The latest "euthanasia" bill

has just passed the upper house of our state parliament. It will now go to the lower house for debate.  (If that sounds back to front it is because it is a bill which has been put forward by a member of the upper house and it will need to go back to the upper house again.)

I have mixed feelings about euthanasia. My mother would have chosen that option. The last few months of her life were not comfortable. She wanted to go when the cancer returned just a few weeks after major surgery to remove it. The doctor told her then it was terminal. 

My father has a "DNR" order - "do not resuscitate". He repeated this very forcefully recently. I think the staff member he said this to was quite shocked. But why? The Senior Cat is 98. He is mentally still very alert but he is physically frail. He gets tired very quickly. 

Middle Cat, Brother Cat and I all have DNR orders too. What they mean or should mean is that no extraordinary measures will be taken to keep us alive and in a vegetative state. For us it is seen as the responsible course of action.

I know other people feel differently. Yesterday I was talking to the partner of the Senior Cat's closest friend of  many years. K.... is now in a dementia unit. Sometimes he knows his wife and sometimes he doesn't. He doesn't know his children. He doesn't know his friends. B... told me if she mentions the Senior Cat's name he will sometimes appears to recognise it.  He doesn't have a DNR order and his wife would almost certainly fight to keep him alive. His children feel differently.  

Why? It is perhaps partly a generational issue. They have grown up in a world where these things are discussed and debated in parliament. Holland's laws have not shocked them the way they have shocked many older people in other countries. It isn't that life is any less precious to them. I refuse to believe that. It is perhaps that they are not the church going generation for whom the sanctity of life and the certainty of an after-life are as sure. 

The woman whose funeral I went to on Monday wanted to live as long as possible. She went through the pain and discomfort of chemotherapy at 90 in an effort to remain here. It wasn't because she was afraid of dying but, as she once told me herself, "I have so much I still want to do".   

But do we give people a choice? Middle Cat and I knew what our mother wanted. She had been absolutely certain about an after-life. She wanted to die. There was no "quality of life". When the doctor asked the question, "Shall we up the...." and named a drug designed to give pain relief but given in a sufficiently high dose would likely hasten the process we said "yes" because it was what she wanted. Did we do the right thing? It is a question we will never have an absolute answer to but we were doing as she asked.