In November 2008, Washington State became the second state in the United States to allow for doctor-assisted suicide. The first was Oregon, which has had this law since 1997. Currently, a third state, Montana, has such a law as well, but it’s before the Montana Supreme Court for final judgment.

According to this article, Washington state to enact assisted suicide law , written earlier this year, this law allows for “aided dying,” not “euthanasia” or “assisted suicide”:

“Aided dying is neither euthanasia nor suicide,” said Terry Barnett, president of the Washington branch of Compassion & Choices advocacy group.

“It’s not euthanasia because euthanasia implies action by a physician to end a patient’s life. It’s not suicide because people who choose aid in dying are not choosing to end their lives.

“They don’t want to die — they’re choosing to end suffering that cannot be relieved and suffering that they are experiencing that is worse than death.”

The law is called the Death With Dignity Act .

The person at the center of this, the first one to die under this new law, is Linda Fleming, a 66-year-old who had been living with late-stage, terminal, pancreatic cancer. She made this choice when she was still able to with a clear mind and the ability to make her wishes known.

Death under these circumstances is rarely easy and for those who fear that people who believe in laws like this are rejoicing - I doubt it. While they may be grateful that Ms Fleming was given this opportunity, it’s never a good thing to see someone die.

~~~~

Image: iStock

I knew when I heard the phone ring that my mother was dead. No one calls at 4:30 a.m. I was sleeping in my parents’ house because, though the doctors had thought she had months longer to live, my sister just had a feeling. And so the phone rang and I let it ring and ring until I heard my father’s voice answer from the other room and then I picked up. The woman on the other end said, “Dr. Walker. This is the hospital. I’m am sorry to inform you, but your wife, Mary Walker, has passed away.”  

Elizabeth Edwards' new book will be released May 8

My mind moved with my body in tow through the distance of two rooms, to the open doorway of the bedroom where my mother used to sleep. The bed was empty and I heard my father through the bathroom door. He was retching. It was an awful sound, low and monotone, and I sobbed there, like a baby, on the hallway floor because life was supposed to be different for us.  

(My father tells me now he did not throw up. He was brushing his teeth and sometimes when he brushes his tongue he gags himself and makes that horrible retching sound. I’d rather believe the news of Mom’s death made him sick to his stomach because it’s more endearing that way. But, whatever.)

As idiotic as it sounds, when I read the reports of Elizabeth Edward’s interview on Oprah (scheduled for Thursday), and how she spoke about her husband’s affair, I understood when she said her reaction to her husband’s confession was to cry, scream and vomit. It brought me back to that day, when my mother died and my father threw up, because life had changed forever and ever.

And sometimes you just don’t want it to change. 

John Edwards broke my heart, too. He was supposed to be my president. I had chosen him before 2004, before he played second fiddle to John Kerry. And I was a bigger supporter when he ran again in 2008. I read a story in the New York Times magazine how he would serve as a champion to the underprivileged because, though he is insanely wealthy now, he hails from a humble background. I saw visions of Robert Kennedy in him. He was my candidate; (although my son was determined Obama would win). When Edwards withdrew just before Super Tuesday, so did I, temporarily.

I respected his love for his wife. And she won me over by being solid and loyal. There is no denying he is the more attractive of the two, but he seemed to look beyond that. And when the rumors began to circulate that John was having an affair, I refused to believe them because the John I know is good and honest and loves his wife with a passion – his cancer-survivor wife. The one who hid the lump in her breast as Kerry gave his concession speech to the world.

I don’t blame her for sticking with him, for trying to hold tight to that life she knew before the affair. But life is changed forever for her, like it changed more than a decade ago when her oldest son tragically died, and again in 2004, when she discovered she had breast cancer. Life rarely goes as expected. It sends you to great highs and treacherous lows. How one manages to hold on during those times and keep her sanity says a lot about a person.

I think that must be the value of being Resilient.

Photo, Barnes & Noble

Recently, there was a discussion on one of my online children’s author groups  (I’m a children’s author, as well as blogger) about children’s chapter books dealing with death.  Most of them are slated for young readers,  6-9 years old.

Image:sxc.hu

I thought I’d pass this information along in case parents, grandparents and others would find this list of interest for reference.  Some books deal with death of a family member or friend; others are about the death of a pet.

• Remembering Mrs. Rossi by Amy Hest
• Love You, Soldier by Amy Hest
• Because of Winn Dixie
• Each Little Bird That Sings
• Sarah Plain and Tall
• The Higher Power of  Lucky
• Carolina Harmony
• Julia’s Kitchen
• The Tenth Good Thing About Barney
• Blackberries in the Dark by Mavis Jukes, about a boy visiting his grandmother after the death of his grandfather
• Sun & Spoon by Kevin Henkes
• Saying Goodbye to Grandma by Jane Resh Thomas
• Some of Us Survived: The Story of an Armenian Boy by
  Kerop Bedoukian,  an eyewitness account of the Armenian Genocide
  written from the author’s point of view when he was 8 years old.
• The Road from Home by David Kherdian  is the true story how Kherdian’s mother and  family were annihilated and driven from their historic homeland during the Genocide.

Do you have any to suggest that you think are particularly good at helping youngsters…and adults?

I have my mother’s hands. They are a woman’s hands, creased and well used. Nearly 10 years to the day my mother passed away, I still remember holding hers, stroking her long fingers, telling her it was OK to die.

There are reminders of her everywhere, pushing out from mounds of pansies in my garden or in passages of a thick Pat Conroy novel. At times I can feel her with an intensity that startles me. Browsing hosta in a garden shop or scraping wallpaper from the bathroom walls, I am doing what she did. I am becoming her.

Nine months after her death, on what would have been her 58th birthday, I held her ashes in the palm of my hand, giving her up to the wind of the sea islands. The dust flew into the sky and down into the quiet waters of the marsh. There was no ceremony, no preacher hugging the family Bible, no sermon echoing in the open breeze. Just my family, what was left of us, bruised and worn raw.

We had scattered her ashes off the edge of my parents’ property on Dataw Island, South Carolina. They had purchased the land the year my mother got sick, with plans to retire early and spend their days tending to the native plants, fishing off the pier, maybe teaching at the local community college. Here, my mother would heal from the surgeries and treatments. Here, she would be healthy.

But the cancer came back. Or maybe it never left her body, lying dormant until we fooled ourselves into thinking that life would be normal again. Cancer does that. It hides in the back of the mind, breathes a chill against your shoulder so you never completely forget.

On a quiet spring morning just before daybreak, the same month ground was to have been broken for their home on Dataw, my mother passed away. The birds still called into the sunrise, the car engine still turned over, people on the street still walked and breathed and made small talk, all unaware that everything had changed. My mother was dead.

I was the only one of my family who remembered that Easter night a year before she died, when we sat at the dinner table and dreamed of their move. The house plans were almost final, there were appliance books and paint decks spread across the table. My mother said once they moved to Dataw, they would never move again. And when she died, she wanted to be cremated and her ashes scattered into the water at high tide, just below the twisted oak in their backyard that leaned over the marsh’s edge.

I have often been asked if I miss having a gravesite to visit, a plot of grass on which to drop to my knees and connect with what remains of her six feet below. At the very least, don’t I feel obligated to visit the property where her ashes were scattered, a place that now holds the house of a stranger, someone who never will know the secrets of that sprawling live oak out back?

I stand now, my feet bathed in the gently swaying waters of the Gulf Coast, hundreds of miles and many years from where my mother’s ashes flew. She is with me. She is the water, riding currents across this mighty earth. She is the air I breathe, the wind that tangles my hair. I have felt her during my child’s birth, in the still nights rocking my son to sleep, with my grandmother who since spiraled into the darkness of dementia. I speak to her in the quiet of my car and in the vast space between earth and stars.

There is no comfort in losing a mother, just the raw burn when memories rub against the mind. I choose to visit her here, in the static of my senses – for this is as close to heaven that I know.

(photo, Flickr, debaird)

JWJourney

I believe with all my heart that what I’m about to say to you is important, for me, to let you know about me

I believe in what I’m doing on this Blog and I am extremely grateful to the folks at b5 media for allowing me to be a part of b5.

Thanks to the Second Step of recovery, today I have a different belief system than when I was drinking. That belief system has, as it’s basis, a loving God. For me. Hopefully, I am not, will not, try to force that God down your throat. I was taught that was not the right thing to do. I was also taught “do the right things and the right things will happen.”

Let me get to the point. Something has been appearing on this Blog that is in direct conflict with my belief system. I have no control over it. Without being very specific, I hope, it is the direct motivation for this new page where I am now taking a short moment to explain what I do or do not endorse or who does or does not endorse what I say here. Got that? LOL…

I will never tell you things like:

“Avoid Recovery Groups,” “Treatment Doesn’t Work,” or my favorite “Alcoholism: a disease of stupidity.” Some may not believe and heck, that’s fine! But to promote one man’s opinion as Gospel? No way! Please, see this post from yesterday!

A Sober, Clean Day To All,

Mark

SCRAM = Secure, Continuous Alcohol-Monitoring Technology

Suffolk gets high-tech leg up on DWI

“Drunken drivers in Suffolk County will be fitted for alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelets, the latest tool of Suffolk County parole officers, county lawmakers announced yesterday.

These high-tech gadgets enable authorities to track blood alcohol levels through the wearer’s perspiration.

The mechanism is enough to have previous DWI offenders sweating their next court date.

“These bracelets have been proven effective in deterring repeat drunk driving in over 30 states,” Suffolk County Legislator Dan Losquadro (R-Shoreham) said, kicking off the pilot program.

The plan would strap bracelets on 20 of the county’s high risk or repeat drunken-driving offenders, whose probation conditions stipulate they cannot consume any alcohol.

Using secure, continuous alcohol-monitoring technology, or SCRAM, the cuffs conduct scheduled tests throughout the day of the wearer’s evaporated sweat to determine blood alcohol content.

Data collected from correction departments across the country show the likelihood of DWI offenders to drive drunk again is more than 40%, Losquadro said.

“This becomes a mechanism in the type of behavior modification we’re looking for,” Losquadro said. “There’s no way to beat this.“

A Sober, Clean Day To All,

Mark