“So you think you’re free. You are part of a democratic society, so you have the freedom of choice in how you live – and die. Well, you don’t.”
“I have the privilege to learn and hear interesting perspectives, along with all the questions and comments that our community members have, on the topics of death and dying. Here are a few insights I have gleaned from these discussions.”
“There should be a JLMA form: Just Leave Me Alone, for those of us who concede that we’re actually going to die some day and work to keep our end-times as inexpensive and comfortable as possible.”
“One of the most common questions asked by people considering ending their suffering is how to start the conversation with family members and friends.”
“Why would an anti-MAiD activist try to force a patient about whom they know nothing, to live by the activist’s personal values rather than the patient’s own?”
It’s time that we revise and refine our cultural lexicon around this emergent end-of-life practice. A medically assisted death definitively warrants a linguistic and conceptual category of its own.
“The rest is up to you,” he finally said, ending the conversation for good. He didn’t have any more guidance, and certainly no more patience to talk about it. I was surprised. To me, it felt slightly irresponsible to leave all these decisions to other people.
After he died, Jean and her sister both looked at one other and said, “That’s how I’m going to die.”
It should be clear, as we argued in the first part of this two-part post, that the word “suicide” is not always appropriate. In this second part of our post, we offer a candidate word.