Euthanasia

A dear friend died recently. He lost a long and horrible struggle with multiple diseases and chronic pain. Confined to a bed in a nursing home for months due to the loss of both feet from diabetes his leg stumps never healed and oozed blood through his bandages on a daily basis. Cancer of the throat made it impossible to eat. Feeding tubes pumped liquid food into his stomach and bowel evacuation tubes emptied into a plastic bag each day. When death finally came, the family was actually happy. My friend's ordeal was at an end, but none too soon for those who loved him.

Witnessing this sad spectacle for months, the family was physically and emotionally spent. My friend would often beg to die, but no one could do anything except ask for more narcotics to help ease the pain.

Knowing my friend, I believe the pain of confinement, the loss of human dignity, and the isolation from any meaningful life must have been his greatest horror.

My mind remembered an incident from the distant past. My little dog "Spot" was a gift from a favorite uncle who was at that time fighting Nazi Germany in the Big War. "Spot" was a tiny mongrel dog who followed me everywhere I would roam. He was a gentle little fellow who would never harm anything or anyone. One day "Spot" was savagely attacked by a much larger and vicious dog and was torn almost in half. The grownups said there was no hope that "Spot" would recover. To put him out of his misery, my dad ended "Spot's" life. I buried my dog in the woods and cried as I put him in the Greenville, South Carolina soil. Even my nine year old mind knew my dad had done the most loving thing for "Spot."

In subsequent years I have thought often of that day. I have lived long enough to have personally experienced the loss of many people whom I care about. But I have never really been able to understand or justify why it is that we treat our terminal animals with greater love and dignity than we do our terminally ill human beings.

I am aware as one who reads the Bible that St. Paul once wrote that "...death is an enemy." But is death really an enemy of our humanity?

I think not. I think St. Paul was wrong about this. He was wrong in a number of other places as well, but that is a story for another time.

It is my belief that euthanasia should be legal in our nation. Whenever the medical community along with the family and the sick person believes that life is more than a condition I described at the beginning of the article, it is time to grant the sick person a chance to die without pain and with human dignity.

Many will disagree with me, and that is okay. Some will say that euthanasia is mankind playing God. But, would this not also be true each time we execute someone or even whenever we kill anyone for whatever reason.

If Christian tradition regards life as too sacred to have it taken away under any circumstances, does it not become too sacred to have it taken away under any circumstance? If that conclusion is not drawn, how can one say that legal suicide is evil?

There was once a man who lived a good and productive life. In his old age he was asked if he had made his peace with God. He answered that they had never quarreled. He was told that when he died he would be resurrected one day from his resting place and put into an eternal flame filled pit. The old man died and his faithful dog on the same day. When the man awoke on that fateful day he asked about his dog and was told that dogs were left to sleep forever. And the old man said he wished he was a dog.

What do you think? Shalom.

This article was first published in the Gainesville Times in May 2003