An end-of-life option can make living better
I recently had a birthday. Yep, another one. So I’m 76, which is fine, right? It’s the new 66 — or the new 86 — I can’t remember how that goes. I’m in good health, considering the abuses I’ve put myself through. I have the maladies that old people are supposed to have: unsure ankles, wonky knees and a hip that doesn’t want to be a hip anymore. I also have various issues with various tissues that we needn’t go into here. I’m getting old. It’s what’s expected. Of course, I don’t yet know my exact end date — but it’s definitely coming up — it’s nearer to me than my memories.
So, it’s time for me to take a good, hard look forward: it’s time to get responsible about my dying. I’ll make some plans so that the loved ones I’ll be leaving behind will be able to proceed with a blueprint of some kind. I’ll make lists for Jill, my wonderful wife. Bank accounts, insurance policies, pension plans, house expenses, car leases: I’ll leave clear instructions. The only problem being that Jill never reads instructions. She prefers to plunge in and let the chips fall where they may. Which is what they do, of course. Fall, that is. Where they may. Ah, well. What I will do before I die is give her face-to-face lessons on the three remotes that control the TV because they’re impenetrable. Our kids will help her. They’ll help get her back on track.
I got a lesson in dying from a dear friend of mine last year, the legendary actor René Auberjonois. He got a diagnosis of stage-four lung cancer and he was given a year to live, more or less. He called us to give us the news. I got very emotional on the phone.
“We’re not dead until we’re dead, René. Don’t forget that,” I said to him — and to myself — of course. “We don’t die in increments. We’re alive until we’re not. So your responsibility to your wife and your children and their children — and to yourself — is to live. And then, after you die, you won’t have to worry about that anymore.”
He, of course, knew all this. René and his wife Judith took a trip to Ireland with their kids and grandkids. His sister and her family live there — on a beautiful Irish farm — and they all leapt into that adventure together. Then René and Judith went to
Buenos Aires, where they had never been, and learned the tango. One of his prodigious talents was photography and he sent me a photo that he handpainted of tango dancers in Buenos Aires. And on the back of it he quoted the Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen:
“Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love.”
In addition to his great acting skills, René was a formidable artist, a sculptor, a painter, a photographer. Every breath he took was creative. He couldn’t help it.
And because he lived in California, where unlike in Connecticut, medical aid in dying is an option for terminally ill adults to die peacefully, he created for himself and his family a beautiful death. In his last weeks he combed through nearly 60 years of photographs and put together a slide show for the family. They gathered at his bedside and watched the history of their life together, with the Beatles’ music blasting merrily away. It took hours to see it all. They laughed, they danced, they hugged, they cried. It was like life. And then, with everyone gathered, he took his aidin-dying medication and peacefully died a very loving death. One of the last things he said was a thank you to the state of California for allowing him to die with the option of how it would proceed. He died as he lived: as an artist.
I have no idea how or when I’m going to die. It could happen suddenly and unexpectedly, in which case my end-of-life care options won’t be an issue. But I know that if my state, Connecticut, has passed a recently introduced bill (H.B. 6425) that guarantees the end-of-life care option of medical aid in dying, then my life will be better now. And now is really what it’s all about.