Choosing death..tonight SBS (Main Forum)

I also watched the programme James.
The tragedy seems that it did look a bit like suicide?!
Then again the point was made that the decision needs to be made by the person whilst he/she is healthy enough and of sound mind?!
Whilst it does seem at times that animals are treated better, the animals don't make the choice. It is made for them by humans?!
georgeh

Yes, I was intrigued by the program also. I think this is another area of morality where the churches will not "hold back the tide". The public opinion polls point in that direction.

I have a slightly different take on the subject but it is more in the realms of theory. My sense/theory is that for a person who is able to develop a truly holistic outlook towards life such steps might not be necessary in the end. Death will, to a large extent, remain within the control of the individual (barring accidents of course). I had an aunt who succumbed to Alzheimers whom I last saw with my father about ten days before she passed away. At that stage I'd be pretty sure in saying there was almost no higher brain function left to tell the body to shut down — the end had been reached. She was essentially being kept alive by the lizard and automatic brain functions that circulate our blood and keep us breathing. I'm not even sure that it is a conscious decision when a person decides "the time has come" but it might be a deeply sub- or un-conscious thing.

Part of the trouble today both within religion and also in non-religious society is that neither really encourages an holistic outlook towards life. My own father prayed all his life, or at least from as long as I can remember him, for a "peaceful death". In the end he achieved it albeit he was suffering some symptoms of dementia by the time he died but nowhere near as bad as two of his siblings. I don't know if his death was literally an answer to that life-long prayer or if it was merely part of the serendipity of life. That's why I would not advance this as anything more than a theory.

My mother, who was a fiercely independent woman had long expressed a fear of being dependent on others in her old age. She had a stroke one day and was rushed to hospital. I think I was the last one to communicate with her in the emergency department of the hospital where she was calling out trying to comprehend what had happened to her. I just kept repeating who I was that she was in the hospital emergency department and she'd had a stroke. Just three simple statements that I keep repeating. After a while I could see "the tumblers" falling into place in her mind and as soon as she had grasped the meaning of what I was saying she relaxed, fell into a deep sleep from which she never awoke and then a couple of days later died in one of the wards with my father and I beside her and neither of us noticed. It was a nurse who poked her head in the door who alerted us. She passed away very peacefully. I've long had a sense that following that last conversation with me she chose to depart in that way and she didn't put up any fight to live because of her long expressed fear of being a burden on others.

The Catholic religious culture I was brought up in, and essentially believed for a large part of my life, posited that our life journey was some process of learning a whole set of rules (which essentially is what happened at school), then the rest of life was a process of obeying those rules (more often interpreted as not disobeying them rather than obeying them – there is a big difference); and then death was essentially some process similar to Lotto where if you'd been good enough "passing muster" God might be nice to you when you died and if he'd happened to get out of bed on the correct side that morning. Our prospects of how we would be judged in life were a bit like a Lotto gamble. We couldn't do much besides "buy the ticket" by endeavouring to live a goody two shoes life by not disobeying any of the rules. Our death also, in whatever form it might take, was also a bit of a lotto gamble. We were taught we wouldn't have much say in the process — you know not the day nor the hour. Modern secular culture it seems is not much better and I thought that came through in parts of the documentary last night.

I wonder if any of the rest of you have thoughts on this? Death is something that is not totally out of our control and necessitates resort to artificial means to end it if a person who has prepared themselves for it. In totally different ways I think each of my own parents had "prepared" for their own deaths. Dad in a religious sort of way with his life-long prayer for a happy death. Mum, who was not religious and didn't believe in any life after death, had prepared herself in a secular sort of way.

It would be interesting to get a range of opinions from people who have witnessed many different deaths.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

For several years, Oregon USA, has had an "allowable self-termination" statute, with several restrictions -- 2nd dr other than main one must also diagnosis terminal illness, must be self-done without others' direct help, waiting period...etc.
About half of the people, after going through all the paperwork & preparations, do it themselves, the other half let death happen naturally...
Yet the RCC & others put up a big campaign against this vote in its time...didn't prevail...

Actually, there seems to be many more criminal prosecutions & trouble with people deliberately violating the medical marijuana laws than "mercy murderers"...

What a wonderful documentary. This is the type of assisted death we should have available in Australia.