 |
| John Cruickshank & my bottle of Calvados |
Last night I had such a terrible toothache that Aleve did not alleviate. I resorted to a solution that I had tried once before as I wrote here. I opened a lovely bottle of expensive Calvados and took a swig. I kept it in my mouth for a while and then I did it again (and yes I did swallow it). The pain subsided and I was able to fall asleep.
Sandrine Cassini and my terrible toothache
Tomorrow I am scheduled for a root canal at my dentist in the morning. I had gone to see him a few days ago telling me of my mild but intermittent pain.
The fact that at age 81 I still have all of my teeth is possibly due to the fact that my mother spent good money on dentists.
The terrible pain last night made me think of something that few of us ever experience. That pain made me think of people with diseases like terminal cancer that they want to die.
I have always believed that our will to live would somehow circumvent that desire to avoid pain by calling it quits with one’s existence.
That took me to a blog I wrote about a Vancouver journalist I most admired called Rick Ouston. He wrote an essay on August 22, 2014 defending euthanasia and mentioning that he had bungled his own efforts at suicide. I knew Ouston, but not well. He was a man who looked seriously depressed.
Malcolm Parry as editor of Vancouver Magazine would hire Ouston once a year to write about the status of Vancouver newspapers. Ouston was a thorough reporter.
Now can it be that the Vancouver Sun published that Ouston story on Euthanasia?
It had to do that at the time the Editor-in-Chief was John Cruickshank who I believe was the best editor the Vancouver Sun ever had. It took guts to publish that Ouston piece.
At one time I had the digital link of Ouston’s piece in one of my Ouston blog. It is sadly gone. I wonder if our Vancouver Archives or if our newspapers keep those links saved and stored anywhere.
But I was able to get a copy of Ouston’s essay by my sometimes good connections. Anybody who has gotten this far should make an effort to read it. Ouston’s piece represented for me a high point in Vancouver journalism.
Will it ever return? Where are you Rick Ouston? We need you.
Choice of death is a personal thing; Assisted suicide: Place it in the hands of the people, not the doctors or courts
Vancouver Sun
Fri Aug 22 2014
Page: B9
Section: Opinion
Byline: Rick Ouston
Source: Vancouver Sun
The reasons why multi-talented Robin Williams took his own life will never be fully known. Maybe depression, Parkinson's, money woes, or some other demon - only he knew, and his voice is now stilled.
But his death begs a public discussion about suicide.
I have long maintained that if ever diagnosed with Alzheimer's or another dementia, I will take my own life. My reasoning is personal and purely selfish: What's the point in staying alive if I can't think? I am beholden to no one, no children of my own, no needy parents, no debts.
If life is not worth living, what is the point?
But our society prohibits assisted suicide, making it a crime punishable by jail time. Williams chose to die at his home, leaving his body to be found, his remains a messy, stark and perhaps surprisingly tragic discovery.
He had no real choice. Assisted suicide is legal in just a few U.S. states - as close to us as Washington - but only for people diagnosed with just a few months to live, usually too weak and addled to take their own lives. There are some agencies internationally, such as Dignitas in Switzerland, that people can attend, but travelling there entails a passport, airports, money, paperwork and other indignities. It strikes me as a waste of effort to leave the country to do something we're all going to do: die.
The Vancouver Sun on Wednesday carried a frontpage story on Bowen Island's Gillian Bennett, a brave psychotherapist who committed suicide Monday after years of succumbing to dementia. She had to surreptitiously acquire the fatal dose of drugs and lug a mattress over rocks, and police and the coroner were needed to attend after her death.
Why can't we check into a pampering facility close to home, with a water view and a fancy meal with an expensive bottle of wine, and simply drift away to death?
Instead of leaving loved ones to find our bodies and clean up the mess, staff could do the job. There are people who already deal with human remains - funeral directors and palliative care professionals, for example - for whom it would be an unpleasant task, but not one for tears and sadness.
Assisted suicide would only be available for people after counselling, a methodically reasoned decision.
Cancer patients at home waiting for death get morphine for pain, the drugs administered by a trusted person. And if the dosage hastens their death, no one in authority questions that and there is no legal retribution. But the onus is still placed on caregivers often forever plagued with guilt for their actions.
In Canada, there are no legal alternatives for providing death with dignity and peace.
I'm just a journalist, not a doctor or lawyer or clergyman or professional ethicist. But I did make my own attempt at suicide last year, beset by a personal issue that shall remain personal - because that's what personal is - that I hid in an alcoholic haze. I was too drunk to unhook the garden hose to connect it to my exhaust pipe, so I swallowed a bottle of Ativan that had been prescribed for pain relief stemming from an old car accident.
As it turned out, there were not enough pills for a fatal dose and eventually I fell and bruised my brain and spent days in hospitals. Because it was alcohol-related and I was too humiliated to reveal the underlying reasons, I was ordered into alcohol rehab.
I'm happy I didn't die last year because I still have things to do.
Why all this personal information?
Because our deaths, if we have the choice, are a personal thing.
I had undergone no counselling, taken no time to soberly cogitate my death. If anyone had helped, it would have been a crime. The lawmakers say so.
And that leads me to the second reason I think I have a right to write these words.
I was abandoned at birth, adopted by a good family and eventually used what abilities I had to sleuth out my biological relatives because I was curious to know the fundamental facts of my life. Adoption records were sealed. It was the law.
I wrote a book on all of this years ago. Then-Minister of Social Services Joy MacPhail bought a copy of the book, read it, got to the part where I argued that adoption records should be opened, agreed, shared the reasoning with her colleagues in the Opposition, and B.C. became the first jurisdiction in North America to unseal adoption records. Since then, adoptees like me haven't had to skulk around to find out who and why they are.
Anarchy has not broken out. Some other provinces and U.S. states have followed B.C.'s lead, mothers get found and life goes on. That which was once legally not allowed is now allowed. The laws got changed. It happened with births. It should happen with deaths.
It would take a federal effort. No individual politician or party wants to be painted as being 'pro-death.' Anyone who shares my thinking would have to lobby politicians for a change to the suicide law.
Some talk about it as 'physician-assisted suicide.' That needs to be changed. Most doctors become doctors to help people, not kill them. This lifeand-death issue needs to be removed from the hands of doctors and placed in the hands of us all.
Some faiths prohibit people from advocating assisted suicide. So be it. I'm not advocating mandatory suicide no more than the abortion debate centres on enforced deaths of the unborn. Some people will choose to stay alive as long as possible, for their own reasons. They are entitled to that choice.
I want to die when I'm good and ready to die, not be forced into a long-term care home when I'm too weak mentally or physically to successfully protest against it.
So, why hasn't this debate, in a country as socially progressive as Canada, already been resolved?
Because no one in a position of power or responsibility can risk the very real possibility of being blamed for a copycat suicide.
Me, I'm just a newspaper editor, responsible for nothing except typing and spelling. If there is blame for copy-catting because of these words, blame me.
But for people who share my point of view, I'm merely asking: Let your federal politicians know how you feel.
How you wish to live. And how you wish to die.
Rick Ouston is an editor at The Vancouver Sun [email protected]
© 2014 Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved.
