Dear Judy,
My boyfriend (ridiculous word) of 10 years and I aren’t speaking to each other right now, and I guess you’re the person to turn to, given your web site.
I notice that lately a few people have been writing in about heroic measures that they do or do not want in case of emergency. In my case, if I am incapacitated or likely to live in great pain or with severe limitations, I don’t want heroic measures.
I am now 40, but I like to think ahead. So I went to a lawyer of my acquaintance, and she drafted a Uniform Health Care Directive for me, and we discussed just what I want done (not much, as I mentioned) if the worst should happen. To me the worst would be to live a life I hate, not death. I made my longtime boyfriend who lives with me my “designated health care agent” in case I can’t talk or think or whatever.
When I told my live-in lover what I’d done, he went ballistic. Turns out, he thinks death occurs only when your heart stops and they pull a sheet over your head. He is furious (so am I — with him!). He says he can’t live with a woman who wants to “kill” herself or select others to do it for her.
What do I do now?
Julie
Dear Julie,
The first thing to do, of course, is to find another person close to you who will abide by your end-of-life desires. How to find this person? Talk everything over with a longtime friend or relative. Your mistake, as you realize now, was not to talk things over with your longtime boyfriend. You just assumed he agreed with you on what turns out to be a vital concern to you both.
And he didn’t, did he?
Next, return to your lawyer’s office and re-draft that Health Care Directive, or Living Will as some call it, to designated that friend or relative as your new agent, in the event you become incapacitated. By the way, pick only an agent who is in good health and is relatively young. (You don’t want to return to the lawyer a third time, do you?)
This issue is so important that in this Thursday’s blog, Marc Levine, a well-known Maryland attorney, will be commenting on Health Care Directives, and some of his thoughts may surprise you.
Now about your longtime boyfriend: it seems to me that people who differ markedly on so important an issue as end-of-life procedures must differ on a lot of other subjects as well. It sure does seem, also, that your live-in friend is pretty fiery, considering what you were really handing him was the ultimate compliment. You were, literally, offering to put your life in his hands.
He didn’t want it, did he?
I leave the rest to you.
Thank you for writing
Judy
I am totally amazed that you imply that Julie should just drop her boyfriend. They’ve been fine for 10 years. So I agree that this is a big issue for them. But big enough to split? To invalidate everything between them? What they need is couples counseling.
Judy, you are absolutely right. People who have such different ideas on major issues (issues that only become more and more important as years roll by), have no business being together. It would be ok, tho, for much younger people.
Well as you read, LauraSu, Julie’s longtime boyfriend said he couldn’t live or continue on with a person who wanted to “kill” (his word) herself.
In other words, it was he — not I — who made the decision to sever relations with Julie because her views on what constitutes living differ from his.
Now will the boyfriend go through with his threat? I don’t know. But in my experience, men who threaten to end a relationship usually have given that option a lot of thought — and long before they voice it.