Posted on 10/13/2005 11:37:42 AM PDT by madprof98
Mom first confessed to me that she wanted to die almost 14 months before she killed herself on April 28, 2004.
"I just want to go," she yelled on her 82nd birthday, tears welling up. Her heart had given out physically from advanced arteriosclerosis, and emotionally since Daddy died.
She had lived with us since a massive heart attack left her an invalid with no hope of recovery. She no longer had the strength to socialize, go shopping or attend Mass.
I did everything they tell you to do for a suicidal person. Mom had a heaven-sent primary doctor in Alpharetta who started monitoring a course of antidepressants for her. He treated her soul as well as her body. We brought in a daily caregiver.
Most important, we talked. I said I understood her feelings, but that it would upset me if she tried something on her own without talking to me first.
Mom was so relieved that she could tell me the truth of how she felt. She promised not to take matters into her own hands.
By January 2004, Mom's lungs had deteriorated. As with many women her age, she started smoking in her teens. She quit before turning 50. We always hoped that 30 years of abstinence would undo all the damage, but it was not to be.
By February, Mom suddenly announced that she had stopped taking all of her medicines and would no longer go to any doctor. "I just want to go," she kept saying.
By March, Mom was going blind. Her heart was not strong enough to permit surgery on her cataracts, so her remaining pleasures of reading and watching TV were going away. On her 83rd birthday, she again burst into tears. "I just want to go!" she raged.
By April 28, Mom's rage had boiled over. Late that afternoon, I found her surrounded by all those medicine bottles untouched since February. They were empty.
"I just want to go," she slurred. She kept shaking her head from side to side. "Just let me go, please don't call 911!"
I considered not calling. I just wanted to make my Mom happy again.
Months later, my physician told me that if I hadn't called, I might have been arrested.
A few hours after arriving at the emergency room, Mom died from a combination of the overdose and her advanced arteriosclerosis.
Unfortunately, my experience is that doing all the right things couldn't stop my 83-year-old Catholic mother from following through on a threat she made consistently for almost 14 months.
While she was still conscious, I asked her why she didn't keep her promise to tell me before she tried something like this. She replied, "I was afraid you would be arrested."
Exactly what kind of family values prevent a mother and daughter from talking openly about the end of life for fear of prosecution?
I pray you never have to walk in my shoes to find out.
Nora DePalma lives in Cumming.
I was in a similar place with my Mom who wanted nothing more than to join my Dad. For some reason, her body just kept hanging on - she was angry about it for many of her last months.
I had 24/7 caregivers and Hospice helped me make sure she was as comfortable as possible and I would remind her that the Lord would pick the time for her to go.
On one level, I don't want my children to have the same experience with me - on another, I realize that caring for her in her final illness completed the circle for me. In a way I was honored to be the person to return the care she had given me.
If they are personal decisions, then why involve a court?
So much for freedom.
Gosh, I just spent the morning feeding a couple hundred "free" people, most of whom would have been locked away in institutions just a few years ago. Today--thanks to the "freedom" lovers--they live under bridges and overpasses and wait for another of their number to come along and kill them for a little drug money.
The poor women and her mother. If only the GOP could have used the long, compassionate arm of government to prevent such a thing from occurring. Everyone knows the founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Indpendence and the Constitution so the government could micromanage reproductive and end of life issues of the individual and his or her family.
Yours will automatically be entered in our Stupid Comment of the Month contest. (First prize is the opportunity to write your own guest editorial for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)
I disagree.
I see the point of slippery slopes and all that and I see the general thrust of the article, that the mother and daughter should have been able to discuss her death or decide together it was time to go, etc.and how awful it is that they couldn't.
But I was adressing the comment that if I refused to take my meds that I could be forced to have them administered.
Not
a
chance.
The mother decided she was ready to go. The mother took her hoarded pills. She did not ask her daughter to do anything and rightfully so.
Nor did her dr. suggest that her life was not worth living. Nor her daughter.
The person being kept alive decided that.
And it didn't sound like a "whim" and if it was a "whim" it was her own.
That part about the daughter being in trouble if she hadn't called 911 got me. I would have lied about it.
And that's a good thing? It seems pretty heartless to force medical treatment on someone who doesn't want it any more. Just how do we ever die when we know our wishes will not be honored and people are force-feeding pills, hooking us up to IVs, shocking us back to life, when we have clearly said we want none of that due to advanced age and/or terminal illness/injury? I am totally against legalized euthanasia or suicide, but I am also against intervening when someone is ready to go. So, if my Mom told me not to intervene, and she stops taking her pills and dies, do I go to jail in Pennsylvania?
Don't you guys have a party of your own going on someplace else?
Yes, we called that de-institutionalization back in the 70's. I wonder if it really did save the taxpayers any money seeing how so many of these poor folks end up in jail.
Some of them want to die. I don't think we are supposed to let them do away with themselves, at least not without a struggle.
Why don't these people want plumber-assisted suicide? It would likely be much cheaper and just as fatal to be beaten with a 3/4-inch pipe as to be killed by chemical injection.
We were force fed many of these "emotion dripping" articles in Oregon before voting in legalized murder. If the court sides with the executioners, you can expect to be overwhelmed with these by the liberal media.
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