Right to Die

As I was thumbing through my Oprah magazine the other night I came across an interesting article.

The article was about a woman who's mother had opted to "off" herself instead of dying the slow agonizing death that her degenerative Parkinson's disease offered her.

The mother had gone as far to include the family making sure they would be there for her "suicide".

Long story made short, the mother had a failed attempt in overdosing herself on morphine. Eventually, she decided the best way to die was to starve herself to death.

After a few days of starving her physical body her death was finally underway. Her children sat by her side and watched her slowly die a painless inevitable death.

Although the article gave me the creeps a bit...and only because this sort of death is out of society's norm, it did get me to speculating.

Why do we prolong the inevitable???? If we are nothing but a burden to ourselves and our loved ones and our "purpose" here on Earth is done why not lessen our physical and emotional suffering????? We have no qualms with taking our suffering pets to the vet to have them euthanized, but yet we don't find it acceptable to offer our fellow man the same relief.

In this instance I think about my mother. She was dying of cancer and death was inevitable yet she hung on for 2 miserable months while her loved ones watch her suffer(and she suffered) before she finally passed.

Think about it; when a child is to be born we sometimes quicken the process by inducing labor or scheduling a C-section to take the baby early. Why is it o.k to quicken the process of birth but not death???

In essence and reality we are all dying, just at different rates. And quite honestly we all commit suicide....some of us just do it quicker than others. Some of us die of heart attacks from stress, some of us smoke and drink ourselves to death, some of us hold anger and resentment inside manifesting physical illnesses such as cancer and other similar diseases.

I'm sure the debate over Euthanasia can get very in depth with pros and cons, but it's all very simple in my opinion. Luckily, Euthanasia is legal to a limited extent in the state of Texas...just in case I ever need it one day...

When it's all said and done, I'm assuming the big debate over Euthanasia probably has a lot to do with religious beliefs than it does about practicality.