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.
I’ve never commented on any article before, but that was so moving, so poignant, such absolute truth that I felt compelled. My grandmother died of the same disease as your mother and I remember watching her, at age 12, make those same decisions with Hospice in our home. A few months ago my father died from bladder cancer which had spread through his body. As I sat with him, waiting, waiting in what I called “ring side seats at the death bed show” (hey, you have to find some way through it, laughter is mine…) I longed so strongly for a just and dignified way for my father to die. Thank you for putting to words what so many of us think. Amanda
I am in my late 40s and fighting stage IV breast cancer, in hopes of getting a few more years of the life I love. At this point I do not know if I’ll have months or years or a decade or more: cancer is different now. Unfortunately, outside the medical community, most people still equate stage IV with “terminal.” This attitude is so pervasive, unconscious, and deep, that a couple of longtime friends I’d thought I could count on forever, smart friends who normally know better about stuff, have dropped me like a zombie and left me for dead. The pain is indescribable as I fight this disease minus much of a support network. Sex & The City, this is not. My life is very bleak, and October’s toxic pink ribbons can’t bind up my ripped-out insides as I walk through the leaves alone.
“Long story short,” uh…
1. Society’s attitude toward catastrophic CHRONIC BUT SURVIVABLE illness such as my breast cancer terrifies me. I AM STILL THE SAME PERSON, but I’ve watched people I thought I knew “put me in the grave alive” and walk away. Former friends refer to me as “terminal” while I go about an active, productive, creative and joyful life. They assume something about me I can’t fathom. I AM STILL HERE.
2. The attitudes of insurance companies, ‘bots at the HUGE cancer clinic I go to, even some doctors and nurses, terrify me. Yes, there are some wonderfully compassionate people in medicine. But they are part of an industry which sees me as an insignificant cluster of numbers to be swept along on the conveyor belt as fast as possible to maximize profits. Profits for shareholders, profits for CEOs, profits for the wealthy few who own this system: THAT is the bottom line. Not my life. Not your life. Not the dignity of life. The moment I become just unprofitable enough AND just invisible enough, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A CORPORATE CONSCIENCE in place to save my life.
Without going into too much detail, the clinic I go to (it’s HUGE) has already referred to my insurance as “not good enough” several times. I carry the same insurance thousands of workers in this area have. It is NOT “bad” insurance. But apparently it’s not the extra-deluxe insurance of the wealthy which this megalo-clinic’s beancounters prefer. And some of them are not shy about saying so. What scares me is what they are NOT saying, if they’ll be that blatantly cold about my lack of value to my face. They terrify me.
So we need laws, I think. Yes, I would love the ability to choose a softly opiated exit into warm, turquoise seas of infinite unity. Yes, this option should be legal, along with ten thousand other inherent human rights to bind one’s own wounds.
But until I stop waking up in a cold sweat knowing that, as a less-wealthy person, a working class person, my life means exactly NOTHING to this system, I WANT A LAW TO PROTECT ME.
I am quite literally afraid that the clinic, and my own doctor, might be persuaded to neglect my treatment, might be persuaded to give me a little push in the direction of euthanasia, TO SAVE A FEW DOLLARS. My life is simply not worth saving, to them, if preserving it conficts with greater profits for the shareholders of the ruling class.
I am fighting cancer on so many fronts. I am exhausted. And worrying that my doctor and my clinic could smile coldly and end my life with a few little pushes toward euthanasia “for my own good” is yet another waking nightmare. Please do not trust a system which values profits above all.
Dan
Your experience and perspective on your mother’s death has moved me greatly.
It evoked feelings I, too, will never resolve about my own mother’s lonely death.
Dan
Thank you for your story. I think the concept of assisted suicide is foreign to those who have not had to deal with a terminally ill family member. I could go on about my personal experience, but it really will not help to persuade those who do not understand or relate. All I can hope is that people will allow others to do with their life what they want. If someone wishes to end their own life due to extreme pain, please let them do it with a few pills rather than a kitchen knife. Best of luck to everyone who has to deal with death… It catches up to all of us and our family members in one way or another. Gina
Despite not being able to choose (it’s our life and our body, I would like for people to be able to choose), your mother was surrounded by many people who loved her and she loved. I’d like to feel that her spirit was probably at peace and love at that point. My mother was able to be in hospice in the hospital for a few days on morpine also. Thank you for sharing your intimate story, your great writing, and to bring this issue to light. xo Beki
Your article brought tears to my eyes and reminded me of my own mother’s recent death.
For whatever reasons, numerous tests and biopsies didn’t show the cancer tumour growning and spreading in my mom’s stomache lining. When the doctors figured out what was going on, nothing could be done and they gave her 2 months tops. According to my sister, when they gave her this news it was like someone took a pin to a balloon.
She instructed us that there were to be no heroic last minute measures to keep her alive any longer than her body wanted- no CPR, no machines, no feeding tubes, etc. My mom believed in God and was actively involved in her church, yet she also strongly believed in quality of life versus quantity of life.
I live overseas and it was 2 weeks before I could make it home after getting the news.
Ends up she was hanging on, waiting for me to get back. She was heavily medicated, including anti-anxiety drugs and morphine. I was with her when she went: it was not pain free, she was calling out for help while crying that it hurt so bad and she just wanted us to make the pain stop. And of course, those of us with her felt so powerless because there was nothing we could do to help her.
It made me think of a conversation with my sister – she said we treat our pets better than fellow humans. That if a pet was in pain and suffering like our mother was, you would put the pet down. But that you can’t do that with your family because of the sanctity of life – instead you have to make them suffer up until their last breath – literally.
People should be given the choice in the case of a terminal illness. I don’t ever want to suffer like my mom did. I am thankful that she didn’t suffer for very long – from getting the news to her passing was 17 days – but I would have preferred it if she didn’t have to suffer like that at all.
Tears.
Dan, I grew to love your mother through your books. I am so sorry this happened to you and your family. I wish you peace.
I’m crying. Man, that was painful to read. I’m like your mom in way–an anomaly. A pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, etc practicing Catholic. In other words, a very rare bird. It seems to me that there is some reasoning which can make abortion OK to Catholics. According to my Catholicism for Dummies book (and I’m paraphrasing here) if there is a procedure done to save a mother’s life, which inadvertently ends the life of her unborn child, that’s OK, because it wasn’t a *deliberate* act to kill the fetus. It’s like a moral loophole. I imagine that there can be a loophole for physician assisted suicide…for example, letting the dying patient self-administer painkillers that might inadvertently have the effect of causing the patient to die. The emphasis would be killing the PAIN and not the person. But that’s the religious justification. As a strict separation-of-church-and-state believer, I don’t think the government has the right to tell anyone what to do with his or her body, up to and including, suicide. Just putting it out there.
Deepest condolences, Dan.
dan, as a health care professional that works in end of life care, i applaud your well written, honest, loving story. i too believe in choice. who are we to “limit” the experience of the dying? i have been present at hundreds of deaths, they are each spiritual, individual and on the dying person’s own terms. choice is a comfort measure.
once again dan savage has proven that while he may not be the very most,he is definatly in the top three most sensible humans ever. talk about your strait talk express!how about dan and tina fey team up for a white house run in ’12? i can even wait for’16.they could start a new trend…co-presidents! i like it. best wishes to you and your family dan,keep on keepin’ it real for all of us. joe norcio seattle
It can be said in one quick statement… keep your religion out of my government.
Dan,
I am so sorry for your loss… I have been a fan of your’s for a while and after reading this you have become my hero. Thank you. If I lived in WA I would vote for I-1000.
crying my eyes out for you dan. i love you so much.
Dan, that sounds like you had a horrible experience during your mother’s death and for that I am truly sorry. As a health care professional that works in hospice and palliative care, I can tell you that the doctor should NEVER have told you or your family “there is nothing more we can do” for your mother. That is tantamount to abandonment. We do not stop caring for patients even when (especially when!) they are dying. They could not stop the inevitability of her death; yes that is true. But what they should have told you is that they would do everything in their power to control the things that were making her so miserable – pain, shortness of breath, anxiety. These are symptoms for which we have very safe and effective medications that could have been given to your mother to make her comfortable in her final moments. We do not give medications indiscriminately to end people’s lives; most often, the doses needed for relief of suffering do not hasten death. Herein lies the key difference between well-practiced end-of-life care and physician-assisted suicide. They are NOT one and the same, although unfortunately the public discourse often confuses the two. Having good end-of-life care eliminates the need for physician-assisted suicide, in my opinion.
Resources:
http://www.nhpco.org
http://www.getpalliativecare.org
We recently went through this with our mother. I held her hand for 2.5 hours after she passed and washed her before the funeral people came. It was the best and last thing I could do for her.
Your writing captured much of my own feelings. My brother, father and I were asked to make the final decision. My greatest comfort was that our decision was heart-felt and unwaveringly unanimous and yet, somehow I feel haunted. She passed on May 16th and yet it feels like this morning. My heart still sings for her and I cry, sometimes, that there is no answering note, and yet, silence IS part of the music of life too.
Hugs, if you want them.
“the hour chosen by God” is when the body gives out, whether by age sickness or accident. Anything else is the medical establishment imposing its will upon you, for profit, not God.
“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””
How can you enhance life if you cause it more suffering by not letting it end as a person wishes?
Please, vote Yes on I-1000.
Dan,
My heart goes out to you and your family. I can not say that I’ve been in the same situation as both my parents went rather quickly. However, I do think there are ways around the laws to facilitate a dignified death as a friend did…no questions asked..just careful planning. Keep the memory of your mum alive within you all…because that is the best tribute. Hugs, St.
This was stunningly and achingly beautiful and powerful, Dan.
This was heartbreaking but beautiful. My condolences.
Tucson isnt really dung-colored by the way….
You don’t get to ‘play the dead parent card’ and use it to get away with an attack on Catholics. Since Islam, Buddhism, Muslims, etc are off limits–especially in flaky Seattle–it’s a chickenshit strategy.
It shows the low state of U.S. education and critical thinking that an idiot you can bring in the abuse of kids by a few priests in a church of one billion followers and a 2000 year history. No matter that abuse in the Catholic church was no higher than amongst educators or other faiths (though the hierarchy should be criticized).
No mention of the Church’s stand in the sanctity of life or the deeply felt and honestly came by beliefs. You may not agree with it, but you’re just an ass who hid behind the skirt of his mother’s death to throw bullshit comments out.
I would add here that I am not a practicing Catholic but I do have respect for the beliefs of all faiths and even those of atheists.
You’re still an ass.
Dan, My father died of this exact same disease in February of 2005. He was diagnosed in August of 2004. It was terrifying and heartbreaking. My mother stockpiled the morphine hospice brought and I think she ended his suffering that last morning. Our family still reels from the pain and trauma of this disease and the decisions we had to make. Thank you for sharing your story.
Dan, I love ya, and I’m sorry for your loss, and I thought this piece was mostly great…but dude, that “Fuck your God” line was a dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb rhetorical choice. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. You ALMOST had a great piece of writing that could have been used to convince members of the religious right why they should at least sympathize with your point of view. But with that line, you blew it. You lost them. No mission accomplished. No, they wouldn’t be regular readers of Savage Love, but they could have found it in other places, such as in a circulated e-mail. Come on, man, what were you thinking?
When I was 15 I had to watch my maternal grandmother die right in front of me after taking care of her all summer. I am also a Catholic but PRO-choice/gay marriage/physician-assisted suicide. My thoughts, prayers, and heart go out to you and your family, because I know what it’s like to sit and watch someone you love and say “is their suffering worth it?” Blessings on you.
I find the “slippery slope” argument against physician-assisted suicide quite uncompelling, especially as compared to the stories of families who lived to witness excruciatingly painful deaths of loved ones who were not offered the choice to manage their death.
Such arguments presume that we are not capable of drawing a line in matter- that once Pandora’s Box is opened, in a couple decades we’ll be euthanizing anyone without the preferred genetic composition. There is, after all, a clear distinction between a voluntary choice of a terminally ill patient and an involuntary action foisted upon them by others.
The slippery slope argument can be applied inappropriately to all manners of arguments, and this is just one of them. In Oregon, physician-assisted suicide is already the law. Would repealing that law introduce a slippery slope where the society forces physicians to keep all patients perpetually on life support, despite the wishes of the patient? Of course not- and neither will accepting I-1000 lead to similarly dystopian results.
BTW, are some opponents to I-1000 really comparing supporters to Nazis? Is that really where you want to take this?
Dan, I’m sorry to hear about your family’s loss, and like you I hope we can offer those facing similar prospects as your mother a respectable choice on how to depart us.
As someone who watched her mother claw her way toward death, fighting every inch of the way, I can only admire the incredible bravery your mother showed at the end of her life. I also admire your bravery for writing about it so openly. Thank you for sharing this story.
It’s been ten years since my mother died and I still think about her every day. I hope that you find peace as you make your own journey through grief.
I remember when Oregon was debating this. There were all sorts of terrible predictions, but we voted it in anyway (twice!), and the system has worked well. None of the dire warnings have come to pass, and one side effect has been significant improvement in palliative care for the dying.
Posted by SirVic; “And for Catholics…No organization in human history has as much innocent blood on their hands as the pope and his gang.”
Don’t let your comic book derived historical knowledge get in the way of truth Einstein.
No matter that millions have derived comfort from the Church. No matter that the Church’s teachings on poverty demand compassion and kindness.
No matter that nationalism or political ideology have far more victims. No matter that millions of Catholics throughout history continued to administer to the poor no matter what the income. No matter that the Inquisition was far less onerous than set of falsehoods the English propaganda of the time pushed.
And of course a flaky Seattle hipster-doofus like you would never face a historical truth such as the fact that Islam has had a far more warlike and bloody history.
Check out a history book not a few nitwit website articles before you spout idiocy next time Lord Acton.
Hi Dan
I have just com back from a trip to see my dad in hospital. I arrived , met my brother on the sidewalk outside the hospital and he told me the news my dad had died that morning. My brother did not want to call me while I was driving. I went in to see my dad and it was so sad to see him in the place he hated above all places, hospital. He died of pneumonia because he had had TB when he was 21 and only had 1/3 a lung on the right side and 2/3 on the left. He knew it was his Achilles heel. He had turned to my sister a week before, blind, thin and hardly able to talk and said, “I am done”. She knew what he was saying.
He held out long enough for my mom to arrive so he could lift both his hands up to touch my moms face. The love of his life for 60 years.
Your pain and frustration are understandable, and your points are well made. However, to blast God with an F-word completely erases any credibility that you have in mine, and other good folk’s eyes.
I realize Chrstian churches and their leaders have been hypocritical and far from the pious leaders they’d like to be seen as. But I’ll have you know, they are truly but a small minority in Christianity. Most Christian people do their best to live a good life and practice what they preach.
You have a good argument, even if I don’t agree with it. Too bad you can’t keep your caustic opinions and harsh language to yourself and present the facts of this narrative in a respectful way.
Respect is a two-way street my friend, and you just lost mine.
Hey Dan. My father died in a way not so different from your mother. Cancer metastized to his lungs, on oxygen, couldn’t breathe. He died at home, and I remember all too well the slow intrusion of interventions, the steady weakening of a man who’s strength had been there all my life.
He died with my mom and sister beside him. I’m the one who gave him the last morphine injection. I wouldn’t let them do it – some misplaced sense of eldest-son duty I think. I didn’t want them to feel responsible, so I took it on myself – I’m proud that I did. Morphine suppresses respiration. He would have lived longer if I hadn’t done it, but all lives end. He felt no pain at the end, it’s the best any of us can hope for.
Lives are not pennies to be saved, not stamps to be collected in return for some mail-in reward. Those who “Choose life” too often forget that what matters is not merely being alive but how you live.
“Fuck your God.” On the face of it, it sounds offensive. But when you are experiencing the gut-wrenching agony of watching a loved one suffer, such expression merely portrays a genunine response. Thanks for being so open and real Dan and for loving your mom so much. I am sorry.
Dan,
I am very sorry to read of your mothers passing. It is a horrible thing to have to go through.
Your words hit home with me all to well. 5 years ago my mother finally lost her battle with lung cancer. I will spare you the long details of her “sticking it up that Dr’s ass” that she lived 3 years longer than she was supposed to. Her final moments were very similar to your mom’s. She fought and battled the whole time. I was begging the attending Dr the night she died to just give her so much morphine that she would just go to sleep and never wake up. I do not know if my mother would have chosen the “assited suicide” route or not,but I would have liked her to have the choice. Fuck those Catholic bastards. Being from Boston and a one time altar boy, they can go shit in there fists. They are one of the most vile organizations on earth.
Again, sorry for your loss. It seems you were very close to your mom. I just want to say,if she is anything like my mom, she left you with all you need to get by in life.
My dad died of kidney failure after an emergency surgery to repair a burst aneurysm failed. He’d been a do-not surgical risk, with emphysema and heart trouble, so the surgery wasn’t even considered until the thing burst.
He never came out of the anesthesia, but he was kept on painkillers–we never had the chance to say goodbye.
I had the option of putting my cat to sleep, painlessly, when her kidneys shut down. The law did not give us the same option with my father.
BE AWARE: even if you have a living will, as Dad did, signing permission for surgery can void that document. One of my 3 siblings had a terrible struggle with the question of taking him off the machine, until the docs told us his inner organs were shutting down.
Dan, I’ve been there, it’s horrible. I’m glad you had family at your side.
Dan – I can’t stop tearing up and reliving my Dad’s passing last December in very similar situation, is not an easy road to travel and they say time heals, it gets better after time passes but for the healing I’m still waiting… I personally want to thank you for sharing such an intimate experience it truly helps those of use going through similar situations. It’s very powerful and touching in every sense.
Things will get better… my condolences.
Beautifully written, Dan.
We can’t even GET a proposition like that here in Tennessee. I wish you the best of luck in getting it approved.
Don May
Memphis, Tn.
My condolences to you from Argentina, Dan.
Beautiful and powerful writing. We, readers, feel your pain and sadness.
Abrazos.
When my father was slowly slipping in much the same way, they came in to weigh him. I had to watch and even help him use his last strength to get him self onto that scale. I was to young and dumb to yell like your step-father did to leave a family at peace. It still haunts me. Be so glad for the morphine. The morphine doesn’t just ease the pain it allows them to go quicker and quieter. It brings peace quicker to all involved. I’m so glad she didn’t suffer for long.
Fuck their god, and fuck them too.
I believe there is nothing in the bible forbidding suicide. I believe suicide was made a sin in order to assist religious oppression: if you did not believe Roman Catholic dogma, you could be horribly murdered; and for many freethinkers, would have been preferable to first, torture, second, burning to death at the stake. So by threatening them a continuation of agony for all eternity, the church denied them that escape.
I don’t know if it helps in any way at all, but when I was younger I had jaw surgery. It hurt. I was put on a drip that let me add a little bit of morphine to my IV every fifteen minutes if I needed it.
I’d try to tough it out, but then I’d punch the little button and within a few seconds, at most: no pain, just a feeling like I was floating.
Morphine is the good stuff.
Jeffrey and Elsie: Everything is a slippery slope to somewhere. If the initiative is passed, yes, it’s possible that some bad law will be passed after that. What you seem to preserve is some automatic system that spares you the obligation of citizenship, which is to pay attention to what lawmakers and hospitals are doing.
But we don’t have that now as it is. No automatic system. We the people have to shoulder our responsibilities as watchdogs. That doesn’t change is the initiative passes.
You talk about Holland. But what the hell do you know? Have you been to Holland? Have you talked to Dutch people? Just where do you get your information? What evidence is there that patients are being killed against their will?
Dan,
Many thanks for sharing your story so eloquently. While I’m sympathetic to the story having lived through the same situation with my beloved mother, I must comment that the idealogy behing your argument remains sound and just and DO-able! Our society is truly intact enough to accomodate this relatively new choice without abusing it. I urge all readers to trust that they and their families will find comfort and empowerment with a law that reflects our abilities to live and end our lives with as many choices as God has given us.
What a beautiful and well-stated piece. It comforts me at several levels — the memory of dealing with my own mother’s death; the way I responded to a relative just last night who is so sure her God has the answers that she wants to impose them on the rest of the world. Thank you.
Thank you for the article. It made me cry. We should all have a choice.
well. i just started crying in class.
Dear Dan,
Thank you for putting yourself out there to share this with all of us. Reliving it can’t have been easy, but hopefully it will help others understand better.
You and your family have the support of all of us out here in Reader-land during this tough time.
Heather
Jeffrey,
I sympathize with your fears. As a feminist, it bothers me immensely that in places where assisted suicide is legal, women take advantage of it more often than men do; in our society, women are still taught that their worth lies in caring for others, and they seem more likely to end their lives rather than risk being a “burden” on those whom they are supposed to be taking care of. But to me, that’s no reason to oppose I-1000; quite the contrary. As a feminist, I oppose the social norms that value women’s lives only when they are of a particular kind of “use,” AND the idea that government has a right to dictate how I die. I’m interested in a society that encourages women to value their own lives as much as it encourages men to do so. I have no interest at all in one that devalues women’s lives and then forces them to live out the final moments of those lives feeling guilty about the toll it takes on their loved ones.
The answer to discrimination, against women or against the disabled, is to fight against the twisted ideas about the value of some lives over others that lie behind it, not to hand over to the state the final decision on whether any individual’s life is worth their living.
Dan, I am so sorry.
Thank you for writing this.