I remember the morning my mom called and said it was time to pack up her home and move. She’d been living there for 60 years. My father had died more than a decade earlier. But now she felt she could no longer manage alone. She’d become tired of cooking and cleaning and was having problems with her memory.
I picked her up right away, before she could change her mind, and brought her to see a beautiful assisted-living retirement home just minutes away from me. Selfish, I know! The place was beautiful, with a broad range of activities, a bright welcoming dining room with excellent food. Her apartment would be on the main floor, overlooking the gardens and the pond, home to a family of swans. Her apartment came with a bedroom, bathroom, a living room, and eat-in kitchen. That made me laugh. I don’t think Mom even made tea, there. She was like her mother. One day my grandmother had called and said she was never going to cook again. She meant it. When Mom signed on the dotted line, I asked what age one had to be to get a room.
I remember, too, that day my mother said to me she didn’t want to become a burden. That was her fear. And I got angry with her. Why not be a burden? She was allowed to be a burden. Had I not been her burden all those years she raised me? Had she loved every minute of raising me? Were there not times she wanted to run? My mother took me back home when I was going through my divorce. She cared for me, cooked for me, did my laundry and encouraged me as I had returned to school. She would wait for me on the porch as she had done when I was young. She put me back on my feet and sent me back into the world.
It was OK for Mom to be a burden. It was OK for me to say; yes, now you’re being a tad burdensome. Yes, your needs are interfering with my life. Yes Yes Yes. But so what? It was my turn now, to take care of her as she had taken care of me. Beyond love, it’s called respect and honour. Two attributes sadly lacking in our culture.
We live in a throw-away society. We are now a country of people with grandiose infantile delusions of entitlement and self-importance. Our parents, our elderly, hear the talk about the cost of caring for them, about assisted-suicide and euthanasia for those in pain. In truth this comes from a fear of the day they may be in pain and unable to end their lives and become that terrible burden on their families. They think about the time, money and effort into caring for them and wonder how they can ask that of us.
We talk so cavalierly about ending life. We’ve forgotten that life is a gift, it’s sacred. We’re returning to a time when it was considered honourable to go out on an ice-flow and disappear, without being a burden.
Yes, there are people who suffer with critical, incurable illness. And illnesses that take away our memories-our sense of self. No, no one should be in pain, not in the 21st century. No one should fear being in pain or losing one’s sense of self. Instead of spending time and effort in making the taking of life legal, let’s spend time and money on palliative care. Let’s relearn how to die. And that means learning when to say no to medical treatment.
Let’s know that we’re going to bring loved ones, facing death, the opportunity to come home, surrounded by family, friends and pets and given the opportunity to be grateful for the life lived and share that gratitude. And if that cannot be done at home, then let’s make it our priority to give those who came before us the best end of life possible with quality palliative care. That should be our priority-not planning ways of killing oneself out of fear.
