Never Say Die: Dying With Dignity ~ Emerald Quill

Oct 25, 2014

Never Say Die: Dying With Dignity

10/25/2014 Celestine Green No comments

Most of the time, we focus on the values outlined in the Declaration of Independence-life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is the main stay of political discourse, raising its head most often when an election is close at hand. The greatest freedom may be to live, and die, according to one's own desires and beliefs. What we fail to deal with is life’s most inevitable fact-that life will end. From advance directives to physician-assisted dying, "Death with Dignity" is a movement to provide options for the dying to control their own end-of-life care.

Two recent news stories have put the issue of “dying”in the forefront.

In mid-September, Ezekiel Emanuel caused a stir by writing in The Atlantic that he wanted to die at age 75, before his faculties dimmed too much, before his life became a litany of medical concerns. "Dying at 75 will not be a tragedy," he wrote. "Death is a loss...But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss."

Emanuel, 57, said he wasn't planning to end his life at 75, only that he would not pursue health care strategies designed to prolong it past that point. But as the director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the NIH and one of the engineers of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare, aka death-panel central) his piece was a magnet for criticism.

One of the most scathing attacks came from Damon Linker, a writer for The Week. Emanuel's article "clearly amounts to a defense of eugenics," Linker wrote, because it suggests that only lives in top condition are worth living.
Linker's concluding remark appears to reveal the real foundation of his objection: "No one should hope to die—at 75, 80, 90, or ever."

As tempting as it is to get into the Emanuel-Linker debate, let's go to the other recent story on the subject of "Dying with Dignity". The second story, much more visceral than Emanuel's, went viral last week. Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman with terminal brain cancer and less than six months to live, says she is planning to end her life with an overdose of medication instead of allowing the cancer to take its ravaging course. "I do not want to die," she wrote in a piece for CNN. "But I am dying. And I want to die on my own terms."

Maynard has become a poster-child for the right-to-die movement, and she is an ideal spokesperson: attractive, eloquent, with a tragic story (diagnosed on New Year's Day, a year after her wedding) and all the right bonafides of medical courage (two surgeries, including a partial craniotomy). Despite that—or because of it—she has also become a lightning rod for critics of the movement, and they all seem to rest their case on the simple assertion that life has value.

My purpose in writing this post is to encourage my family, friends and readers to give the subject of dying some thought as painful as it may be. We need to be clear on what choices our loved ones have made and put the mechanisms in place to address those choices when the time comes. Recognize the value of preparing a will and an advance directive as a guide for our end-of-life journey. No one ever wants to discuss these issues, but having a clear view of the wishes of the individual family member will lessen the stress of making these decisions during extremely difficult times. It is also helpful to find out any existing laws that might impact your decisions. Be prayful and walk by faith.