People deserve to die6/29/2023 ![]() I was quite nervous when I took my first phone call in 2013, with a middle-aged man who had ALS. While my job is to provide information about the various options people have when considering death, most who call are just relieved they can find someone to talk to about dying, someone who will just listen. Related: Why I didn’t say goodbye to my dying mother I’m in my mid-70s and was a nurse for 20 years, so I’ve dealt with a lot of people who’ve been in difficult, uncomfortable and often really painful positions.įour years ago, a friend of mine at the Unitarian Church told me about the Dying With Dignity Network, which was training volunteers to speak with people looking for more information about medically-assisted death. Hearing fellow volunteers share why they were interested in Dying with Dignity, which included lots of stories of their own family members and friends suffering painful deaths, is what convinced me to sign up as a volunteer. They’re usually embarrassed, because their friends and family don’t want to discuss it, but that’s why they call me - they know I’ll understand. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision.Fifty people have called me in the last three years to say, “I’m thinking about dying.” I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar Khayyám. I have done something to help human understanding, to temper justice with mercy, to overcome hate with love. If I should succeed, my greatest reward and my greatest hope will be that. I am sure I do not need to tell this court, or to tell my friends that I would fight just as hard for the poor as for the rich. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man. I am pleading for the future I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. You may hang these boys you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love. I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all. I know the future is with me, and what I stand for here not merely for the lives of these two unfortunate lads, but for all boys and all girls for all of the young, and as far as possible, for all of the old. It is a hard thing for a father to see his life’s hopes crumble into dust. He watched him, he cared for him, he worked for him the boy was brilliant and accomplished, he educated him, and he thought that fame and position awaited him, as it should have awaited. ![]() ![]() Here it Leopold’s father - and this boy was the pride of his life. And I think here of the stanza of Housman: But what have they to look forward to? Nothing. I would be the last person on earth to close the door of hope to any human being that lives, and least of all to my clients. “I would not tell this court that I do not hope that some time, when life and age have changed their bodies, as they do, and have changed their emotions, as they do - that they may once more return to life. ![]()
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