The Right To Die debate is one I have strong opinions on. Ever since Brittany Maynard decided to end her life to avoid inevitable agony and suffering and watching her discuss this in many interviews, I concluded that the Right To Die law should exist for everyone, everywhere.
There are pitfalls no doubt. I can imagine nightmare scenarios where people are ‘terminated’ by bored relatives who do not wish to take care of them. So obviously safe-guards must be paramount. That said, I am open to the RTD law be expanded to include dementia patients and those with serious Chronic Illness, including long-term-depression.
That’s murder! You may say. And part of the invariable slippery-slope! But I would disagree. Unless you have been the victim of Chronic Illness and/or long-term-incurable-depression you cannot speak for others who suffer each and every day.
A few years ago I killed a kitten who was suffering. It was in agony, unsavable and its liter mates had died in excruciating agony. It was a Sunday and no pet-store nearby was open to euthanize the kitten. To spare her suffering I put her to sleep myself. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, I didn’t actually think I had it in me (to take a life) being vegetarian among other things. But the compassion for her suffering over-took the fear of harm.
The harm was her suffering any longer and that is how I see RTD laws.
Obviously we have to put into place protections against this being misused. I recognize that many deeply devout folks believe God takes us when we are ready, but I have never subscribed to that. How is suffering in agony EVER God ordained? If a God exists I do NOT believe he/she chooses people to suffer in agony for years on end. Thus for me, that argument is moot.
Without the issue of ‘taking God’s job away’ we are left with the morality of RTD laws. If I see someone suffering as horrific as it is, to consider their dying at my or their own hands, I would want to help them not suffer. If that was their true wish.
In the case of dementia patients, if they sign a waiver now they can ask not to be force-fed and kept alive, but it still means those wishes can be ignored, effectively they can exist for years as a vegetable, and do nothing about avoiding that outcome. This isn’t a pragmatic thing. Obviously our society is going to be destroyed by dementia cases as more and more develop it, but irrespective, this isn’t about convenience of death, it’s about the mercy of death.
Few of us (I know some exceptions) would wish to shit on themselves, not be able to eat, remember, function etc, and lose all dignity and awareness. Most of us would prefer to die. Giving us a way to write this out and have a representative help us achieve this, seems to me, a mercy not a convenience.
The whole subject is heart-achiningly awful and we avoid talking about it for the most part. But we need to think of this. Just recently with Covid 19 ventilation, the question of dying and life has been very pertinent and young people who never wrote living-wills have been in limbo. It is never too early to consider these things because we really don’t know.
When I put my cat of 18 years to sleep it haunted me. Briefly I went back on my belief that RTD was the best choice because I thought; If I can’t handle the images and flashbacks of the catheter being put in my cats arm, and watching him being put to sleep, if I felt that was ‘wrong’ in some way, how could I handle it if it was my dad? Or someone I loved?
Truly I think I am nearly not strong enough to cope with that day. But despite that I would still do it. TO END THE SUFFERING. It would haunt me and yes it would feel worse to me than if they died naturally just as it would have been ‘easier’ if my cat had died naturally instead of being given drugs that killed him. Watching that was horrific and it did feel ‘unnatural’ because it was but sometimes it’s the only choice, and it’s the best choice and even if it leaves us feeling horrific, we should consider it.
I don’t regret putting my cat to sleep. But I regret that it had to happen and I still get flash-backs of the last moments. If I had to do that with a human-being I know it would be the hardest thing I ever had to do. But if I loved that human being and it was THEIR WISH I would hope I had the courage and love within me to do it or be part of it or at very least, support their wish.
Having had chronic illness I know we can be ‘not in our right minds’ and so the issue of ‘how sick is too sick?’ must be considered. Depressed people for example, may be able to be cured, so are they really the right candidates for euthanasia? I don’t know the answer, I only know that if someone I knew had suffered for 20 years and wanted to die, I would find it hard to deny them that mercy. If all else had failed.
This is not what we want to think about but right now, out there, are many people who are in this VERY situation right now and have no recourse to end their suffering. I believe safe laws CAN be made that protect against abuses and I believe at this juncture in our societies evolution we need to consider those things, not to keep our sick numbers in check, but to be merciful to suffering.
The courage of Brittany Maynard has stayed with me ever since I heard about her and followed her story. Some may say that is morbid. I say it is honest. I still think of her, she affected me deeply and opened up this debate. I hope others can get over their prejudices of what they believe others should do and give people a CHOICE. Just like my best friend who doesn’t believe she would have an abortion but believes others should have the right to choose if they want to have one. Such is this debate about an individuals right to choose their outcome. Who can honestly deny that in the face of suffering?
I often think if I live to be old, I will be alone and I fear that very much. I think if it were possible I would choose to end my life simply based on not having enough money to keep going or enough reason and family left to make it worthwhile. Is that wrong? Maybe. But one day that too may exist as an ‘option’ and a mercy, to help those who would otherwise resort to suicide which can often fail and leave awful aftermaths. This is a very sad subject but it’s one many of us will one day face one way or another. I don’t want to dwell on it, but equally, I don’t want to pretend it could never happen.
I think now more than ever, we have learned, anything can happen and we need to be prepared. Taking responsibility for our lives AND our deaths is a responsible decision, and helps those who may be left in our lives, follow our true wishes. I hope I never have to find out, but I believe we should all be prepared for both the best case scenario and the worst. Contrary to popular opinion, taking ones life is probably the hardest thing a person can do, not the easiest. But as this article above states, there are worst things than dying and I would say suffering in agony meets that criteria and forces us then, to consider this subject honestly and with compassion.
Quarantined kids escape briefly, screeching loud into empty streets
their thin bodies desperate for release and water sprayed
high into quiet air
I grew my nails because I am not touched, I do not arouse desire
there is no purpose in their being short or useful
for love I had once, in the magnolia dimness of loveliness.
Racketed sound is a mockery, a reminder of how things used to be
when you believed in love and it slipped through your hands
like porcupine quills that have no sharp
distracting yourself with empty boxes and things unpacked
for you belong not here nor there, nor any place
always the need to pack up and relocate, find what
has never sought finding in great wild.
You may judge if you wish
I did a good thing, though you will say it was wrong
I saw nature today at its most timorous and yet bold
I let it go, I let it go.
Many months I planned the capture of her off spring
as she ate from my plates, watching side-ways with distrusting gaze
I am after all, someone prone to superstition and wonder
she arrived a month after the death of my cat
it seemed in her resemblance, it was his return
then she is pregnant and I believe I can have
a house full of life again.
But this heart cannot take one more attempt at loving
this body though young, remembers the torment of losing
those mercies in the night and belief things last eternal
when nothing but the certainty of natures hammer sounds
and nature is not a kindly thing
though perhaps in her supposed cruelty, she is pure
whilst we save cats and neuter so that they may
grow fat and listless without purpose, swatting flies for entertainment
our city nearly drained of ferals and life, and hope, it occurred to me
I didn’t want her caught and diminished by
our belief we know what is right for
creatures of the wild.
I would say, especially as a virus seeks to diminish our population
a mass of humanity grown out of control
this is natures doing, this is the deliberate
consequence of our unprecedented surge to exist
maybe she will forgive
if she does not, is that even wrong?
We place our beliefs as if they are more
than tin soldiers and waxen effigies
as proofs of some superior knowledge
all against the tilled marrow of this earth
long outlasting us, fecund dirt and soil
from which life springs eternal and unfettered
laughing at our arrogance with our
purple capes of chastity and piety
golden crosses forged from raped stone
rules to contradict and suppress the powerless.
She was caught in this cold cage and I saw
her yellow eyes find mine
they say if you stare too long into the eyes of
a wild creature they will perceive a threat
better to bow your head in prayer and submit
they say too much that is tired and old
she looked at me and with the beseechmentof her kind and mine
she asked to be wild
not neutered for ‘her own good’
because she will develop cancer and her kittens
will die time and again to the coral snake and all
other natural things.
She wanted her chance at freedom
she would take them away now, her kittens whom I watched from
my isolation and my hurt, brightening my day
a salve of selfish joy, what is it that saves
the sanctity of the unsaved?
Her shoulders were down, almost crushed, I knew
to release was the greater good
as the wild rose is always more beautiful
on the wild rose tree and not in a vase
in a sterile room to bloom and wilt and lose
richer, than the bland salt-less life I lead
tame without children, without those who
call me when they promise to love and obey.
Our human folly I saw as glaringly
as those kittens in a line, following their mother
through high grass away
my heart stung, same as when my own cat
breathed his last and we said it was a mercy
to euthanize him in his pain
but what of his freedom?
Did he go from that place of needles and
kitty grooming and dental hygiene for pets
to something as noble as her green field?
I saw roses die when I was very young
even as I dried them and tried to keep their wholeness
they crumbled because life is bidden by our false extension
but the visceral and the sad and the sorrowful and the tragic
and quite often
something more achingly beautiful than we
with all our art and books and music
could ever be.
I didn’t want to let her go, I wanted to control
insert myself into the story
trap her kittens to tame them
save them from a less noble fate
and yet who am I?
Am I a worthy example?
with my loss of love, my lack of family?
who was I to prescribe my way? To these
who had every right to live their way?
You see, I have long known I am not
their superior, they are not inferior to me
I am neither their master nor willing to decide
their fate when they have a greater sense of life
real life, than I, in my artifice, ever will
I do not eat flesh for this reason, it is to me
a cannibalism in the way we farm and produce
milk and animal products neatly spit out
without thought to their suffering, or the
terrible way they know what will happen.
We are unnatural in our artificial world
we are too aware of things, our intelligence
can be as much a curse.
Many days I wake and have such a pain inside
me, I know only comes from the unbearable
awareness and I wish I were as simple and as
loving as those felines in my garden or that
I had not listened to sensibility as a young girl
and like this cat, who so resembles mine, who is dead
believed like the earth, after rain, we should
grow wild and free
unbidden.
Yet we have in a way, and with our vast numbers
disease and famine, virus and pest try to
even the score
it is as natural as it comes to get a virus and die
but we are not able to accept that, we believe we
should conquer this God given earth, spreading ourselves out
until we are no different to bacteria or roaches.
I pity us, I pity what we know and do not know
in some ways we are the same as this mother
trying to save her kittens because of an impulse
in her case the purity of instinct
in ours we have choices and often they lead to greed
and an insatiable desire for more.
I choose
seeing her resigned, defeated self
I release the cage, it springs back, she rushes out
it feels so right to see her dart across the field, unencumbered
I know she will take them far away now
I know I will lose them
I also know I never possessed them
and that it is right this way
for pets are not ours to ‘own’ or be master of, they are the chained
learned mules and horses who have been broken
maybe they do not know it and are happy
but what of those who are still wild?
Who am I to take, to decide? To think I know best?
I have read all the books about feral cat population
show cruel it is for nature to flourish unchecked
how disease runs rampant and sickness abounds
and I think of us and our wish to have choices
even as the same thing happens and we perish
to the hands of disease and the will of something more powerful
than our tinker toys and our belief we know all.
As much as she punishes me for my error
walking away, leaving nothing but footprints
in dry sand on my emptied deck
I feel I have listened to
something deeper than talk radio or
my biology books, I have instead
heard the call of the wild and it told me
do not always think you can disturb
this felted land with your superior knowledge
you should only know, you do not know
much.
How am I an example with my perpetuate grief
my unfulfillment, unhappy childhood, empty rooms.
All the awareness we have can be a curse
better to be wild, not to expect love or loyalty
those are human constraints, doomed often to failure
better to be without rule, not to live for glory or purpose beyond
the simplicity of instinctmy instinct told me to open the cage
it has always sought to protect rather than capture
even if she dies out there, she dies intact
not a creature molded by us, into something hybrid and wrong.
I have nothing in my arms now, as I had
nothing in my arms then
and I don’t cut my nails because there is no-one to love
or hold me when I need to be held
because humans promise and break those promises like
egg shells cast on skillets
because you told me you loved me always and
soon you couldn’t even lift a finger or try
to write a line in love, for your bitterness soured your
entire soul and I had a heart filled
but with no way to empty it.
I no longer want to be let down and told
I don’t write because there’s nothing to say
and I don’t want a relationship based on writing
because all those who were separated in the past
wrote letters to each other many, many times
no matter their distance.
It is rather, our modern impatience that says
I want it all now, I want it all or none
then you shall have none, as I shall have none
and all those wasted years were a grave mistake
just as many things I have done are.
I am not making another mistake
I will not keep her behind bars
where I have been waiting for you to do right by me
where I have been expecting to be treated right
when most people are anything but … merciful
it is our human world and I wish I were
instead that mother or a deer unbound
it is sad that we die of the virus
it is more sad, that we live as we do
things happen as lessons to teach us
will we listen? Or will we repeat
and repeat and repeat?
I release her back
into the mercy of the wild
where she looks once
over her shoulder and then
quick as lightning
she is gone.
Written in memory of the cat who loved me loyally more than any person ever has and whom I loved very much and brought with me to this country so long ago.
Many women I encounter say they would never have an abortion because of their personal beliefs but equally they would never take away the option for someone else. That is what this is all about. Choice. Personally I have noticed a shift toward restricting/banning abortion, swings-and-roundabouts, in 20 more years it’s going to shift the other way. Point being, abortion is never ideal, but the right to make a choice is an ideal worth striving for, worrying that this is being ignored. When you search for pro-choice online there is not as much as pro-life, giving the impression we’re shifting radically. I’d say it’s more the vehemence of extremists scaring others to speak out, thus I speak out, as a woman who cannot have children and would love to, but believes others need to make their own choices about their own bodies. Will be interesting how many followers I lose by the days end. And that’s okay.
She came into town
Many years ago when her ancestors wore
Here’s to you, a sterile woman
Skim the stone on the surface
Disease of heart grows rancorous sore
TheFeatheredSleep 