A Matter of Life or Death

("Could I Kill My Mother?")

My mother would not have wanted to live like this. Day after day, year after year, unaware of her very surroundings, unable to communicate her thoughts, incapable of attending to her needs. It was a helpless, hopeless nightmare that drained her financial resources and the emotional reserve of my sister and myself.

And yet, even had our mom been able to plead with us to end her most diminished state of being, we would have been powerless to comply.

Is this what our society demands, this act of seeming cruelty in watching a life fade away in this manner? Do we demonstrate respect, compassion, caring or is our moral compass askew when we wring our hands, hold our heads and our tongues and watch in silent agony as this plays out in excruciatingly slow motion?

For my mom, it was nearly a decade in this alternate universe, one in which everything that mattered most in her existence was taken away, piece by piece, and hour by hour until all that eventually remained was the physical shell.

And when it ended there was sadness not only that she was gone but that she had lingered so long in this ever declining state. Sadness knowing that this would never have been the way she chose to say goodbye, never have been the way she wanted us to see her, never have been how she chose her final act upon the stage to play out.

There is something fundamentally wrong, something wholly undignified, something disrespectful in our society's mandate on the issue of the sanctity of life no matter it's ultimate definition. Continued existence, whatever it's four corners, our only command.

For my sister and myself and for the many millions each day whose story unfolds in similar, painful watching and waiting, waiting, waiting there is the perpetual question of whether we are doing to, rather than for.

And whether the crime we commit is in keeping those we love alive instead of helping them die.