When Is Euthanasia Compassion?
I truly believe in the value of life…but this last week hit me with a question.
This weekend a member of a good friend of mine’s family died from a 20 year battle with cancer. And as I spoke words of consolation to him, he said something to me that caught me a little by surprise. He said, “I prayed for this.” The end was a relief. It seemed strange at first that anyone would pray for someone to die. Yet this is what my friend had done. His family member was deeply suffering and any semblance of life had long since passed. I could see the sense of relief in my friend’s eyes that the suffering had ended.
And then over the weekend I picked up Donald Miller’s new book, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. (A review is coming but I will say this. It is his best and most mature work to date.) In the book Don shares a story about how a good friend lost his wife, and that the suffering in the end was truly hard. I literally read this the day before I met my friend. The two events seemed to press on me.
And then today I came home to find out that a friend on my street is in a coma. She is literally on her death bed waiting to die after a second and brutal battle with cancer. She is married and has two daughters and has chosen to stay home for the last moments of her life. The nurses don’t expect her to live longer than today. And then a friend of mine who makes me sandwiches at the grocery store, struck up a conversation because she knew knew the family. She shared how her own father had gone through the same experience.
Three days in a row, the same situation seemed to compound. And what seemed to flow through each of these conversations was the pain of seeing the person suffer. We just want it to end. These events flowed into my own thoughts ans conversations. I remember my grandmother literally wasting away from colon cancer because she couldn’t eat. I was seventeen at the time and I remember my parents asking me to pick her up the day before she dies and carrying her from the couch to her bedroom. I could feel nothing but skin and bones. My heart broke that day in a way I had never experienced before. It was the first time I literally felt death.
As I sit here writing this post, I am aware that in the midst of suffering, questioning the legitimacy of when to end the suffering isn’t so easy to navigate. Until we have experienced the depth of that suffering, it seems like such an easy question. The questions that cross our mind when the very existence of someone we love is ONLY suffering, then the act of ending that suffering seems like an act of love.
Yet I completely understand the response. Who are we to play God? Who are we to take the one thing that only God can give? I personally hold that love is best expressed in the heroic act of giving a life instead of taking one, so these moments truly throw a wrench into things.
I came to the realization today that I just don’t know.
FYI, I am interested in your thoughts on this subject but given the subject I fully expect you to begin with compassion.
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