Editor:
Anne Stuart’s and Barbara Gobbi’s letters (Coast Reporter, March 6), regarding the Supreme Court case on assisted suicide, have prompted me to write and add my personal experience, especially as I have so recently experienced the death of my mother to breast cancer.
My mother was 85, and she was a vibrant, intelligent, lively woman who loved life. Even when she went rapidly downward in health a month before her death, she still embraced life as best she could. But then the progression of her disease made that impossible for her.
She lost abilities one by one, and as she did, we did our best to help her and support her, but eventually she needed to be in hospice care. There, she received the finest care we could possibly imagine, but her health continued to deteriorate, and soon she was suffering all the time. When we, her children, would visit, she would beg us to end her misery.
It strikes me that the cruelest thing is to rob people of the dignity to pass over in comfort, when they are ready. People who are dying know when they are ready. They know how to let us know. To keep them here is, in my opinion, short sighted, cruel and the utmost selfishness.
I did not want to lose my mother, but when she said she was ready to go, the powerlessness I felt to help her left me feeling I was hurting her and letting her down. I would not wish that on anyone. I would not wish my mom’s own “torture,” as she described it, to happen to anyone. Assisted suicide is a compassionate, thoughtful avenue for us to explore and I, for one, am glad the Supreme Court recognized that.
Kerrianne Ferrier, Gibsons
