“I lost two friends to MAiD last week. Granted both were terminally ill, but it still seemed shockingly fast to me that they died so quickly. My friend was in hospital and found out she had stomach and liver cancer. The MAiD team at the hospital came to see her on Monday morning and arranged for her to die on Wednesday. There was no talk of palliative care – it was straight to MAiD. I found it so hard getting my head around an appointment with death like that.”
I received the above message from a friend just before Christmas, and I haven’t been able to rid myself of the feeling it aroused in me. I knew the woman my friend was talking about, but not well, so the grief wasn’t acute. I’d had a similar experience with a neighbour recently — I found out that he was terminally ill one day, and the next day, he was gone. I guess we’re supposed to feel happy that they didn’t have to suffer through a long period of decline, that there was an “option” available. But wasn’t MAiD for the terminally ill supposed to be ONE of the options that would now be offered to patients? That may (or may not) have been true for my neighbour, but it was not true for my acquaintance in the story above. The only “palliative” option offered to her was death, and the time frame was basically NOW.
Is it better this way? Maybe in this modern age of car accidents and drug overdoses, deaths by firearms, deaths by bombs exploding in the hospitals of Gaza — maybe in this historical moment, sudden death is a reality that we just have to get used to. Do we need to toughen up? Maybe …
That is what worries me, though: the toughening up; the growing of the thicker skin; the cultivation of a slight indifference; the loosening of bonds; the ever-growing skill of switching attention from the emotionally difficult to the mindlessly distracting; the developing illusion of oneself as independent of others, entirely separate, ruggedly individual.
The fact that this wide-spread social tendency is accompanied by an internationally documented crisis of loneliness does not seem too mysterious or hard to grasp. As individuals, we need to recognize and honour our connection to others, not only in childhood but throughout the life cycle, including through the process of winding down, the process of dying.
But I worry that we have become impatient with death. Impatient with infirmity, weakness, disability, decline. We are busy people and we have a lot to do in our waking hours. We have projects and tasks to attend to. We need to be somewhere. We have clients waiting. We really don’t have time to care too much. To be there for someone, perhaps especially if that someone doesn’t remember who we are.
Even more worrisome than our individual impatience is a more systemic impatience. It’s expensive to have patients in beds. Other patients are waiting for those beds. Those other patients may be curable, while this one is not. One way or another, clear that bed! [If you think that wouldn’t happen, it did happen to my mother-in-law — as soon as her immediate family members decided not to pursue further treatment, someone appeared at the door to the room telling them that the bed needed to be cleared in two hours. A lot of complex care and equipment arrangements had to be lined up in those two frantic hours!! There was no “discharge planning” and no offer of assistance with palliative care arrangements.]
They make assisted death sound so good when they promote it — choose your own time, have friends and family around, everyone celebrating your life and who you were, a dignified goodbye. I wonder though, for the 44,000 + people who have died this way since MAID was introduced in Canada, how many of those deaths looked anything like the scenario they promote? And how many were quite a bit sadder and lonelier than that? For many — Wilma Herzgers, for example — the family was not even informed. There are many other examples on this website’s Remembering Lives Lived page.
One gentleman asked his MAID provider to wait while he changed into his clown outfit, and she waited. She thought it was amusing that he wanted to show her that side of himself, and after ending his life, she left him there in his clown outfit to be collected.
Another had expressed a wish to be in control of the time of his death, unlike so many he had known who were killed by Nazis decades before, and his doctor agreed that she could “provide” for him, as an agent authorized by the state to do so. But as his cancer progressed, he found he really loved sitting by his window watching the bluejays come and go outside, wings flashing in the sunlight — they delighted him — he procrastinated. The doc came one day and reminded him that if he wanted to choose his time, he’d better hurry up or the cancer would kill him before she could administer the drugs. He said goodbye to the bluejays and lay down on his bed.
Those last two stories were actually told by MAID providers doing quite separate “educational” presentations to different audiences, both obviously convinced that they had done right by those people. And both stories made me weep. The clown and the Holocaust survivor. These, dear readers, are sad stories. They don’t deserve to be brushed off or dismissed or celebrated. Both of those gentlemen deserved attentive and tender palliative care — someone to sit and listen to the stories, share in the joys and sorrows, have their hands held and their aching hearts comforted.
But no. Now we have the arrival of the “MAID Team” on the cancer care ward, instead of the palliative care team. That doesn’t strike me as a sign of increased patient control and dignity in death. Rather it seems like an ominous sign of a deeply worrisome cultural shift.
Your comments are welcome.
Oh, this is such a moving, incisive, and despair-inducing post Patricia. I am struck by your last line about “a deeply worrisome cultural shift”. Because i am wondering — is it indeed a shift, or is it a deeply worrisome cultural norm? New in its current Canadian form for sure, as it was resisted for so long by ancient cultural norms of medicine/religious traditions/multigenerational family structures etc., that have been sitting awkwardly on top of a society that individualizes and commodifies everything, including care and life. And so, it is –almost predictably maybe?– emerging now, not unlike the climate emergency.
And as you say, the reality of, and the information overload of all the sudden deaths. Such that “voluntary”, apparently painless deaths–indeed deaths to avoid pain, can hardly seem, in this context, as an urgent social injustice. It’s a different kind of horror, no? One that your post reveals.
I am so sorry Patricia that you lost two treasured friends especially to MAID. It does seem to be a very undignified and cold way to pass on. For some who have family it may be different. You are so right, impatience seems to be an epidemic. Recently a friend of mine had surgery for cancer and 3 days later nursing staff came to her saying she could go home as they needed the bed. Before she was even dressed for the day, staff was getting her bed ready for another patient. She could not drive since she just had surgery, so the nurse offered to call her a cab. Thankfully she had family and her son drove from his work in Halifax to take her home. It is so distressing to think that death (MAID) is showing up at your door not even invited.