My wife is in nursing school and has clinical duty where she gets to "be" a nurse. This past week she got to care for a 93 year old woman who was bed-ridden and suffering. The woman was pleading with my wife to let her go (meaning let her die). Of course my wife could not help, but it brought to mind just how disrespectful it is to let our elderly live beyond when they want to live. This religiously-based notion that suicide under all circumstances is an evil thing stops us from allowing the humane thing to be done.
I’m old enough now that I can imagine a time when I’ll be tired of living and would welcome the quiet sleep of death. Death shouldn’t be so feared; the act of dying might be a painful one, but death itself is not.
Many cultures in history have allowed their old to die gracefully when the time came. Our own Native American Indians are an example – the elderly (or really anyone) could wonder off into the woods or fields, as the case may be, and quietly die on their own.
In modern times, we have the luxury of methods that will allow us to quietly go to sleep and die. Why are we therefore hanging on to this notion that all suicide is bad and we force people that would rather just fade away suffer continuously until they get so far gone that technology can’t keep them alive.
It seems to me that this is just being disrespectful of the individual and their right to die when they choose to. Everyone dies, so why should we make the end so painful when there are alternatives?
