By CARL A. NEWTONThe now dying Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh admonished us for decades to be mindful and compassionate and I struggle to practice that. While listening to the just presented CON remarks, I’m aware that the compassion that I avow is different from their sense of compassion.
My daughter is the minister of a Massachusetts Federated Church, the First Parish Church of Berlin, and the parishioners are United Church of Christ and Unitarian Universalist worshipping together. Although I’m comfortable with naming her in my health care proxy, I will name and rename a local surrogate. At 81 years, friends have predeceased me or have moved away; and my end time cannot be scripted as to duration.
Democratic principles have been expressed as “You are as good as I am; not I am as good as you are.” I think we should feel obliged to see ways to accommodate; not to obstruct our freedom of conscience.
At our end time when the family has come to our side supporting our relief from a painful incurable illness, joy may be ours at the time of our final breath if we need to invoke the provisions of this bill.
I regret that many family members and friends were not able to receive the benefits of this bill. At the time of my father’s last breath, he was suffering from gangrene in his lower extremities, and he wisely chose in his 90th year not become an amputee. The palliative morphine along with his extreme deafness made communication with him truly formidable. No family member attended his death. My brother was notified and appeared a short while later. Neither my father or mother felt the compassionate presence of any of their children at their side when they died. Their survivors are left with the grief that it was not otherwise.