In our increasingly disposable society, we have now made it acceptable—and even laudable—to throw away people. We see an example of this with a Connecticut woman named Lynda Bluestein, who was the first non-resident of Vermont to take advantage of the state’s new medical-aid-in-dying law that now allows for residents of other states to travel to Vermont to die.
On January 4, Bluestein, who had been suffering from ovarian and fallopian tube cancer, died after taking a lethal dose of medication.
This NBC article seems to hold Bluestein and her decision in high regard, saying she has been “a crusader her entire life.” Apparently, she marched against gun violence and has been advocating—to no avail—for a change in medical-aid-in-dying laws in Connecticut.
When asked how she would like to be remembered, Bluestein said, “I’d like to be remembered as someone who never thought that second best was even in the realm of possibility, who always believed that you can make everything better.”
Her son supported her decision to kill herself, saying, “I’m proud to be next to her doing this. . . . [I] wouldn’t want to be any place else. It’s a gift.”
A gift? For whom?
A true gift would be caring for a sick or elderly loved one until natural death. It would be walking with them through their pain and helping them see their value, regardless of how sick they are. It would be ensuring that the person never felt like a burden.
Contrast this view with the response of Bruce Willis’s family, which has rallied around him since his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis. His wife, Emma, recently posted a photo with the caption, “My love and adoration for him only grows.” Bruce’s wife and daughters regularly update fans across the globe by posting pictures and messages to help spread awareness and to encourage people to remain strong when caring for a loved one who is suffering from a similar diagnosis.
While we don’t know what the future holds for Willis, we can offer our prayers and we can use their loving actions as examples for how we should treat family members who are suffering.
There is no doubt that it is incredibly difficult to watch a family member suffer from a debilitating illness. It can be emotionally, physically, and financially draining. But love for another—especially family—commands that we treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve as human beings. And that means that we must never rush them to death or act as if they are burdens.
Love consists of wanting and pursuing only good for another person. Misguided compassion that leads to an early death is not authentic love.
Yet today we see an increase in disdain and a blatant disregard for the elderly and the sick. News stories show a culture where the elderly are mistreated, where nurses replace pain meds with water, and where “death with dignity” implies that a person needs to die in order to retain his dignity.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
We are human beings; we are not animals. Human beings never need to be put down. We do not need an early death to retain dignity. Our dignity is given to us at our creation, and we never lose it. Though people may treat others without the dignity that they deserve, that does not mean that the person lacks dignity.
While Bluestein’s son’s misguided compassion led him to think that allowing his mother to take her own life was a “gift,” we must realize that life is a gift. And caring for someone, treating them with true compassion, and loving them unconditionally is a gift we can give them, especially as they near the end of their lives.
Someday, Christ will ask us how we cared for the people He entrusted to us—our children, our parents, our grandparents, or even an elderly friend. Imagine looking into the beatific face of God and telling Him that we advocated for our loved one to take a lethal dose of medication.
Now imagine looking into His face and saying we held our grandfather’s hand, read our mother a book, or sat by our nephew’s bedside and just loved him. This authentic love is the love we should exhibit to every single person, no matter their stage of life or their ability.
This authentic love is what will allow us to someday hear those seven words we should all long to hear: “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
If you or a loved one needs help or advocacy in the later stages of life, visit the Healthcare Advocacy and Leadership Organization for assistance.
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I think half or more of deaths attributed to “gun violence ” involve suicide. I don’t understand why those who promote one form of suicide want to prevent other types. You end up with the same result.
When you do not worship God who is the Author of life, you wind up thinking that the prerogative of life and death rests in your own hands – for yourself and others. Hence, murder, abortion, contraception, euthanasia, in vitro fertilization, surrogate parenting, etc
Sometimes the good is perfectly clear, but sometimes we do not know what is truly good for another person, or there are equally compelling visions of what that good is. That’s where the problem arises.
How so Steve? I can’t think of any variety of good connected to suicide. (If that’s what you are referring to.)
Clarify.
Provide an objective argument of ‘where the problem is’ concerning alternate ‘goods’ relative to this column.
Great article on human life and the respect we all should give to it, no matter what. I love how you have links you can further read, especially the “seven words”. I hear that in Mass and it was nice to read again. Thank you.
This hits home. Three years ago I was discovered to have pancreatic cancer. Surgery to remove it was unsuccessful. The first thing I was asked (in Quebec Canada), when it was discovered, was whether I wished to be treated, wished to be resuscitated or if I was to be provided with assisted dying. The doctor asking these things semi-apologized with “we are required by law to ask and indicate it on your file”. I replied with some words like “I am a Catholic and will go naturally when God wants me”. God’s greatest gift is existence: it is what makes God’s gift of eternal life possible outside of the non-existence that God saw a need to raise us. Why throw this away?
The more Luciferian we become, thinking we are hyper-gods-greater-than-the-real-God (maggots beg to disagree), we commit internal self-suicide against the image-and-likeness-of-God that we are born with, and we become lower than animalistic, down to bestial and below. It follows that from that chosen internal death that it loves to worship the death of sin, death worshipping death, that we develop an insatiable appetite for the death that the Culture of Death offers.
Now the High Clergy in our Church pushes that Spirit of Death further into blessing the sin-death of the greatest enablers of all the other forms of sin-death available, and which is the reason that they are so deliriously worshipped with multiple colors by corrupt politicians, etc. and all hard core tyrants. Those multiple colors are not the colors of life but the impostor colors of death, as evil always disguises behind its most direct opposite good or virtue. Resist! Be God’s likeness and image and live in the real sacrifice of real love! Ask God to color you with the heavenly colors coming from the holy purity of Jesus’ Sacred Heart!
Bruce Willis has huge amounts of money, making his family’s “caring for a loved one” a matter of holding hands, etc.. rather than the 24/7 exhausting care that less wealthy caregivers must often provide with far less help of the kind that money can buy. I don’t mean any support for euthanasia by pointing this out, just that its perhaps leaves out an aspect of such situations that is important to acknowledge.
Bruce Willis may reach a point where more medical assistance is required at home but from my experience resources are available to more people than just the affluent. It depends where you live and what home healthcare programs are offered. And what level of hands on care you and your family can provide. Or are willing to provide.
A bit more on this.
In 1995, I moved back home to take care of my father who was seriously ill with kidney and nerve disease. His pain was extreme, he lost a leg and his eyesight failed.
For nine and one-half years, I took care of him. Mom was there but was too ill.
Dad passed in 2005. I was the last one with him.
Two years later, I again came back home. My mother’s arthritis had crippled her and she could no longer walk. She went blind in one eye. Holding her often to let her know I was there, her pain was something else. We cried.
Mom died in my arms in 2016.
During all those years money was often so tight and resources slim, I was terrified I would fail them. Scared.
I had to pray…angry. Earnestness in anger. God heard me. He gave me the daily strength and I finally understood what charity in action would mean.
So,
those two capsules would have solved all this? In a secular world, sure. Then my argument before God would be that it was the ‘compassionate’ thing to do? Does pain serve a purpose known but to God alone relative to the idea of atonement and Purgatory and the obligations we owe to the Father? If we purposely cut another life short, how can we be certain we didn’t interrupt or even doom an individual purgatory that was suppose to start while on earth?