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A Small Gift from COVID-19
Madeline knew her mind was slipping. After a long and successful career, renowned in her field, she knew her brain — and knew it was no longer working as it always had. Never a forgetful woman, Madeline now misplaced important items — and, more distressing, her thoughts. She spent days talking with her doctors and searching the internet for understanding. Then she would forget why she had gone to that website.
After weeks of worry, weeks of increasing confusion, Madeline had a moment of absolute clarity: she wanted to end her life now, before she became unable to make her own decisions. So she told her family she was choosing to stop eating or drinking. Not everyone in the family agreed or empathized, but her husband said he would support her. She recently enrolled in hospice care and is carefully, comfortably spending her final days in peace.
Here’s an upside to the current COVID-19 pandemic: We are talking, daily, about dying. We the people of the USA. And not just in the abstract: “I’ve already completed my Advance Directives . . .” but in very personal terms: “If I die, what choices can I have about that?”
This may not seem very Up for an upside. The personal terms too often involve a parent or spouse who died alone in a cold hospital room, a elderly cousin or a beloved friend suffering alone and isolated. Suddenly we’re not talking about…
