I get a kick out of Dan Savage’s column, Savage Love. If you ever wanted to know about fetishes or “interesting” sexual practices or anything else that some Republicans might want to make a felony someday, he’s your man.
That said, I recently read a column from him that chilled me to the bone.
You see, like many others, I’ve dealt with the death of a parent from a long and debilitating disease. I’ve been there and done that, and if watching a family member die isn’t hell itself, then it’s at least a suburb. I watched the toughest sonofabitch in the known universe (my dad) say “Enough. No more. I want to die.”
But oh no, he didn’t get to choose the hour or day. He didn’t get to go out on his own terms. He fought for as long as his will could hold out and reached the breaking point. Is that dignity? Sure. He fought with everything he could until he couldn’t fight any more. I can think of no finer epitaph for a man than that. However, when the fight was done, Cancer wasn’t.
His body wasted away to less than half of his “healthy weight”. A man who, just 3 days before he died, helped his son lift a 500 pound slab of concrete and move it into place in the back yard. A man who, on the last day he would ever see his son, got out of his death bed, walked to the living room and said “Gimme my fuckin’ hearing aid, I want to talk to my son.” A man whose greatest fear was not death, but becoming so infirm that he would soil himself and be embarrassed in front of his family. The same man who refused to tell his son that the cancer had spread from his lungs to his brain because he didn’t want to be a downer at his son’s wedding. The same man whose last words to me were “I love you, son. I’ll see you next weekend.”
He said “Let me go. It’s time. I give up.”
When he lost the ability to speak and spent his last 48 hours unconscious with a temperature of nearly 104 degrees, there was no need for the suffering to continue. There was no possibility of recovery, or even regaining consciousness. Instead, he laid there while the hospice nurses were powerless to do anything but watch.
Lawmakers who vote against legalizing assisted suicide apparently want you to have this experience too. There are precious few things in this world that an individual can control. I would like to say that I cannot imagine the kind of pain that would cause me to choose to end my own life, but I couldn’t imagine it for my dad, and I saw it happen anyway. Your life. Your body. Your choice.
Do you think Terri Schiavo wanted to be remembered like this?
or like this?
Simple respect for your fellow man dictates that we respect the wishes and the dignity of the dying. If a person chooses to die peacefully rather than suffer the pain and indignity of a lingering death, then what right do we have to deny him that?
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