A STEP-UNCLE of mine recently died. Horribly. Thanks
to the cowardice of the medical and political establish-
ments, and the gross anti-humanitarianism of religious
zealots, the Catholic Church in particular.

J was away on holiday when it
happened, so | didn’t find out un-
til a week later.

By the time | was able to call
my aunt, she had mostly recov-
ered from the initial shock,
managing to display the stoicism
that served her so well through the
Depression years, the war, the
death of her first husband.

She maintained this surface ap-
pearance of calm until she started
to describe my step-uncle’s final
days.

He was approaching 80. He had
just barely recovered from apen-
heart surgery. He was as fragile as
a butterfly.

Iremember when my mother
died, he was too close to the edge
himself to be able to risk coming
up to the hospital room, for fear

_ that such a traumatic brush with
death might trigger his own
demise. ‘

We.all understood perfectly. It
was a miracle he has lasted as
long as he did, although it got to
te less and less of a miracle every
‘day, and more and more of a
torment. ,

When the stomach pains came,
there was no way he could be
operated on again so soon. It fi-
nally reaches a point where too
many things are going wrong at
once. .°

He had developed a hideous
pain in his abdomen. No matter
what the doctors did, the pain
grew steadily worse. it would not
go away.

They took him to hospital, but
for a series of complicated medi-
cal reasons, there was little they
could do to ease the agony, and’
by then, he had developed a tol-
erance for morphine and demerol,
That also happens.

During the last three days and
nights of his life, he looked out
from pain-wracked eyes, begging
my aunt over and over and over
again: ‘‘Let me go, please let me
go!?’

Telling the story, my stoic aunt -
broke down, for the first time that
I ever remember. - :

What caused her the most hor-
ror.was her delerious, dying hus-
band’s idea that it was somehow
up to her, as though she had the
power to release him from the .
torfure chamber his body had
become. !

_ “But it wasn’t up to me,’’ she
sobbed. ‘‘I’d have let him go,
1 :

STRICTLY PERSONAL

God kuows. But they, wouldn’t do
anything.”

They. They, the cowardly medi-
cal people who are so willing to
play God when it comes to the
good stuff: healing the sick,
delivering babies, stitching limbs
back’ on, allowing the blind to see,
inserting hearing aids and artificial
organs.

But when it comes to the bitter
end, where there is absolutely no
hope, no gratification for anyone,
only horror and prolonged suf-
fering, the angels of mercy avert
their eyes, shrug, and refuse to
face the other side of godhood.

Which is pulling the plug or
giving the lethal agony-ending in- ”
jection, ‘

in my mother’s case (as in 50
many other unreported, unrecord-
ed, .:nacknowledged cases),
euthanasia was performed in the
end, when my brother, our stepfa-
ther and myself were asked
straightforwardly: ‘‘Do you want
us to remove the intravenous?’’

We took that deep, awful
breath, and nodded, together, at
once.

And that was it. Shé had been
dying of inoperable lung cancer
for too long.

It still took three days before
her great, wonderful heart stopped
beating; and shrivelled and parch-
ed, her tough old body finally quit
its mindless twitching.

At least, by then, she was un-
conscious.

My step-uncle wasn’t so lucky.
He went down in a drawn-out
agony, begging for a releasc that
my poor aunt could not give him.

~ LIFE IS
U NPREDICTABLE

~ THANKFULLY.
DON 1S NOT.

Don Eilers

926-6233
REAABC
‘MASTERS REALTY IN

{'m writing all this not to bum
your day out, but because of the
Sue Rodriguez case, and her
heroic attempt to shake the law,
the medical establishment and the
churches out of their implacable
indifference to ultimate human
suffering.

As far as organized religion is
concerned, neither I nor Sue
Rodriguez or anyone else on the
side of sanity and compassion
have much reason for hope.

The Catholic Church, summing
up the worst of abstract mind-
games run amok in its famous
Declaration on Euthanasia, has
stated categorically: ‘‘Suffering
during the last moments of life
has a special place in God’s saving
plan.””

That’s great news for
sadomasochists, but no one else.

The fact is we treat our dogs
and cats better than we do our
Joved ones.

A hopelessly sick pet is put
down with pentobarbitone sodi-
um, while my step-uncle and (un-
til the very end) my mother are
forced, by bizarre legal and
religious convention, to endure
hideous agony, probably beyond
anvthing endured by Christ on the
cross, because, thanks to modern
science, we can keep the victim
alive longer.

To what end? To suffer more.
How wonderful for ‘God's saving
plan.”

If that’s the best it can do, get
the church out of the hospitats, |
say. Ban the wretched clergymen
from the deathbeds, wiiere all they
can offer is prolonged pain.

As for doctors, shape up and
accept the responsibility for end-
ing the lives you have worked so
hard to prolong,

Beyond a certain point, science
is totally counterproductive. As
you have so eagerly learned to ex-
tend life to unnatural lengths,
fearn now y when to quit.

owstnd then, we all need something to
lean on...a support systeny we can trust.

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