at 3:32 PM
1 Comments:
I found it very telling to hear on a recent NPR report that Oregon has the highest rate of utilizing Hospice of anywhere in the country. It appears that the "death with dignity" act has allowed people to have a conversation with their doctor about dying. Sounds like a great thing to me - no matter where you stand on taking one's life.
My grandmother is 91. She died to us all about 4 years ago, when she stopped knowing her own name. For two years or so before that, she thought that my dad (her son) was really her brother. We all dreaded the day that she would mistake my father for his father - who is now dead. I am absolutely certain that if she could find some way to connect her brain and her body for a few precious moments, she would find a way to end her "life." She had lucid moments for a while where she told us she wanted to "sleep the big sleep" and to "be with my Isey (my grandfather)". We can't do anything about it - except to make very sure that no doctor gets in the way of nature when the time comes.
Modern medicine and nutrition have given us more years. Unfortunately, society has not figured out what to do when then does not equate to more "life."
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