Death: It's Not Pretty or Sinful. It's a Fact of Life

By Mariel Garza, Los Angeles Daily News, March 15, 2006

Opinion

• Visit AB 651 proponents' Web site.

• Visit the opponent' Web sites at www.ca-aas.com and www.californiaprolife.org.

Two years ago, my grandmother announced to her three daughters that she was thinking about dying. Not just thinking about whether it would hurt, whether angels really have harps, or whether there's ice cream in the afterlife?

She was thinking about helping it along.

She said she didn't have much to live for anymore, felt isolated and useless. So she planned to stop eating and drinking after her impending 91st birthday.

Age had robbed her of so many of the things she'd loved and enjoyed in life. First, her husband, my grandfather, then so many of her good friends at the Claremont retirement community where she'd lived for two decades. Her body was failing as well.

She had been going deaf for years and now could barely hear. People were constantly shouting at her: "HI GRANDMOM! WHAT'S NEW?" Her eyesight was going, too, making it hard to watch movies or read books or write.

Then when an infection forced the amputation of one leg above the knee, this once-world traveler was suddenly permanently immobilized.

The family was, of course, shocked and saddened. And my mother and aunts found themselves upset and conflicted, trying to maintain a balance of supporting my grandmother's right to control the circumstance of her death and urging her to continue to live.

I'm happy to say that my grandmother decided not to hasten her death after all. She found reasons to go on, like the birth of her first great-grandchild and, oddly, the true story of a disabled man who won the right to an assisted suicide, as portrayed in the controversial film, "The Sea Inside."

I tell my grandmother's story not to make a political point about the right to die, but because I suspect that many people have a similar tale about their grandparents or father or mother or husband or wife. Considering how science and technology have extended our natural lives to amazing, and sometimes disturbing, lengths. It's no surprise, then, if the subject of controlling death is coming up a lot more often in family discussions.

In California, the discussion is about to go public. The catalyst is an Assembly bill co-sponsored by Van Nuys Democrat Lloyd Levine called the Compassionate Choices Act, which is expected to come up for committee discussion in early April.

From the cleverly euphemistic name of the bill, you can't really tell that it's about death. Modeled after Oregon's 1997 Death with Dignity Act, AB 651 would give people who have been diagnosed as terminally ill, with six or fewer months to live, the right to obtain a lethal dose of barbiturates from their doctors with the intent to end their lives.

As far groundbreaking law goes, it will affect a small portion of society. What it does do, however, is open the door to an uncomfortable and unpleasant discussion about how we allow individuals to control their own deaths and the way we allow them to control their lives.

The absolutists on both sides are already mustering their forces to shut down the debate before it gets going.

Opponents say society has no right to determine which lives aren't worth living (except, I guess, for those on Death Row) and that only God has the right to take life. Considering we happily thwart the will of God every day through things like pacemakers and penicillin, it's an argument that needs to fade like Y2K hysteria.

With the bill's silly name, it's clear proponents are cloaking the debate in a disingenuous touchy-feely, death-can-be-beautiful kind of thing.

Controlling death is neither beautiful nor a sin. It is, however, a fact of life. And we owe it to ourselves and the people who we love to start discussing this honestly and free of all of the polarizing rhetoric.

Mariel Garza

mariel.garza@dailynews.com

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