GlenHuntly & Thereabouts

Rudd explains why he opposes euthanasia

My response, Prime Minister, to your comments

I have among my few treasured friends a ninety year old lady who just quite simply wants to be allowed to die. She is tired of living. She doesn’t like pain so takes 14 tablets a day to prevent this occurring and so prolongs her tired body natural inclination to stop working efficiently. Her husband of sixty years has pre deceased her and she has seen most of her friends go before her. Unable to travel, she is surrounded by a religious community group as neigbours, that do not associate with outsiders. Her family check on their mother on a regular basis but even knowing she is loved, she still wants to be “allowed” to die quickly and peacefully. Every morning she awakes and thinks ” heavens, I am still here and alive, why couldn’t I have died in my sleep?”…Strong language, Mr Rudd, sitting across the kitchen table with a woman who has intelligently assessed her circumstances and wants to die anyhow!

I just know Mr Rudd, that I would like the choice to choose for myself. I am sick and tired of the drawn out excuses that the frail elderly would choose death to prevent becoming a burden to their relatives! This is absolute rubbish! one only has to look at the rows of over medicated, alone people, sitting restlessly in nursing homes to know that for the vast majority of the frail elderly their last years are not spent with their loving family. They are spent alone while their children attend their grandchildren’s wants and needs.

When I was desperately ill myself, I never felt so alone as sitting in a room full of people who had no comprehension of my absolute pain. I knew I was loved and yet, quite often it wasn’t enough at the time to prevent my sense of aloneness in what I must endure. Facing death does this to some people and as a Humanist, Mr Rudd, I don’t have the advantage of “faith” to call on for support. I feel very responsible for me!

A man I’d known for thirty years, told me in conversation that he had not seen his aged father in over a year and yet he felt he had a “good relationship” with his dad. “He’s knows I am a busy man!” A solicitor or a son, he had indicated his choice of priority. Is that what his father would have understood? Will this man spend a week sitting by his father’s bed as he dies slowly, reminiscing about his love for the old man? Twice in three years is not really what constitutes a parent worrying about becoming a burden on their children……They’ve ceased to have a relationship.

Older folk become very independent of their children’s authority over their lives as is indicated by the many news stories where estrangement are common place in many families and yet the Law assumes “happy families” is the normal.

Blood ties yes, but caring, loving, interested, worried - it doesn’t matter what family want - or it shouldn’t! Legislation should be about how the individual feels about their end of life choices for themselves. Not the mother, husband, brother, sister, daughter or son, but about the individual undergoing major medical changes in their lives, or even maintaining existing medical circumstances which continuously and ongoing, take away their joy of living.

Absolutely no one Mr Rudd is overlooking that very inconvenient word “voluntary”, but it does need to be spelt out time and time again. We want to die in a manner that suits our needs - not the relatives - but our own needs for us!

Why is it so very difficult to get this message through to the politicians?

Of course we would love to continue living a happy. healthy life forever, but the reality is that death will not be denied. For so many sick people, to die with appropriate medication to hasten death, is a necessity for their wellbeing and could also by default provide a bonus if it prevents relatives from “suffering emotionally” along with them. I don’t care Mr Rudd if my relatives should gain from my death, if it means I’ve had a good one!

Mary Walsh
May 6, 2008