married again.

She was still a beautiful
woman, ] thought. Her hair
was pure white. Her teeth
were gone and her face had
become craggy, but it's
perfectly okay for very old
people to look very old. 1
liked her better without the
false teeth. That way, she
had more natural dignity.

1 liked her better, too,
without make-up. Make-up
on a very old woman's face
can be macabre.

lt seemed to me, in a way,
she. glowed. Maybe. what !
saw was her spirit gathering
itself for the great leap. Her
shade, medieval people
would have called it. Her
aura departing. Something
like that.

She has been in and out of
the hospital, in and out, in
and’ out. The strokes or
seizures or whatever they are
come at neariy monthly in-
tervals now, like the con-
tractions of labor, only in
reverse.

It ‘seems, for her, leaving

the world will be at least as
agonizing as the entry. More
blood” and messes. More
body-racking ‘convulsions;
More time on the rack.
_¢ Only this departure ‘is ‘far
more painful, more drawn-
out than birth. There are the
needles they jam into her
stick of an arm. The skin is
bruised a permanent brown
around the needic holes, as
though already mummified.

In her eyes, there is
tremendous fear.-

She thinks she has been in

an auiomobile accident, even

though. she hasn't. She°

thinks there are corpses in
the closet across the room.

She. hurts all. over, of
course. Her buttocks have
been numb a long time from
the bed, but how can you
twist into a more comfor-
table position without the
catheter pulling lore? And
the tubes running up the
nose, so thin and richly
veined, the once-smooth skin
almost transparent ...

Every time she alinost
dies, she is rushed to a
machine that jerks her back
into the land of the living
where the hurt continues.

Sometimes she shivers
even though she feels like
she’s burning.

The nurses took away the
button she used to call them
every 20 minutes to com-
plain about something new.
It is a vicious spiral. She
makes an effort, at first, to
ask questions about the out-
side world. But her own
world is so entirely filled up
with discomforts and
frustrations and pain that it
is quite impossible for her to
keep up the small talk,

“This isn't right,’’ she
whispered to me.

All I could do was shake
my head, clench my jaws. It
took a moment tu say, ‘'iNo,
it's not right.”

1 knew what the right
thing to do was. It was
perfectly clear. The right
thing to do was to somehow

4 - Wednesday, March 6, 1985 - North Shore News

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

Long, cruel death

nce she had been a beautiful woman. Men
had fought over her. She had been married
and divorced, married and divorced, and

Jet her go. The feeling I had
was the same kind of feeling
1 get when | see a mutilated
animal in a leghold trap. For
God's sake, end the misery!
Just a couple of years ago,
the guy whom all the kids
called Gramps finally passed
away after nearly a year in
one of these beds. He was
better off, in a way. Most of

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the time, he wasn’t there.
His mind was adrift.

So he probably didn't feel
the catheter so much, the
needles, the bedpans being
removed, the tubes in the
nose. The needles. The nec-
dles. The needles.

And somehow it is all
passed off, this torture, as
humanitarianism. Let them
go, I say. Beyond a certain
point, we just shouldn't be
saved any more. I know |
don’t want to be.

My wife and 1 have a

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death pact. If I end up a
vegetable, kept alive by a
machine, she has vowed to
disconnect me, and I swear
to do the same for her if our
positions are reversed. Be-
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want to be able to refuse
treatment, except to stop the
pain.

When survival becomes
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any longer. In supposedly
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inquisitors (who also claimed
they did it in the name of
love) we inflict a long cruel
dying.

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