A good death

One of those letters appeared in the paper earlier this week in which a correspondent declared she was positioning herself to make a decision that would allow her to die decently.

This seems not unreasonable. All of us, you would think, should be allowed to die with dignity.

Often we don't pay enough attention to this, and some times it is hard.

But it strikes me that it should be hard. Life is not without cost, and that much at least should be evident as we die.

It should be more than just ensuring that the appropriate tablets are in the top drawer so that if we feel we are ready today then we can just pop them.

There is a certain sense of irony that just at the moment there is a lot of ruckus about an abandoned whale calf becasue one of the suggestions is that it should be put down. People seem to be worried about humans getting too much treatment, and in this case Colin the whale (who calls a whale 'Colin?) not getting enough, Could you do more for a dying animal? It is of course the question that haunts us all (as it has done about our own beloved dog in the last fortnight)
But I rather think that euthanasia of people is different.
It should, as I say, be hard not easy.
One of the comments the letter-writer made earlier in the week was that she didn't want to be in a nursing home "losing control of my bowels". This is nasty stuff, but would it now mean that gastroenteritis or irritable bowel syndrome is now an indicator for potential euthanasia.
I personally don't believe that the health system is keeping anyone alive who shouldn't be.
The fact that the last few weeks or even months may be awful for the dying and for those who surround them, is something of the nature of death.
But more goes on at these times than just the breakdown of the body. Our engagement with the process of grief is probably the most important thing human beings do. I have had enough encounters with raw grief to know that this approaches the truth.
Cut it short, and you risk cutting off this process in mid-stream.
No one should be treated beyond the level of reasonable intervention. But the bar cannot be set so low that we can no longer engage with the sadness of death.