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A matter of birth and death
A survey last month from the online version of Mother and
Baby magazine revealed that childbirth comes as a nasty shock
for many mothers. Instead of a `holistic’ birth – music, subdued
lighting, water – they find themselves under high medical
management, strapped to machines; an altogether less happy
experience.
When I have watched people dying – my parents, relatives,
close friends – it reminded me in a way of being in labour, a lot of
hard work..
So I can’t help taking the analogy further. How many of us will have
a holistic death?
The issue is the same for birth and death: the main participants
usually want to stay in control and don’t want to hand themselves
over to doctors and nurses, no matter how considerate they are.
That, I believe, is the main rationale for making a living will.
When Baroness Warnock recommended the idea last year, she said she
did not wish to be a burden to her family. With this in mind, she
thought it would be good to state in advance a request for no
antibiotics or resuscitation or ‘life sustaining treatment’. Or to
put it more brutally, to request assisted suicide.
But I’m not sure that’s the whole story. When I die, I would
like to die well, having said my goodbyes to my loved ones. I would
like to go gracefully, without too much of a fight. I’d like a
holistic death.
This is not unheard of. The Hospice Movement specialises in
such things. Euthanasia is not legal in this country, so some
people, in search of their version of holistic dying, have gone to
Holland, where it is.
My mother, increasingly frail, confided to me that she’d had
enough, and then apologised for saying it. I said I understood, and
perhaps I did.
She survived another six months and died a week or so after her 98th
birthday. If she had asked me to help her speed up the process, I
don’t know what I would have done, or felt. She certainly wasn’t in
a fit state to travel to Holland.
I don’t know how I’d feel about myself in that situation either.
The trouble is, you never can plan properly in advance. But I do
think, at this perfectly lucid moment in my own life, that it would
be a good idea to make a living will.
Not only for the reason that Baroness Warnock gave - that she
did not wish to be a burden to her family. But because I don’t want
the burden of being terminally ill for myself.
We do, inevitably, put our lives in the hands of the doctors and
nurses who will supervise our last moments. And the truth is
that we would rather not do it, mainly because they are strangers,
not our loved ones. What we really really want is for our
loved ones to do the caring, a totally impractical idea that belongs
with the Victorians. The only reason they could enjoy deathbed
scenes at home was because of their limited medical skills (and lots
of servants).
I trust my children to love and care for me to the end, but
not hands on. Inevitably, if my own parents are anything to go by,
the chances are that I will indeed become a burden. My children may
want me to go into a residential home, in order to get the best care
possible (which will also reduce the burden on them, a totally
legitimate motive).
I will probably want to stay in my own home, maintaining my
increasingly enfeebled ‘independence’. Health Secretary John Reid,
recently said that 3000 community matrons would be appointed by
2007, as a new way of keeping older people out of hospital and
having extra care at home.
That’s fine for a while. But it could end up being both
impractical and unfair. I tell myself that I will, at some
point, accept that I go into a home, or, more sensibly, start off in
sheltered accommodation when I still have my wits and some physical
ability about me, preferably with my husband.
And at the end? I hope the government sorts out its ideas
about a Mental Capacity Act. A bill has been put forward that would
give legal backing to written living wills, with doctors called in
when needed to justify their validity – to ensure that relatives
aren’t in it only for the inheritance. Alzheimer’s Society, Age
Concern, Mencap are among the charities reported as supporting a
bill , despite critics claiming that it would ‘legalise euthanasia
by the back door’.
We may not be able to stay in control of our lives until the
moment we depart from it. But it would be nice if we had a choice.
What are your views on living wills and assisted suicides?
Email helen@laterlife.com
or put your messages on laterlife cafe
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Talkback is a
regular feature in laterlife.com run by
journalist and author Helen Franks. 
