I would need the room for a week. That’s what I told the front-desk
clerk at the Extended Residence Stay America Whatever when I checked in
that Sunday night.
At least a week, I said, maybe longer.
My mother had already been in the hospital across the street for
nearly a week by the time I arrived in Tucson. She was no stranger to
hospitals over the last few years. She’d wake up to find that her
breathing was more difficult, or that some new infection was exploiting
her weakened immune system, or that some new debilitating side effect
from the powerful drugs that were keeping her alive had emerged. My
stepfather would rush her to a hospital, and she would come home a few
days later having accepted some previously feared
development—being hooked up to an oxygen tank, having to use a
walker—as her “new normal.”
The plan: I would stay in Tucson for three or four days and help my
stepfather and aunt look after my mother. Then my brother Billy
would fly in from Chicago, take over the helping-out duties and my
hotel room, and we’d figure out what to do next.
Before going to the hotel on Sunday night, I got to play cards with
my mother and read with her, and things were looking less grim than
they had when my aunt called me in Seattle earlier that day and told me
to get on an airplane. My mother wasn’t getting better, but she wasn’t
getting worse.
My mother had pulmonary fibrosis, a degenerative lung condition, and
we knew enough about the disease to know that dramatic turns for the
worse were a possibility. She knew that pulmonary fibrosis would
eventually end her life, and she’d done some research into just what
sort of an end she could expect. It wasn’t going to be pretty. Her
lungs were gradually filling with scar tissue. She would, when her time
came, slowly and painfully suffocate to death over a period of hours or
days. But eight weeks before she wound up in a sprawling, dung-colored
hospital in sprawling, dung-colored Tucson, my mother’s doctors had
given her two to five years to live.
She’d recently marked the five-year anniversary of her diagnosis, an
anniversary very few pulmonary fibrosis sufferers live to celebrate.
She was terrified, as her fifth anniversary approached, that she
wouldn’t “beat five.” But her spirits lifted when her anniversary came
and went, and her doctors gave her years, not months or weeks, to live.
That’s when she decided to go on this trip with her husband, driving to
California and New Mexico and Arizona. She was looking forward to
attending her first grandson’s high-school graduation, her grade-school
class’s 50th reunion, a Broadway show.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer‘s Joel Connelly has written
several columns—and several thousand words—blasting
Initiative 1000, the November ballot measure in Washington State that
would make it legal for physicians to prescribe lethal doses of
medication to terminally ill patients. Connelly doesn’t like the
measure because he believes the purpose of a “democratic society” is to
“safeguard and enhance life, especially among the youngest, the
weakest, and the suffering”; because he worries that the movement might
next “seek to expand conditions for the legal ending of life, as has
been done in the Netherlands”; and because out-of-state money has been
collected by supporters of Initiative 1000.
“Should Washington be a launching pad for a movement that seeks to
transform a crime into a ‘medical treatment’?” Connelly thunders.
KUOW has been covering the debate over I-1000, too. In a recent
report, two widows were interviewed about the deaths of their husbands.
After watching their spouses die, one widow planned to vote for I-1000
and the other planned to vote against it.
The woman voting for the initiative—whose husband died of
brain cancer—wants terminally ill people to have a choice at the
end of their lives, a choice to end their suffering and hasten an
inevitable, rapidly approaching death. The woman voting against the
initiative wants—well, she wants what we all want. She wants to
have a good death, a peaceful death, a death like the one her husband,
um, enjoyed.
“I would like to be enveloped in the love of a good caregiver I
would get,” she says.
Don’t we all want that kind of death? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if
each of us could enjoy a Hallmark death? Wouldn’t it be ideal if each
of us passed from this life into the next—aka “the
void”—enveloped in the love of good caregivers and under the care
of competent “pain management” professionals? But not everyone is so
lucky. Some of us have to endure deaths that are gruesome and
protracted and excruciatingly painful, deaths that involve pain that
cannot be “managed,” deaths that our loving caregivers can only stand
helplessly by and witness.
“You don’t know how you’re going to feel at the end of your life,”
the widow planning to vote for I-1000 says. “I want to have the choices
available to me.”
Choices.
Exactly. If I-1000 is approved by Washington State voters, the widow
opposed to the initiative will not be compelled to end her life with
the assistance of a physician. She can choose pain meds and the love of
caregivers and die a “natural” death. (What’s so “natural” about pain
management anyway?) But if I-1000 is rejected, the widow who plans to
vote in favor of it will not have the same choice. She will not be able
to choose to end her life, and end her suffering, if the pain becomes
too much for her to bear.
That’s what the debate about I-1000 is really all about: your body,
your death, your choice. The passage of I-1000 doesn’t impose anything
on terminally ill people who reject physician-assisted suicide for
religious reasons. But the rejection of I-1000 imposes the values of
others on terminally ill people who would like to make that choice for
themselves, who should have a right to make that choice for
themselves.
And, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing about physician-assisted
suicide—or, as it should be called, end-of-life pain
management—that precludes the presence of loving caregivers. You
can be surrounded by love and have access to the best medical care
available and still conclude—reasonably and rationally—that
you would rather not spend the last few moments of your life in
blinding pain or gasping for breath or pumped full of just enough
morphine to (hopefully) deaden your pain without deadening you.
On Monday morning, after eliminating all other possibilities (a
virus, pneumonia, some rare desert fungus), a doctor pulled me and my
stepfather out of my mother’s room. They were out of options. Nothing
more could be done. Her battered lungs were failing; one had a widening
hole in it. Amazingly, the doctor didn’t say, “It’s over, this is it.”
He laid out the facts and we stared at him dumbly for that
world-without-end moment, and then one of us—my stepfather, me, I
don’t remember—finally said, “So this is it?”
The doctor nodded.
We somehow managed to hold it together, me and my stepfather. We
didn’t have the luxury of breaking down. He stepped out of the
intensive-care unit to tell my sister and my aunt the news, to confer
about how we would break the news to my mother, and to call a priest. I
stepped back into her room to sit with her, to hold her hand. I didn’t
tell her what I knew; it wasn’t my place. I would sit with her and wait
for my stepfather to return.
Suddenly, the doctor was at the door to my mother’s room again. He
waved me out into the hall. He needed a medical directive. Immediately.
Her vital signs were tanking. If we were going to put a tube in her,
and put her on machines that could breathe for her, it had to be now.
Right now. So it fell to me to walk back into my mother’s room, tell
her she was going to die, and lay out her rather limited options. She
could be put under and put on machines and live for a day or two in a
coma, long enough for her other two children to get down to Tucson and
say their good-byes, which she wouldn’t be able to hear. Or she could
live for maybe another six hours if she continued to wear an oxygen
mask that forced air into her lungs with so much force it made her
whole body convulse. Or she could take the mask off and suffocate to
death. Slowly, painfully, over an hour or two.
It was her choice.
“No mask,” she said, “no pain.”
Her nurse promised to give her enough morphine to deaden any pain
she might feel after my mother made her choice: She would take off the
mask. She would go now. I told the doctor and then ran sobbing—no
longer trying to hold it together—into the waiting room to get my
stepfather, my sister, and my aunt. Things were worse than they were
five minutes ago. Get in here, I said, get in here now.
We said our good-byes—doesn’t that sound dignified? But her
mask was still on and her body still convulsing. Good-byes reduced my
affable stepfather to wracking sobs; good-byes sent me and my sister
falling to the floor beside our mother’s deathbed. We held a phone up
to my mother’s ear so she could hear one of my brothers shout his
good-bye over the whir and thump of the oxygen machine, while we tried
desperately to get my other brother on the phone.
In the midst of all of this, a hospital orderly breezed into my
mother’s room and handed her a menu to fill out for tomorrow’s meals.
It was a staggering blow, this sudden and unwelcome reminder that
tomorrow was coming and my mother wouldn’t be part of it, and it felt
like we had all just been punched in the stomach. After a
this-can’t-be-
happening pause, my stepfather rose from his chair
and barked so loudly at the orderly that she dropped the menu, which
fluttered to the floor under my mother’s bed.
Then my mother was ready. The mask came off, she held tight to our
hands, and the morphine went in. Her grip slackened. My mother was
still alive, in there somewhere, beyond our reach. Was she in pain? We
don’t know. She couldn’t talk to us now, or focus on us, but she was
awake, her eyes open. She gasped for breath, again and again, and we
sat there, traumatized, waiting for her heart to stop, waiting for the
very first sound that I had ever heard—my mother’s heart
beating—to go silent.
People must accept death at “the hour chosen by God,” according to
Pope Benedict XVI, leader of the Catholic Church, which is pouring
money into the campaign against I-1000.
The hour chosen by God? What does that even mean? Without the
intervention of man—and medical science—my mother would
have died years earlier. And at the end, even without assisted suicide
as an option, my mother had to make her choices. Two hours with the
mask off? Six with the mask on? Another two days hooked up to machines?
Once things were hopeless, she chose the quickest, if not the easiest,
exit. Mask off, two hours. That was my mother’s choice, not God’s.
Did my mother commit suicide? I wonder what the pope might say.
I know what my mother would say: The same church leaders who can’t
manage to keep priests from raping children aren’t entitled to
micromanage the final moments of our lives.
If religious people believe assisted suicide is wrong, they have a
right to say so. Same for gay marriage and abortion. They oppose them
for religious reasons, but it’s somehow not enough for them to deny
those things to themselves. They have to rush into your intimate life
and deny them to you, too—deny you control over your own
reproductive organs, deny you the spouse of your choosing, condemn you
to pain (or the terror of it) at the end of your life.
The proper response to religious opposition to choice or love or
death can be reduced to a series of bumper stickers: Don’t approve of
abortion? Don’t have one. Don’t approve of gay marriage? Don’t have
one. Don’t approve of physician-assisted suicide? For Christ’s sake,
don’t have one. But don’t tell me I can’t have one—each
one—because it offends your God.
Fuck your God.
They gave my mother some more morphine—not enough to kill her,
only enough to deaden the pain while her lungs finished her off. Still:
Was she in pain? I’m haunted by the thought that she could have
been in pain—the pain we promised to spare her—but had no
way to tell us, no way to ask for more painkillers, no way to let us
know that she needed us, that she needed our help, that she needed us
to do whatever we could to hasten her inevitable death and end her
suffering.
I don’t know what my mother would have done if she had had the
choice to take a few pills and skip the last two hours of her life. She
was a practicing Catholic. But she was also pro-choice, pro–gay
marriage, pro–ordaining women. If she could’ve committed suicide,
by her own hand, with a doctor “assisting” only by providing her with
drugs and allowing her to administer them to herself, after saying her
good-byes, I suspect she would have done so, so great was her fear of
dying in pain.
I do know that she should have been allowed to make that choice for
herself. It’s not a choice that Joel Connelly—or the Catholic
Church—had a right to make for her.
I also know that, if my mother needed my help, I would’ve held a
glass of water to her lips, so that she could swallow the pills that
would’ve spared her those two hours of agony.
And that shouldn’t be a crime.
May you and your family find comfort and solace in the memories of the good times which you shared with your mother/loved one.
Thanks again, Dan, for your powerfully written words of reason.
Dan – This had to hurt to live through and write about, as it hurt me to read of it. Hopefully, your mother’s courage will not be limited to a Tucson hospital room. She did a marvelous job raising at least one son who can share with and help others at tough times in their lives.
Sometimes I wonder if the Joel Connelly’s of the world, who oppose I-1000 out for religous reasons, are joined by those entities that profit on the pain & suffering of folks like Mother Savage. (there’s an odd name)
Insurance & pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money on the terminally ill. Anyone know how much those groups are contributing to the anti-dignity cause?
And for Catholics to talk about the “sanctity of life” is the height of hypocrisy. No organization in human history has as much innocent blood on their hands as the pope and his gang. “Hour of god’s choosing” is shorthand for “we’ll let you die when we’re good & ready”. (or, “when you’re out of money”)
That was really well written Dan, condolences to you and your family.
Thank you for sharing from your heart with such courage.
My parents almost lost both my brother and when we were younger. They saw intolerable suffering… I now see thanks to your words how it must have been for them at certain key moments. I was a teenager at the time and remember them looking at me and holding my hands as a priest delivered me my last rights. Seeing the fear, disbelief and pain in their eyes (I remember thinking, “Is it odd that this priest is comforting me?” and “Would he do it if he knew I was a lesbian?” and “I wish I had told my mom” at that moment – off topic in some ways but not in others…. long story which I will refrain from getting into any further)… I started this only wanting to thank you so much for telling your story. I wish you and your family the very best, comfort, and love. Please keep speaking out about all you have…. I have sent this article to my entire email list & I will be voting against Stephen Harper.
Keep up the good work. I wish I could have met your mother she sounds amazing. I will go home and give my catholic pro-choice, pro–gay marriage a huge hug tonight.
Thank you Dan for weighing in and giving your very real mother’s face to this issue.
One question that comes to mind is the “suicide clause” that exists in life insurance that cancels a policy payout in the instance of a suicide. I wonder how many insurance companies are tossing dollars to support this issue that will surely prove more lucrative to them in the long run. A recent news report of a woman who was denied a lung-transplant by her insurance company, but offered a Rx for a lethal medication, is another unwanted outcome that comes to mind. I support this measure, and hate the idea of a Hobson’s choice between suffering or insuring my family’s financial stability.
Dan, first and formost, my heart and tears go out to you and your family. Reading your article brought back a lot of memories. You see, 20 years ago, the docs sent my grandmother home with a shunt and a box of morpophine and told her if things got too much for her, XX cc’s would take care of things. She and my grandfather stared at that box for almost 3 weeks while she became so weak caring for herself was out of the question. (the docs had given here only a few weeks at the most to live) THey called my husband and I to come over (with our 6 month old daughter in tow) and be with them. After a 4 hour drive, we were there. THey told us what they wanted to do. My grandmother was to weak to load the syringe, so I did it. We all held hands as she faded in and out, and finally she pushed the syringe into the shunt. She fell asleep. It took about 45 minutes for everything to secome to the morphine’s effect of shutting everything down. We called the doc first. I’ll never forget it, but I’m thankful to the doc for providing this option. I think.
I was surprised to learn that I have become a Catholic! I was shocked! I have tried and tried to avoid being one, all my life. I favored abortion rights. I think that stem cell research is a great idea. I think that civil unions are okay. Wasn’t that enough? How did I go wrong?
I also am opposed to assisted suicide. I oppose assisted suicide because some day those chickens will come home to roost for everyone of us. Laws morph over time, depending on the present circumnstances. They do not stop at present measures, and when they are enacted they become easier to erode the protections.
We are entering a period of great political and economic uncertainty. No one knows what the NEXT ten years will bring. The past ten years are no guide when we start treading into such uncharted waters. Only history gives us a guide and we must be wise and foresighted to see the dangers ahead, and not be fooled.
Someone wants this law very, very much. Where is the pressure? Not likely it’s the families, I think.
The unspoken economic forces that are driving someone to spend $2.5 Million dollars to relentlessly campaign for this measure , for all these years in so many states, despite defeat after defeat, are likely to grow in intensity, as we face budget cuts, failures in insurance comverages and increasing costs, Medicaid failures, and increasinig pressures on disabled adults and elders.
Every society that has adopted these laws, sooner or later, falls prey to indifference and apathy over the killing of supposedly unproductive human beings. That spreads to all of us.
That is the part I oppose, because I am the senior parent of a gentle and beautiful adult autistic daughter who our state has appointed a public guardian for that she neither wants or needs, and we worry that laws like this would give the state the right during an economic downturn to decide to dispose of in some future modified version. To us the slippery slope is very, very real, given the impossible and unlawful things the state has to our family done already. This just puts another brick into place.
Generally few people were aware of what destructive economic forces were unleashed ten years ago when Wall Street was deregulated. So, now we are here. The Jeremiahs were right. Effects of laws like these are not always immediately apparent.
Be careful! Be very careful! This is how Germany went in the late 1930s. This is how Holland went into euthanasia during the past 20 years. There is a lot of age and handicapped prejudice and there is a shortage of sophisticated voters right now as we can see.
Even if one person suffers a wrongful death because of this law, it is too much to tolerate. Many prescription druges these days cause depression a a side effect. How easy it would be to take the one-two punch to assisted suicide and save the state money by steering patients into drinking the KoolAid?
You have my condolences, on the passing of your mother. You can be grateful she went relatively quickly.
But as we all know, sometimes our bodies can betray us.
My family got the call that my grandfather had only hours to live on a Saturday morning – his cardio-pulmonary system was failing after a long bout with cancer. Most people die within a few hours of when they start to “mottle.” My mother, who is a chaplin at a nursing home, was very familiar with how these things go and did her best to prepare everyone.
My grandfather was completely unaware of us; absorbed in morphine and his own pain, he could only groan and call for my grandmother. We watched him carefully and spent our time arguing with the doctor to give him morphine more frequently.
Defying all expectations, his state lasted through to the next tuesday morning. His pain and delirium lasted for days, not hours. The hardest part was watching my grandmother, who would not eat or sleep… a woman who had already wasted down to 90 lbs under the stress of caring for him.
He didn’t go quickly, he didn’t go peacefully, his pain wasn’t controlled well with morphine, and he didn’t even know his loved ones were there. As a deeply pragmatic man, I highly doubt my grandfather would have chosen such an ending… but he didn’t have a choice.
I believe that while death is hard on everyone, a quick death is a blessing for the people dying and those who love them.
Sorry it is back again. I can’t figure out what is going on with this site. It showed up at first, then it was deleted, now it is back again. Apologies to the moderators and thanks for a good airing of issues.
Fantastic piece, Dan. I went through similar bedside situations at the age of 25 and have the deepest sympathy for you.
Thank you Dan and again more condolences,and I would like some more time to try at helping the mentally challenged with understanding the realities of dealing with “chronic hospitalization”.
Chronic hospitalization is a condition this layman will use now to ellucidate the terminal and hopeful feelings of those individuals who spend more than their neighbors “comparative valued hours” in “symbiotic sympathy” and or “simulated theoretical arm chairing of rhetoric”.
For all the non-professionals out there in the world who only go to hospitals to visit the accidental insured, or the birth of a new family member, the death with dignity issue may seem a rather tight fisted approach to the defense of this writers dignity and anger and anguish.
More on name recognition later.
Let’s get to the heart of the laymamn’s term of defense, shall we?
The community of professional writers have many avenues with which to vent frustrations, and egos aside, support of the difficult times all human beings share as a species.
As this “layman” witer will freely admit, I “jumped” into thias defense club for the reasons that ‘this is my high school thesis’, in reality….being played out before all of you… as is “your high school thesis”… and graduations beyond that point also.
This by no means is a statment denagrading Dan and his family or friends.
The grammatical and personal reasons for support are secondary to the message of rationalized indignation some political or religious “deserters” face when confronted with the “community of friends and family pressuring” and second guessing the reasons of grief and personal choice.
Any person who has been to the Union Gospel Mission , will have a pleathora of differing opinions on drugs, alchohol, sex, life, death, God… the good meal… and the poor quality of life out in the streets.
All of those words are contained in the dictionaries of life…
including the Bible ( Catholic ) and the other books of faith that seperate man and woman in the court of law.
If , those of little faith have a problem with flags waving and arm bands and dark colored glasses and personal choices between all kinds of differing people on the planet in a country where the
” openly disguised segregation of bigotry and sexism and discrimination against gay or lesbian men or women “
clashes with the older generations fears of long term belief expeirences of individual lives should carefully consider their own mortality and sin before casting blame and judgement against a blanket of compassionate groupings of co-workers, families and friends.
If you stay in a place long enough, you can make that “mission” your life’s work.
If you want something more in life… go out and find it.
As to name recognition… and Joel Connelly… Joel… go out to netflix and rent that DVD Jennifer Connelly was in dealing with tv and heroin and city life and junkies and sex and sex and sex and tell me what you think of paranoia and “schitzoid fledgling high school writers another day.
Thank you, Dan, for your intimate story. I agree it’s about choice. Your mother’s choice, your choice, my choice. I’ll be voting yes. Meanwhile, best wishes to you and your family.
Great piece Dan. A card well played!
Very powerful. Very right and true. Thank you for for sharing your experience, and thank you for showing people why we should all vote yes on 1000.
“Fuck your God.”
Thank you, Dan. Very much. I’ve never read words that gave me more truth.
I watched my dad die at home of pancreatic cancer. He died surrounded by people who loved and adored him, in his home, even with his beloved cat, and in such intolerable pain that he couldn’t even ingest his pain medications and didn’t recognize either of his children.
It’s not eugenics, it’s not inhumane, it’s humanity at it’s best and most compassionate. It’s preserving human dignity.
Dan, my heart goes out to you and your family. I’ve read both of your autobiographical books, and while I’m a very big fan of you, I was also a huge fan of your mother. She always seemed in your writing like the kind of mom everybody should have–kind, compassionate, supportive, and funny.
I do not accept the idea of a God who wants people to suffer. I think that if God exists and lives up to His good publicity–perfect, all-knowing, loving and merciful–He damn well doesn’t want ANYONE to suffer needlessly.
If I lived in Washington state, I would vote for I-1000. Death is scary, and no one should also have to fear that it’ll be painful and drawn out. No one should have to be afraid of watching their loved ones suffer helplessly, with no options for making it stop.
I believe in love, I believe in mercy, and I believe in the right to choose.
I also believe in you. Thank you for sharing this, so that people will know.
Thank you, Dan, and condolences on your mother’s death. I understand the issue of a slippery slope, and I do not, as a rule, support suicide as a solution. At the same time… when you have a terminal illness, when you know that all you have in front of you is pain and terror, when you know that no one can help you and there is nothing left to be done, when you know that every day you live from that point on is racking up deeper and deeper debt for your loved ones… an option needs to exist, without fear, without condemnation, and without the worry of committing an illegal act or making others suffer for your decision. This is important, and I’m glad to have read your article.
Thank you for your courage and for your well articulated points on the issue, Dan. Your words here are painful to read, but have a great deal of power…the way that some people don’t understand your argument infuriates me.
Let me add my sympathy and condolence on this loss. And massive thanks from me too for saying well what I have long thought.
Deciding when to end one’s life is a personal matter that no one should be able to usurp from a thinking being who has harmed none.
And I agree–Fuck any god that even if it existed would want people to suffer so, and the same for the minions that invoke it.
May healing come soon.
that was one of the most beautiful essays i’ve ever read.
Dan,
I am so sorry for your loss.As a former care giver.I am 100% for I-1000 to pass.Most people say it is assisting suicide.I say its giving them comfort.Especially if they have a DNR order.Who the hell are we to say,so and so needs to suffer.For the
sake of religious zealots.I know for my self I-1000.Is doing a serivce to all.The poor individauls suffering through a terminal illness.Yes it should be a choice to make.And we do live in a “Free” country.I am 100% behind this.I am very sorry for your loss though.Mothers are the first person to touch your soul,and they help inspire the greatness within.
I am so sorry for your loss.
But I just can’t vote for the initiative. In a profit-driven health care system wherein the care we receive is based on either what we can afford or what our insurance will pay, we just cannot have “Well, we won’t cover your care because you might not recover, but we will cover your suicide” as an option.
FIRST we need to reform our health care system. THEN we can talk about doctor-assisted suicide.
Though even then I will have qualms; step into a veterinary office and ask the staff about convenience euthanasia performed on “much-loved” pets who are not really sick but are old enough to be a bother, or have behavior problems, or are expensive.
That is what we, the people are like.
Thank you for this.
In 2000, my mom, a cynical Catholic, died a very slow, painful death. I was her caregiver and she died at home, in her bed, while I was tending to her bed sores. Her heart finally gave up. She was an emaciated shell, unable to stand, appetite gone, and completely in despair from the excruciating pain she lived with for several years. There were repeated times where she asked me for an overdose of her morphine medication, but I could not legally give it to her. I would have, if I had been allowed, because she was the one asking and I would have done whatever she asked.
I will be voting yes on I-1000 because my mom should have had the right to escape the horrible death she suffered.
Thank you, and many condolences. This was an amazing essay.
Thanks for posting your story. I’m certain it will help many people faced with those decisions and not enough time to make them, perhaps without the benefit of other family members to reassure them that they are doing the right thing. Thank you.
I think this lays out my philosophy about this issue perfectly Dan. Thanks for giving voice to those of us who believe that we should have choice.
way to make me cry at work.
Thank You for sharing your experience and views with us.
As someone who has worked in and around a highly conservative religious right -even having worked for a Catholic Archdiocese, I really felt the humanity our your loss come through loud and clear in the face of those who only see one way of thinking and being.
Just as someone has the right to live, we should be given the right to go peacefully as we wish… or they are not rights at all.
Thank You so much. My thoughts and heart go out to You and your family’s loss.
-Stephen Gilbert
I am so very sorry for what you had to go through, Dan, as I recently went through nearly the same thing with my own mother. She was forced to slowly suffocate after fighting cancer for three years, and I stayed home and took care of her until she died.
I know for certain that my mother would have chosen to collect herself, prepare herself, and end her life before the agonizing pain and panic did so for her.
I made sure to re-register to vote in the county I moved to for two reasons:
one was to vote for Barack Obama, and the second was to vote for I-1000.
Christ, Dan…you are such a beautiful writer. I’m usually at work when I go on The Stranger’s website, and many a time I’ve had to stifle loud guffaws or blink back tears after reading your work (no privacy in Cubeville!). This was such a moving piece…I am so deeply sorry you had to go through that.
Thank you Dan. I appreciate you sharing your personal story, and I also appreciate you taking the time to put together such a well-crafted argument in favor of I-1000.
I really worry that we’re so afraid of death in this country, that we will fight off opportunities to enhance the way we handle it. Most of us can’t even talk about it openly enough to understand what it’s going to be like when it comes.
I support the initiative because it gives patients autonomy over the manner in which they die. It offers compassion to those who are already terminal. I think society has a strong interest in preserving life, but sometimes individual liberty is more important—like when you’re already dying and you’re trying to decide how you want that death to come about.
Also, some in the medical profession would tell you that PAS already occurs but under the radar. Legalizing it will lend an openness to the discussion.
Regarding “In Defense Of Dignity” and “Just Confused”:
Bravo, Amen, and Thank You!
the IV goes in the OTHER WAY – i.e. the needle points UP the arm and consequently the tubing will point roughly toward the hand.
Love you Dan.
Thank you, Dan. You really put the whole idea of dying in dignity in perspective. I intend to share your article with my friends who disagree with PAS.
Condolences to Dan, and thanks as well for writing the piece.
My father died of ALS about two years ago now. For those who don’t know, its a debilatating disease that literaly erodes your muscle function until you lose complete control of yourself, eventually causing organ failure. My father could talk, breathe, eat, walk…Nothing. He had a magnetic dot afixed to his forehead which allowed him to point to phrases on a computerized screen with what small amount of muscle control he still had in his neck.
Basically, he was a shell of a human with a still functioning and lucid mind. Fortunately for him, he was treating in Portland, Oregon, a State that ensures patients rights for death with dignity. There were no cures, there were no more options, all we had was heartbreak, a horrible disease, and a father that wanted to die without fear, and with his loving family around. He chose the medications, and he died with all of his friends and family by his side, holding hios hands and telling him they loved him.
This was by no means a hasty decision to end someones life. This was something long thought out and heavily argued in my family. Some were against it at the beginning, but as the end drew near, realized just what it all meant. For all those who oppose the initiative, I beg you to reconsider. There are provisions in the law that make it impossible to put to death a metally ill patient just becasue, or a depressed person becasue they want to die that day. Death with dignity is a well thought out, incredibly difficult decision. It takes couseling by doctors, numerous appointments with various types of consultation, and most importantly, a terminal illness that will without doubt cause death.
No one is advocating ending the lives of minorly ill patients…No one would want that for anybody. The point of this legislation is to ensure that the people who face the most excruciating deaths will be given some relief. By Washington State law, my father’s feeding tube would have have to been pulled, and we would have had to watch him slowly starve to death, all while gasping for air in double-pneumonia filled lungs. How is that fair to him? This way he was comfortable, surrounded by family and friends, and most importantly, my Mother, brothers and I got to be there to hold his hand and tell him we loved him.
Please think about the implications of your vote. This is something that may affect you on a profound level in the future. As Dan says, this won’t affect you if you don’t want it to, but please don’t take the choice away from those who really do need it.
My Mom died of cervical cancer at 90 years of age. She died here at home. We also had to administer morphine because of her pain. I was with her during her last few hours, putting cream on her face and hands, combing her hair, doing her nails (all the things she loved having me do to her), playing Cuban music and dancing around the room. I did not know whether she could hear or feel my touch, but at around 11:30 pm I fell asleep next to her (I was so exhausted by then, emotionally and physically). Her face was very peaceful. Then thirty minutes or so later I woke up and her hand was on my face and she had a lovely smile fixed on her face. She was gone. But her hand and her smile told me that she had heard me, she had felt my touch, she knew I was there with her. In spite of the morphine, she reached out to share her love one last time. Finally, she was without pain. But my pain had just begun.
Although I cherish the precious time spent with her during her last 30 days, I also knew that if there had been an alternative, she would have chosen to have left this world without having felt all that pain and agony. And I would have welcomed such an alternative for her, because it was awful to have to drug her so she could extend her existence (not “life”) a few more weeks.
I disagree with those who are hell-bent on preventing each one of us from choosing how we exit from our lives. Our final moments on Earth should not be politicized or ruled by any religion or church. It is a private moment in the life of a human being.
Thank you, Dan, for sharing your most touching moments with your mother.
Dan,
I wish I could have had the opportunity to sit in front of the fireplace with your mom, drinking scotch and shooting the shit. She sounds like a brave and intelligent woman, much like her son, and the “quote” you gave re: church leaders raping children and micromanaging individual’s last breaths made me want to run up Capitol Hill to hunt you down and high-five you. Your story was powerful and heartbreaking. You’re viewpoints are brilliant. I kind of wish you ran the world. I was already for I-1000 before reading your article and empathising with the personal hell your mother, you, and the rest of your family went through, and I hope that others will be open-minded and supportive and help get this Initiative passed. My fingers are crossed.
Yes.
And yes.
The only objections I hear or read are fear-based: of creeping forced euthanasia, or the like. Religions do play the fear card well – It’s all dey got.
I experienced the same fate with my mother, five years ago. I still miss her, but in time only the sweetness remains.
“God” bless, Dan.
Dan… I am so sorry. I would hold the glass of water to my mother’s lips, too. Why do they deny us this?
My thoughts are with you and your family.
Dan my grandpa also died of Pulmonary Fibrosis. He only lasted 3 months after being diagnosed. If I could have spared him and my family the pain I would have.
Thanks Dan. For sharing a deeply personal moment and for discussing a subject that will impact even more people than sex does. Death, and how it happens in modern medicine, is something our society has refused to acknowledge honestly for far too long. I decided after my own fathers death that I would be clear and honest about what killed him-a morphine overdose. Said overdose self administered in the midst of a painfull and futile struggle against an incurable cancer; but still the true cause of his death was massive levels of morphine.
The inablity of the foes of Death with Dignity initiative to acknowledge the simple fact that most American’s who die in hospice situations die this way is an intellectual and moral dishonesty. We are already speeding along the final days/weeks/hours of virtually any terminal patient in hospital/hospice care situation right now, but continue to maintain the “palliative care” fiction. Find me a doctor, nurse, or professional hospice worker who says differently.
The bottom line is that we die-this is not an opt out situation for anyone afterall-gay, straight, catholic, muslim, jew, pentecostal, or agnostic we all must shuffle off this mortal coil. I want to choose the level of pain and suffering I may endure. Neither I-1000, nor I, seek to impose a standard of acceptable pain and suffering, but to simply allow those who choose to honestly confront their own need, in their own time, in their own manner. I actually have some resources for the illegal purchase of opiate based drugs(shocking I know)I-1000 simply makes this possible for those who don’t have access to the illegal market, and removes the ridiculous “warnings” about “overdose” that my fathers doctor was legallly compelled to deliver.
My dad always insisted we be honest as a family, with our love, with our intellects, and with our spirits.
It’s time we all be honest about how we want to die.
Hey Dan,
I went through a similar experience with my Grandmother a few years ago, when she passed away from Emphysema with all of us standing around her bed. I still don’t know if I would choose the path myself, but I wholeheartedly support a person’s choice at the last. Even Martin Sheen won’t dissuade me from voting in favor.
Barky
You continue to amaze me with your ability to put your life experiences, even your hardest life experiences, into such compelling words. I remain at once saddened by your pain yet amazed at how you reach through your pain to try to help someone else.
Thanks Dan for writing this powerful essay. My mother was recently diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis and has started using a portable oxygen tank. It’s scary. I dread the day when she may have to go through some of the things your mother did as she battles this disease. I can only hope that when her time comes, she has some ability to choose how she goes and that her family can be near her to help her in any way we can.
Dan,
I’m so sorry. It’s hard to know what to say, except to say that your mother must have been a remarkable woman to have raised someone like you with integrity, compassion and tolerance. You honour her whenever you display those traits.
Please accept my deepest condolences for your loss.
Warmest regards,
Steven
Dan, I’m a practicing Episcopalian who supports end of life choices. My heart aches for you and your family. I hope your words help other people understand that this issue isn’t about “assisted suicide”; it’s about dignity, and love. Above all, love. I would never want my parents to suffer if they had other options. I hope someone formerly opposed will read your column and decides to support I-1000.
Dan,
Thank you for a powerful and touching article, and my condolences.
I lost my dad to cancer five years ago, and the doctors told him he had a week to live. And it wasn’t going to be a very pleasant week either: they said it was likely to be full o pain, with a good chance of dementia and incontinence before it was over.
Fortunately he had the connections to get enough pills to escape such a horrible fate, and he died with his mind intact.
This should be a RIGHT, he should not have had to depend on underground connections.
To Joel Connelly and his ilk: if your God is sick and twisted enough to demand that you have to go through a week of suffering like that, that’s your business. But if you try to deny the rest of us our right to choose a pain-free, dignified end because you think it’s not “moral” or “family values”, then fuck your God. Vote Yes on I-1000.
Dear Dan,
I am the widow referenced in your Feature Article who supports Death With Dignity, I-1000. Thank you for telling your story. Your pain saddened me. I cannot understand the kind of thinking from someone who never met my husband nor met your mother but insists they have the right to tell them how long they had to suffer. It is horrible to have someone you love beg to die so they can be free from their pain and know there’s nothing you can do. I understand people may oppose this for religious reasons but our country was founded on a separation between church and state. I hope some day we find our way back to that liberty.