There is nothing that can change our opinion and stance on issues like personal experience. I sometimes wish I had what appears to be passion to be really for or really against something, to get on my soapbox, on the bad wagon. However, I am plagued with “seeing both sides” on most issues.

For instance, I think abortion to terminate a pregnacy for family planning is a horrific thing, a barbaric procedure. However, whose heart wouldn’t be wrenched at the grief and shame of a young lady trying to weigh her options. There is something about sitting with, sitting beside someone in pain that changes the care giver. 

Likewise, if someone has no connection to a group of people that tend to be “marginalized” in our community, it is easy to criticize that group. Name the group because it doesn’t matter. However, if we become directly in contact with someone of that community, we realize they have feelings, hopes, and values. In short, they are just like us in many ways.

Sometimes, in causal conversation with friends, I will mention that I have a hard time disagreeing with what I call “assisted death.” We must however realize there is a difference in “going to die” and “dying.” Going to die involves having a terminal illness—Stage 4 Colon Cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Class IV Congestive Heart Failure. 

Dying is lying in bed unresponsive gasping for air often drowning in the secretions. I have walked out of a hospital room more than once knowing it would be more humane and more moral and more loving to assist someone’s passing than to “let nature take it course.” Nature is slow and cruel sometimes. Some friends will tell me that we cannot kill. Other friends will tell me that only God knows the time of our death, that we cannot play God. 

I cannot disagree with any of that. However, what I wish I could do is invite them to come see patients in the hospital with me some day. Come sit at a real death bed for a few hours. Listen to the strain and pain of dying, even with all the advances of comfort care. Again, I am not talking about prophylactic relief. Learning you have Parkinson’s Disease, and scheduling your death is not what I am talking about. I cannot imagine how a nation could implement such a policy, especially in the United States with our often polarized society. I do think it would be worthy to discuss and study. I suspect we will discuss it in the next 30 years as the baby boomers move through that stage of life and death.

I am not trying to convince you we should implement an “assisted death” policy in our country. I am suggesting those who walk on that death journey could be converted to such an idea. If you are a care giver, give yourself permission to know these thoughts are understandable. For now, we must do all we can to relieve the suffering with the tools we have available.