Last week, a strong lady said a final goodbye to her mother.
With the help of voluntary assisted dying (VAD), Caroline Wingdén at last saw the lady who gave her life, released from her own… and with it, the relentless grip of chronic pain. Half a decade of suffering has now passed into the pages of history, leaving memories of a rich life and the legacy of individual choice.
The reason for Caroline’s happiness, among all the other emotion, is in the name… “voluntary”. Yet it’s required a lot of bureaucracy and a long trip to Switzerland to make this liberation possible. I’m touched by this topic as it takes me back to my grandmother in palliative care about a decade ago now. She wanted this choice too, yet the government denied it. All she could say was that she hoped things were different by the time I reached the crossroad she was at. That stuck with me.
This is such a sensitive taboo in our culture, that I decided to sit down with Caroline a few days before they flew out to discuss this journey with her mum.
We must reconsider our black and white approach to assisted dying. It’s forcing people to terminate their own lives in underground, black-market ways and that’s a stain on our culture’s reputation. State involvement in the dying process inverts the presumption of self-sovereignty. It’s a bureaucratic hand reaching into the palliative care bed and holding the person down by the chest while saying “you’ll die when I let you”, like some line from a Schwarzenegger movie. It’s intimately invasive.
When you die, you leave a hole. People miss what was in that hole, your identity. The infinite little things that make us who we are, the micro interactions, the jokes, the idiosyncrasies. We focus on that when people die because we notice when things are removed, we don’t tend to notice things when they’re around. Death brings into sharp focus our identities in a way that life doesn’t.
People care about the circumstances of their death, ironically, more than they care about the living that happened prior. Identity needs to matter in our lives arguably more so than our death. Yet when the government says “you will die at the time I choose and in the manner I say so”.. who are you? You are someone who has lost sovereignty over the most fundamental part of your life, and that is the circumstance under which it ends.
In our perpetual fight for freedom, we must recognise the breadth of our challenges. The last few years have rightly focused those of us who shelter the fragile flame of liberty on medical tyranny and its satellite issues. Let’s not lose focus however on the fact that those in power can act oppressively with unlimited scope. Spare a thought for those who don’t meet the criteria for liberation from a life of pain; arbitrary thresholds set by officialdom.
Remember that we all will one day face that last green mile, that final journey into our twilight days. During such a reflective time, one wants to be focused on friends, family, and a meaningful transition. It is a bespoke, invite-only celebration of life to be shared with those closest to us. The government is not invited. Let’s break the taboo on this topic and push for less government in death as we do so passionately in life. Our future end-of-life selves will thank us!
Caroline shares some pearls of wisdom and breaks down when talking about how distant people wearing suits have the power to dictate how much pain those we love must live with. It’s a challenging conversation for some… but well worth it.