Euthanasia – the good death

     Occasionally a confluence of influences come together to create what I like to call an “aha moment” a consolidation of previous bits and pieces of thoughts and ideas into a coherent and meaningful whole.

        Life and death issues are with us from the moment of birth. The pull of life is so insistent for the young that they think of themselves as immortal by default. And that's just as it should be. The imminence of death for the aged is just as insistent and gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, we begin to entertain the nagging and intrusive thoughts of our own demise. And that's also just as it should be. It is said that an unexamined life is not worth living. I would add that an unexamined death (if only in the abstract) can lead to an unnecessarily trepid approach to aging.

        What we fear is not so much the unknown that death is, but the absence or loss of life and the potential pain of a prolonged dying process. There is a wonderful Snoopy cartoon where Snoopy and Charlie Brown are contemplating the grim reaper. Charlie says: “Someday we will all die, Snoopy.” Snoopy responds: “True, but on all the other days we will not.” Now, that's a bit of useful philosophy.

        So, we arrive at one of those confluences, in this case the inevitability of death and the inevitability of living until then. Those inevitabilities are givens. What is not given is the quality of those inevitabilities. We can live life poorly or well, and we can also die poorly or well. One is likely to lead to the other. To die well, one must live well—and have choices. To live and die poorly is often a result of no choices whatsoever, or bad choices. To die well, implies a choice of when and how to depart this life as well.

Foxglove and vine Ikebana

digitalis lanata (Foxglove)

        Unwittingly I gambled with death just the other day by using a plant called Digitalis lanata (Foxglove) for an Ikebana arrangement not knowing its name. By chance a blogger recognized my photo of the arrangement an told me of its name and that it was a highly poisonous plant. Sure enough, a Google search informed me that all parts of the plant are highly toxic if ingested and can lead to severe symptoms and even death. It is also used to treat heart patients in controlled dosages.

        The author Umberto Eco in his novel The Island of the Day Before puts it rather well. “We die because we cannot do otherwise. Only the philosopher can think of death as a duty, to be performed willingly and without fear. As long as we are here, death is not here, and when death comes, we have gone.”

        A news item today informs me that the Canadian Parliament will soon consider draft legislation to codify Canada's assisted suicide laws. Euthanasia is already legal in Canada, the draft is designed to establish guidelines for who can (and, equally important, should not) be considered eligible for assisted suicide.

                    Draft legislation in Canadian Parliament

        Assisted suicide is, of course, a controversial topic and one that should not be considered lightly, but should be approached with a view to choice for those who, in certain circumstances, would choose knowingly and in sound mind not to prolong a painful terminal illness and die with dignity—a good death.

        Euthanasia is a derivative of the Greek words for death [thanatos] and good [eu]. He never lived his life so well as in the leaving of it. I think I read something like that somewhere once upon a time. At any rate, I would like to have that choice, should I want it, when my time comes to bid farewell to this beautiful blue-green marble.