Posted on 09/27/2014 1:46:14 PM PDT by NYer
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An elderly husband and wife have announced their plans to die in the world’s first ‘couple’ euthanasia – despite neither of them being terminally ill.
Instead the pair fear loneliness if the other one dies first from natural causes.
Identified only by their first names, Francis, 89, and Anne, 86, they have the support of their three adult children who say they would be unable to care for either parent if they became widowed.
The children have even gone so far as to find a practitioner willing to carry out the double killings on the grounds that the couple’s mental anguish constituted the unbearable suffering needed to legally justify euthanasia.
The couple, from Brussels, are receiving regular medical treatment for age-related ailments.
Francis has received treatment for prostate cancer for 20 years and is unable to spend a day without morphine and Anne is partially blind and almost totally deaf.
They always go out shopping together because they are both scared that one day the other will not return home.
They decided that life in a care home was not an option because of their fear they would end up bedridden without the strength to insist on euthanasia.
They are also afraid that a good retirement home would cost more than their combined pensions and that they would have to dig into their savings to afford it.
They planned to commit suicide on February 3 next year, their 64th wedding anniversary, by placing plastic bags over their heads after taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
We want to go together because we both fear of the future,’ said Francis. ‘It’s as simple as this: we are afraid of what lies ahead.
‘Fear of being alone and above all, fear of the consequences of loneliness.’
He told Moustique, a Belgian online news service, that they eventually opted for euthanasia because they were too scared to attempt to commit suicide.
yeah... that’s when some of us can draw social security.
Did I miss that, or are you making it up? I didn’t see euthanasia or suicide.
More than a decade ago, I kept watch at the bedside of my grandmother as she approached death in the hospice wing of a local hospital. As the day progressed, I took a break and walked down the hall, peering into darkened rooms where others lay dying .. alone. A nurse, seeing the concerned expression on my face, explained these other patients had families that chose not to be there. They would call to know the status of their "loved one" and ask when they could expect to pick up their belongings, once they passed. Perhaps those family members lived far away and could not make it in time; perhaps they simply could not look death in the face. Whatever their reason, is not for us to judge.
Someone once described death as birth in reverse. She had kept watch at her father's bedside as he slowly slipped from this world. Perhaps in death, like in birth, there are those waiting for our arrival. Life on earth is short whereas death draws us to eternal life. We came from God and, at the end of our lives, we get to go home.
>>The decision to end one’s life is entirely the decision of God.
He knows all the hairs on our heads and every thought and action from conception to natural death.
These people are joining the ranks of Judas Iscariot....sad to say.<<
That is good theology but bad public policy.
Killing yourself and your wife in a suicide, is not waiting for old age to take you.
Well, isn't it a kind of sympathy for James Garner essentially willingly dying at his wife's side? It seems to support the idea doesn't it? That's my point.
Well, is there insurance money involved, and who collects?
My favorite aunt died last November, one month before she was to turn 100. She had lost her husband 40 years before. She had the sweetest nature and was the most Christian person I have ever known, in every sense of the word. She never gossiped. She loved Jesus and pinned to be able to see Him. She had macular degeneration and was very hard of hearing, so she could not spend the last few years of her life watching TV or reading the Bible. She taught us all what it meant to be a good person, even when her memory was failing. As we heard her pine for Jesus we got to see a real saint.
They were married. I don’t think there was anything wrong with him breaking the rules to be with her when they died. There was no euthanasia or suicide, and I can’t see how anyone could put the blame on them for dying.
Remind me of Solynt green movie a lot or Logan Run which they plan do remake on BOTH
An elderly husband and wife have announced their plans to die in the world’s first ‘couple’ euthanasia – despite neither of them being terminally ill.
I think not. It's usually called a "murder-suicide".
they have the support of their three adult children who say they would be unable to care for either parent if they became widowed.
A proper response is unprintable.
The children have even gone so far as to find a practitioner willing to carry out the double killings on the grounds that the couple’s mental anguish constituted the unbearable suffering needed to legally justify euthanasia.
God save me from children like these.
Francis has received treatment for prostate cancer for 20 years and is unable to spend a day without morphine and Anne is partially blind and almost totally deaf.
What a coincidence. I just had mine out. There are consequences, and full recovery of function will take a while, but no body wanted to kill me, and no body wanted to delay proper treatment for decades.
They decided that life in a care home was not an option because of their fear they would end up bedridden without the strength to insist on euthanasia.They are also afraid that a good retirement home would cost more than their combined pensions and that they would have to dig into their savings to afford it.
This boggles the mind. They're afraid of running through their savings, so they're going to off themselves?????
Well, it came across to me a strong implication that he went into his wife’s room to die with her and it seems to sympathize with the idea.
I wonder what their net worth is........
This is why despair is a great sin. It is, in sum, saying there are fearful things out of God's control.
>>Killing yourself and your wife in a suicide, is not waiting for old age to take you.<<
You said “people today are in a hurry.” These are not “people today” — these are the last of the Greatest Generation and are not the hurry hurry generation you seem to want to lump them in with.
This is a reasoned decision they have made that is no one else’s business.
At the age of 89 and 86 with their infirmities and having spent the last 64 years together, if that is their personal wish, then why not make that occasion a festive one for both of them and let them pass on together in peace but in a more humane way than what they have chosen?
I can't imagine anything worse at that age than to suffer the loss of my 64 year companion and live my remaining days alone..........
>>I think not. It’s usually called a “murder-suicide”.<<
Read the article. It is simultaneous suicide.
More than a decade ago, I kept watch at the bedside of my grandmother as she approached death in the hospice wing of a local hospital. As the day progressed, I took a break and walked down the hall, peering into darkened rooms where others lay dying .. alone. A nurse, seeing the concerned expression on my face, explained these other patients had families that chose not to be there.
That's terrible.
They would call to know the status of their "loved one" and ask when they could expect to pick up their belongings, once they passed. Perhaps those family members lived far away and could not make it in time; perhaps they simply could not look death in the face.
I suspect so.
Another link I trot out ever once in a while, on our society's problem facing death: Funerals from Hell Where Have All the Graveyards Gone?
Life on earth is short whereas death draws us to eternal life. We came from God and, at the end of our lives, we get to go home.
Some of us.
"42 Q. Since Christ has died for us, why do we still have to die? A: Our death does not pay the debt of our sins. Rather, it puts an end to our sinning and is our entrance into eternal life."
Idiots.
It’s our business because they chose to make it our business by discussing it. Had they done it without making it public none of us would have been the wiser. When you decide to make your private life public you have given away the “it’s their business”.
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