Khin Myint on His Sister's Decision to Die

In Slate, Khin Myint says he accepted his sister's decision to die as her right. But "It took me years more to realize something deeper about how we view human euthanasia." He writes about the difficulty of accepting her decision because she experienced psychotic breaks and so the choice might not meet whatever standards there are for independent, rational judgment. My sister Theda had been bedridden for seven years when she first decided she wanted to die. She was 32 then, and a mysterious chronic illness had diminished her will to live. Though it wasn’t legal in Australia at the time, she wanted to die by euthanasia. Technically, this would classify the death she wished for as a suicide. But ethically—and within the family—we understood it differently. ... When we recognize that mental and physical illnesses are not so cleanly divided, we can also question the usefulness of that “divide” for deciding on someone’s right to die. Should a person experiencing a temporary mental health episode be considered a euthanasia candidate? Everyone would agree the answer is no. Just like someone experiencing a bad case of mononucleosis shouldn’t be given the right to a medically assisted death, nor should someone experiencing an episode of depression. But should someone’s right to die be explicitly about their diagnosis? When someone’s suffering is intolerable and without an end in sight, that should be enough of a reason to consider their right to a peaceful death, on a case-by-case basis. We should listen to people in that situation when they ask for more rights, no matter the cause of their illness, as a cause may not be able to be neatly untangled. ... I wasn’t mad at Theda for ending her life. She had chosen euthanasia after reaching the end of what she could tolerate. I knew that it no longer mattered whether her illness had been in her body or mind. All I knew is that she was no longer suffering.

Poems on Grief

 “I Suffer a Phobia Called Hope” by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat

“Black Snow [I came home]” by Carl Adamshick

“A Great Beauty” by Cyrus Cassells

“Aspen Tree” by Paul Celan

“Greensickness” by Laurel Chen

“I measure every Grief I meet (561)” by Emily Dickinson

“Audience” by Maritza N. Estrada

“Elegy for the Disappeared” by Forrest Gander

“Praise Song” by Hafizah Augustus Geter

“On the Last Day, the Bullet is Asked” by Sadia Hassan

“My Dead Friends” by Marie Howe

“Hail, Mary” by Maria Lisella

A Loving Brother Writes About MAID -- Medical Aid in Dying

Steven Petrow writes in the New York Times, I Promised My Sister I Would Write About Her Death. An excerpt:

I joined a conversation my sister and her wife were having with a social worker, a new member of their hospice care team. They kept discussing “the MAID,” which I soon came to understand is the acronym for the New Jersey law referred to as Medical Aid in Dying. It allows New Jersey residents with terminal illnesses to choose to end their lives by taking a cocktail of life-ending medications. 

This important piece of legislation was enacted in 2019, and as of last year, 186 people had chosen to die this way. (That’s a very small percentage of annual New Jersey deaths.) Julie, a lawyer, had done her research and had told me that the Garden State is one of only 11 jurisdictions (10 states and the District of Columbia) that allow medical aid in dying, also known as death with dignity and end-of-life options....

With the MAID request approved, Maddy, Julie’s spouse of 35 years, picked up the prescription from a local pharmacy. The price: $900, which is not covered by Medicare, the Department of Veterans Affairs or many private insurance plans. A study published in The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society last year found that 96 percent of people who died by medical aid in dying were white and 72 percent had at least some college education. “The reality is that communities of color, for a wide variety of reasons, also are more likely to utilize aggressive care and less likely to use other end-of-life care options, such as hospice and palliative care,” explained Ms. Callinan. People without the resources to pursue MAID may be forced to make a different choice: suffer through a painful death or take matters into their own hands. “Be sure to include these statistics when you write about this,” my sister directed me.

With her pain unabated, my sister’s next task was to choose the day she would die. Our entire family supported Julie’s decision; still, we did not want to say goodbye. We made silly excuses for why certain days were inconvenient. 

Funeral Poem - If I Should Go By Herself & All Her Friends - By Joyce G...

The Allure of Assisted Suicide

A Hospice Nurse on Embracing the Grace of Dying

From an interview with hospice nurse Hadley Vlahos in the New York Times:

What should more people know about death?

I think they should know what they want. I’ve been in more situations than you could imagine where people just don’t know. Do they want to be in a nursing home at the end or at home? Organ donation? Do you want to be buried or cremated? The issue is a little deeper here: Someone gets diagnosed with a terminal illness, and we have a culture where you have to “fight.” That’s the terminology we use: “Fight against it.” So the family won’t say, “Do you want to be buried or cremated?” because those are not fighting words. I have had situations where someone has had terminal cancer for three years, and they die, and I say: “Do they want to be buried or cremated? Because I’ve told the funeral home I’d call.” And the family goes, “I don’t know what they wanted.” I’m like, We’ve known about this for three years! But no one wants to say: “You are going to die. What do you want us to do?” It’s against that culture of “You’re going to beat this.”

...

Do these experiences feel religious to you?

No, and that was one of the most convincing things for me. It does not matter what their background is — if they believe in nothing, if they are the most religious person, if they grew up in a different country, rich or poor. They all tell me the same things. And it’s not like a dream, which is what I think a lot of people think it is. Like, Oh, I went to sleep, and I had a dream. What it is instead is this overwhelming sense of peace. People feel this peace, and they will talk to me, just like you and I are talking, and then they will also talk to their deceased loved ones. I see that over and over again: They are not confused; there’s no change in their medications. Other hospice nurses, people who have been doing this longer than me, or physicians, we all believe in this.

A Parent Describes Grief

With the death of our eldest child, I had no framework on how to proceed through my own mental health journey. People don’t talk about such things. As a television producer, I found myself thinking about our responsibility in telling stories around grief and mental health. Can we as an industry tell those stories accurately and effectively? ... My experience is that the topics of death, dying and grief are quite taboo – even though most will experience it. If you love someone, you will grieve. And anyone who has been there will tell you that grief can annihilate your mental health like a linebacker taking down a fourth-string quarterback. ... I will walk with grief the rest of my days, but now I know how to do it safely. Grief and mental health are inextricable. In our industry of telling stories, we cannot ignore this topic that affects us all. I feel so grateful that I got to tell the story responsibly… and in the end, we even got to laugh. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning’ Producer on How She Learned to Handle Grief