You know what I have a problem with, Alffe??

Anyone who's taken care of sick, elderly people knows that "assisting" them when they've "had enough" has always been an option.

A caring doctor or a caring nurse who's really involved in taking care of their patients, knows them by name, knows the family, even makes home visits -- those kinds of caring people have always been willing to give just a tiny bit more morphine so that it 'helps the patient along on their journey'. The medical community even has a term for it.

What happens, in my viewpoint anyway, when you get lawyers and laws and organizations and governments involved in the whole process is that you lose the 'caring' part of it. It becomes not "a death with dignity" but a "death by process".

I spent a year as a home healh aide after my Mom passed. I wanted to "pay back" in some way the precious gifts that had been given to me. I was the only full-time aide in the two towns that I covered. I had 25 patients that I rotated through over a two-week period. Some I saw daily; some I saw every two weeks. All of my patients were elderly except for one young woman (about 21) with a neuromuscular disease. All the rest of them had cancer or heart problems or altzheimer's. Most of them were 'terminal'.

I spent months and months with most of these people. I grew close to their families and to them. Most of them -- when they'd had "enough" were able to give up and let go and leave.

I saw it in my own Mother. She hung on and hung on. They couldn't understand why she was lasting so long. It was because I wasn't ready to let her go. When I finally became "ready", she passed.

A lot of people that intellectualize the whole dying process and think that they want "death with dignity" don't really understand that most people that really are dying will do anything to hang on as long as possible. When they truly cannot "take anymore", they'll let go.

Someone who is a healthy, elderly individual who talks about "when my time comes" and "when I become a vegetable" and "I want 'death with dignity'" -- I believe -- doesn't really understand that the DIGNITY comes with accepting ALL of what life has to offer -- that includes the entire dying process

I still believe it's "suicide" if you end your life before The Universe intends it to end just because you don't want someone bathing your body or changing adult diapers or cleaning up your bowel movements. Speaking for myself only, I felt that taking care of my Mom and taking care of *MY* patients and doing all of that "yucky stuff" that people normally don't want to do is a gift -- it's a blessing to be able to care for someone's body and bodily processes while they're going through their final steps. I never did consider it a burden. I always felt that the people that I was caring for were dying WITH DIGNITY.

Barb