My Mom and Assisted Suicide

Being handed a Living Will leaflet, provided by the hospital, my mind drew blank. I stood there looking at my mother as she laid in ICU. A tube had been placed down her throat, providing her lungs with oxygen. Several IV drips were embedded in her arm, her veins being supplied with medicine to help her body numb the pain and her mind to forget the whole ordeal. A clip that looked like a clothespin pinches her index finger to monitor the amount of oxygen in her system. A tube runs through her nose to her stomach to provide nourishment. There is a metal patch taped to her chest to monitor her heart rate. All I was able to do at the time was watch a monitor suspended from the ceiling as it recorded and pictured numerous blips and beeps that told me that she was alive. I placed the Living Will leaflet aside.

During that temporary crisis at the time, I had no idea of what my mother's intentions and feelings were in regards to her life. All I knew, and was thankful for, is that we live in a time where doctors and medicine are devoted to saving lives and instilling hope of full recovery. Today's technology in the medical field is a gift. This gift provides humans with the knowledge to determine, treat, heal, sustain, protect and prolong our very existence. This gift allows humans to cherish, care and provide each other support as reverence to the greatest gift we as humans have received -- life.

Since the gift of life is a gift to us, then do we have the right and choice to provide ourselves with a good death? Euthanasia is "the intentional termination of life by another at the request of the person who dies". Euthanasia is not only a social issue, but also a moral issue. It effects all humans, on all level...

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...who have died can not tell us. But those who have died have left behind the pain of sorrow, and brought the label of assisted murder to the medical profession. This is justice in society today. So is all this a good death? I have seen the effects of a good death. A life taken, not as passive euthanasia, known as nature's course, but as God's course.

My grandmother must have been dying slowly, yet never complained. Her faith kept her humble, she must have known her fate was inevitable. Her last action in life was preparing her death. My mother assisted her with a shower and manicure. As grandma rested upon the bed after this ritual, my mother asked her how she felt. Grandma replied, "I feel great". She then immediately passed on. This was a good and painless death. Yes, we were saddened, but comforted with the knowledge that she passed on feeling great.