Dear Judy,
I haven’t seen you tackle this much. Maybe you’re scared and think you’ll be arrested and charged with aiding or abetting. My mother, when she was healthy and younger, always told me that if she did contract some terrible illness, she didn’t want it to go on and on. She wanted it to end, and she wanted me — her only child — to help her end it.
Well, she has Alzheimer’s. I know what’s going to happen down the road. When the diagnosis came in, she was alert enough to exchange a quick glance with me, and I knew what she was thinking. We didn’t have to discuss it. I said, “Later, not now.” She said, “Okay. Whenever you think best.”
And that was that.
It’s been three years, and it’s very bad now. Everything she was she no longer is. She no longer reads, or can clean herself. She can barely talk, and often she doesn’t know who I am.
We do not live in Oregon. I was thinking of moving her there, and being by her side, because I know that in Oregon a dying person has the right to end her suffering. I still feel that no matter what the hassle of moving a very sick woman, applying for residency, etc., a promise is a promise.
What do you think?
Felicia
Dear Felicia,
I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, because I understand exactly what your mother meant, and I know you do too. But even in Oregon, which does allow a hastening of certain death, nothing is easy.
The biggest hurdle for you is that the state demands that the dying person be, at the time of the decision to hasten death, mentally alert and capable of expressing her wishes. And not just verbally, but in writing. That person also has to be able to take the medication that will end the suffering herself. And of course she has to be a state resident of more than six months.
All these rules preclude a move to Oregon. Or rather, they won’t do your mother any good. I think a lot of people in this country are changing their attitudes about what constitutes living — and what constitutes life. But unfortunately, it isn’t happening fast enough.
Please write whenever you feel like it.
Judy
what a horrible dilemma. she helps her mother end her life and risks prison and the ruinof her end life, in effect ending it too. she does nothing and feels she betrayed the person who gave her life. anything she does will weigh on her until her own last day.
I am so sorry for Felicia and the pain she and her mother are suffering. I think her story illustrates why it is so important to explictly discuss what you want to happen if you are in a situation where you may want to end your life but are physically unable to do so. When I cared for my dying father I had that difficult conversation with him. He told me when he thought he would no longer want to live and under what circumstances. He told me he wanted me to help him end his life if he asked. I had to be sure I understood exactly what he wanted and what he meant. After we had that conversation we both felt like a terrible weight had been lifted. He said he felt less scared and safe with the promise from me that I would help him die. In the end, he chose to go the hospice route - and before he died he told me that knowing I would actively help him die on his own terms was a gift of love.