A Disturbing Topic
Death used to terrify me.
As a child going to church and learning about heaven and hell through Bible lessons and songs, I “knew” the only way to avoid hell was faith in Jesus but always had doubt.
What if I am no longer saved? What if I go to hell anyway? Anything “not of faith” was considered a sin so it stood to reason that if I didn’t have enough faith for the afterlife, I wouldn’t make it to heaven.
Believe me when I say that my head was not a good place to be. I suppose it still isn’t.
Religious dogma
As I grew older, my fear of the coming rapture replaced my fear of death as thunderous sermons from the pulpit warned about being “Left Behind”.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Rapture ideology, it’s the imminent return of Jesus who comes as a “thief in the night” and snatches away his children to heaven and the rest of humanity is left to deal with the aftermath of the millions of Christian’s who have vanished in a “twinkling of an eye”.
A world leader will rise to take over the world known as the AntiChrist. He will set up a world religion, and world economy and no one on earth will be allowed to buy or sell any goods or services unless they worship the AntiChrist by accepting his mark on their right hand or forehead as a symbol of selling their soul to Satan.
As you can imagine, Fundamentalist Christians have had a field day with this idea by putting their own unique spin on it and even coming up with their own interpretation of scripture to bolster their claims.
Books were written.
Movies were made.
Fortunes were made on this lunacy.
Duping the faithful
Meanwhile, people of other faiths or no faith have been doing a lot of living and dying in the meantime and one topic has risen up that has caused a lot of people to have a lot of feelings about it.
Well, actually two.
Abortion and medically assisted suicide are also known as euthanasia.
I can’t think of more divisive topics than those two.
In regards to medically assisted end-of-life care, most of the time this is utilized when an elderly person has reached the end of their illness and there is no medical option to improve their quality of life.
Another is when a person is diagnosed with an incurable disease and wants to avoid prolonging the inevitable and the agony.
Lynda Bluestein of Bridgeport Connecticut was diagnosed with stage three ovarian and fallopian tube cancer. Her health took a steep dive in 2023 and she decided that she was no longer going to continue living in excruciating pain.
Incurable disease
Lynda has been an avid activist against gun violence and even led a march in Washington DC to raise awareness of this critical issue.
She also became an activist for the process of medical aid in dying after her diagnosis.
The state of Connecticut legislature has consistently blocked any and all bills that would allow the terminally ill access to end-of-life care.
Lynda had to petition and eventually sue the state of Vermont in order to get an exception for non-residence access to the Medical Aid in Dying Law, also known as Act 39.
This year, she became the first person out of state to be accepted under the law.
She hoped that her final act of getting this law change would lead to other states following suit by striking down the “residents only” part of their respective bills.
Final good-byes
She said goodbye to friends and family and had to be carried out of their house in her wheelchair by her son, who is her full-time caretaker and her two twin granddaughters out to their conversion van and on to the Vermont hospital with her husband of forty years.
Her son confirmed that his mom had taken a lethal dose at 9:44 am on January fourth and has passed.
Imagine if she had been rejected and forced to endure months and even years of more agony only to be bedridden, drugged out of her mind on morphine just to manage the pain.
What exactly would be the purpose of that?
Waiting until god says it’s time and kills her himself?
What’s the justification?
We treat animals and pets with more mercy. We wouldn’t force our own pets to languish in agony so why would we force our loved ones to?
Now, obviously, it’s up to the patient, but I strongly believe they should be offered the choice.
Thank you for reading🌺
For Further Reading
Vermont allows nonresidents to use its assisted suicide law (mynbc5.com)
