Dying Shouldn't Be Hard

Death is a fact of life.  We all die at some point.  Yet we as a society seem incapable of viewing death as a fact of life we can manage, except to spend enormous resources to keep people alive, even if they are ready for death.

My mother is currently in a skilled nursing facility where she has been for many months.  She has Alzheimer's so no longer can recognize her family, her attention span is non-existent, her life is spent in bed unless they bring in a machine to lift her up to sit her in a wheelchair so can be in a different position.  She is largely oblivious to what is going on around her, except to be fearful of loud noises.  She cannot eat without someone working patiently at spooning food into her mouth.  What she has lost in life is irrevocably gone.  She will never be able to converse with her children, or walk outside, or even sit on the sidelines at a family gathering and have any idea who the people are or what is going on.  

About 20 years ago I was helping her set up legal paperwork to manage her life as she moved into old age.  In my conversations with her she was clearly comfortable with the fact she was going to die at some point and wanted no extraordinary measures to keep her alive - she did not want to be a burden on others, and in particular her children and grandchildren.  There is no doubt in my mind if at that time she could have viewed what she has become now she would be very unhappy with her current situation and if given the option would have chosen assisted death at some predetermined point in the deterioration without hesitation.  But there was not then, nor is there now, any legal way for someone to chose to die at a point in the future where their options in life deteriorate to a point they find intolerable.   

Another person I was close to just passed at 96 years old.  Her life was pleasant enough in the assisted living place in which she lived her last years.  But her life was shrinking as her capabilities declined.  She expressed the desire to just die a number of times.  Finally she just stopped eating and drinking.  It is not a pretty decline.  Hospitals and Hospice services do wonderful work making it as comfortable as possible but one has to ask - with all the wonders of modern technology why does someone have to starve and dehydrate themselves to death if they are done with life?

We as a society make it astonishingly difficult for ill or elderly people to choose to leave life.  The worst case scenario folks, maybe in part because they haven't come to terms with the fact they will die someday, come up with all sorts of reasons why the law must rigidly control death.  Most the reasons are rooted in the notion kids will be knocking off their parents over money or property, .

As medicine continues to develop techniques to prolong life we need to do more to help folks who are done with life.  It is nuts to be telling folks in their 80's or 90's they cannot chose to end their life.