I really cannot understand why we associate notions of "dignity" or "indignity" with death. Frankly, if I am dying, I really do not care how it all looks to my family and friends, if the doctor can do anything, to keep me alive and pain free, just do it. We can discuss the embarassing aspects of it all when I survive!

Both as a former hospital chaplain and now a lawyer advocating the rights of adults for whom the statuory Adult Guardian makes decisions (often in the context of what is colloquially described as euthanasia), I resonated with the vast majority of the author's personal reflections and experiences. However, with the greatest respect, the article misses the main point of the author's question: death with dignity is only an oxymoron depending on the definition employed for 'dignity'. Notwithstanding that I concede the author's point that there is a tendency in our society to want to put a cosmetic gloss on the experience of death, the virtue of dignity can go much beyond that cosmetic gloss.

I think it was the salmon mousse that killed them, not a soup

Did they Lagon? Watch it again and one of the Ladies says "But I didn't eat the salmon mouse!" Always an ironic twist with Monty Python.

But to the serious stuff, I empathise with the author and the experience of his father's painful death. I had a similar experience with mine. For 3 days with lung cancer, strugling to breath, up to his eyeballs in morphine, nothing could take away the pain and desperation, he begged us to kill him, we could all hear him scream, and none of us knew what to do. We couldn't kill him. It was horrific.

Since volunteering as an HIV carer with a half a dozen dying people in the dreaded mid 90's, I held their hands to their deaths. Their friends were "too busy" at the time.

Two were under 25 years old and their parents disowned them. Again, the morphine failed to take away the pain with 3: they begged for mercy: their deaths. Of course I couldn't do it.

I still see the ghostly look in their eyes. Since then I taught school in central Queensland needing a break from so many deaths in Sydney.

In 2005 I had to mark the role. One of the kids was born on the same day as of the patients had died in 1990 at SVH Hospice, Sydney. All I could see was a face screaming and I was paralised in shock, it was like a flashback.

The start of a life, the end of another. Both were really just kids. And I'm still here, some old fart with survival guilt. Luckily my family seem to know me well enough to be be sensitive when I stare at the wall for no reason.

Crazy life I've had. Will my death be this mad?

Its not really about dignity. Its about those screams for mercy and the failure of pain relief. Hasn't anyone else been haunted by these kinds of experiences coping with the memory of painful deaths?

I guess it is like shell shock. Mercy, is the rationale, not cosmetics.

I found the writer's story compelling and I have posted it on my website in response to my friend who asked for comments there.. I genuinely felt humbled by the maturity and insight the author displayed.

I've read a couple other comments and wondered if any of them had ever experienced similar journeys to that being described, and I think not. That is the single most important factor in being able to relate to its message....until you've walked in those shoes it can be impossible to make judgments.

Reading a ethics book recently there was a paragraph that grabbed my attention. "In cases where patient's suffering is intense, protracted, unendurable and intractable it seems cruel to deny them the choice of death as a means of release from their suffering. Euthanasia in these kinds of cases is said to be justified on grounds of "prevention of cruelty" or "mercy"., and of preventing an otherwise avoidable harm from occurring."

It should be down to the individual's choice for themselves. That way no one is offended. Your Body, Your Choice: Their body, their choice
Mary Walsh
www.yourchoiceindying.co

With apology StFletcher, I missed your article under the radar..I thought Salmon's comments a little offensive when then perhaps I've lost my sense of humor some time ago on these matters....

The painful death is the reality of cancer for many, and the hospital drama scenes on television never really capture the reality of a bad death which is frequently the case. Your descriptive writing goes some way towards remedying this.

As more people become better educated, it will be harder for the authorities to hide the evidence of protracted dying which sometimes has been directly linked back to technological advances keeping us alive long after we should have been allowed to die.

Hopefully with the Greens in the Upper House in Victoria's Parliament the concept of us not being permitted to take charge of our own dying process because "only God can give or take life' will be debunked with the evidence of science we have available if only we could use it!

Mary Walsh
www.yourchoiceindying.com

Timothy Leary said in an interview (in the late stages of his life) that 'death is the last big tabboo'. I believe that our fear, and lack of understanding of death is what drives us to desperately preserve it at all costs, even at the expense of individual liberty.

We need to identify the real culprits who are responsible for needlessly bad deaths. Those who blame the religious right should ask themselves why they have won on this issue, but not abortion, divorce, gambling, Sunday trading, the teaching of evolutionary theory, etc., etc. A number of US and UK studies indicate that half the money that will ever be spent on an individual's health care is spent in the last six months of life (Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, in an article in the (London) Times Higher Education Supplement (6/10/06)). The billions of dollars involved can only be compared with the resources the Ancient Egyptians spent on tombs and grave goods for their deceased relatives, the difference being that the Egyptians actually believed that they were making their relatives better off in the afterlife. This flow of money must be a powerful incentive to "donate" to politicians to keep euthanasia illegal and to allow advance directives to be ignored.

Excellent point, Divergence. I hadn't considered that at all.

Of course, there is big money to be had right across the Health Care field. I have always understood that the strong (in health) and the powerful (in wealth) will always be able to CONTROL the weak and vulnerable by definition of their circumstances in life.

The Medical Treatment Act 1988 is a law which as far as I am aware has never had a charge taken to court because a Health Care Worker has refused to comply. We worry so much more about the living, eg reputations and relatives, than the dying themselves....and what can a dying person do? they're too busy putting all their energies into the dying process!!

Society needs to think more in terms of "Not taking a life, so much as Relieving Pain"....but then the sanctimonious "do gooders" would be unemployed by their thousands because their audience would have died sooner rather than later.

If those same "Right to Life" folk thought the "other side looking into gods face forever was so delightful" why do they fight so hard to stay on this earth..... What are they afraid of? that there is no fairy tale ending to their life spent on this earth preaching to others about how to live their lives and their deaths at the end.....

Until Governments give back control of law making to the secular citizens of Australia, the Pro Choice section of the community has a hard battle on their hands....It is very much a dictatorship currently where 30% of the population are telling 100% how they may be permitted to die.....slowly and painfully as the case may be, they just don't want to lose another customer (patient) or voter (citizen)....and of course, there is always the God factor....he gives life and takes life, but gives man absolute discretion with technology in between the two, to torture in many cases both physically and mentally.
Right to life believers, can't have a bob both ways.....They are responsible for the evil they cause with their interference, as well as the good.....Choice please!

Mary Walsh
www.yourchoiceindying.com

I don't see how you can generalise and say most peoples deaths are an indigity. What research can you back this statement up with? I think you are aflicted by the fear of death. Death for me will be a blessed release and not at all an idignity or struggle.
Too much rubbish is written about this subject. The facts are that people take their deaths into their own hands every day. They die as they wish to die. Soldiers, sea canooists, drug addicts, firemen, doctors, nurses, crocodile hunters, sky and sea divers, pharmacists, suicide bombers, gun owners, knot tiers, all die how and when they want to. It's the people who won't take risks that dither and dawdle over it and give death a bad name. Letting go just ain't easy for some. I'll miss being here. I'll miss sex and home cooking, and films and me mates and me family, and just hanging around being a nuisance, but when I feel rotton enough, like when I have the flu or recovering from surgery, letting go will be easy for me. I'll take on death when it comes because I have lived a rich life. Death is beautiful and she is waiting just around the corner.
Euthanasia is a word like pornography, used by some to cause anxiety. There no such thing as euthansia because the word is a generalisation. People choose death all the time in many circumstances. People put others to death all the time, but we don't discuss it, it happens like eating and breathing and no amount of agonising will stop it. The idea that politicians can pass laws to stop compassionate acts of love is ridiculous. However, we all know politics is a callous game for callous people. If the religious want to die painfully they can choose to. If people like me want to die painlessly we can. It's just a matter of choice. (I've left out being tortured to death by our allies and enemies-that is an idignity!.)

Barfenzie, I endorse everything you say.
Fear of the inevitable is absurd. I suggest people like you and me keep a brown snake, to hell with politicians.
You'll hope it then takes time to experience death instead of trying to avoid it.
fluff
PS well written article though.