TO END… OR NOT TO END…
I cannot quite understand it. Here is this woman, 86 years old, very capable, well educated and articulate, good company and in good health, but who is flying to Switzerland next week to have herself euthanised. No, I don ‘t quite get it. Now, I know she says she has been quite worn down by her bully of a husband, and that talk of a divorce brought on this decision. He is going to drive her to the airport next week. It has been suggested that he is so glad to be rid of her that he is making sure she catches the plane. Some friends have been trying to get her to change her mind on this matter, but to no avail. She is very calm, they say, and determined that this is the best way out of this situation. Their home is worth a lot of money, enough for two smaller, good houses. She would be able to set herself up quite well. And the pension is liberal enough to afford a good living should she need it. It has been suggested that she simply take an overdose here and save the trouble of going to a foreign country. But it is illegal here to commit suicide, while Switzerland, I am informed, is the only place where one can be euthanised if one is well and just wants to end it all. As I said, it is beyond me. Here we are, trying to enjoy the rest of our sometimes sad and difficult lives, endeavouring to keep well, doing our utmost to stay alive and healthy so that we can make the world a better place, remaining cheerful against all odds so that we will be remembered as a happy person…and that those we leave behind feel better for having known us. Am I right to feel this way? Some say that it is good because she feels at peace, and will exit on her own terms. Is it the coward’s way out? Surely not. I consider it is a very brave act…but a bit of a ‘cop out.’ I can understand this action if there was great suffering involved, but to surrender a perfectly healthy life is surely escaping the responsibility that we all owe to our loved ones to do our best for one another, to contribute as best we can during our lives.
A CHILD OF THE DEPRESSION
When I say that I am ‘a child of the Depression’, most folk know what I mean. It tells them that I do not waste anything if I can help it; I buy hardly anything if I can do without it; and I get great satisfaction out of tastefully using left-overs that are in my...
TONSILLECTOMY
My little grand-daughter had a tonsillectomy last week. She has recovered well. It reminded me of my own experience when I was five. After contracting the dreaded diphtheria when I was three (read about it in my book ‘ Gardening in Your Nineties’), I suffered from...
ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER
One thing always leads to another. One of the many interviews that I have done has lead to a learned fellow coming up to do a podcast about ageing, with me, the nonagenarian, doing the talking! He thought it was very good, and a week or so later I received a request...
MEDICAL ASSISTANCE, NOW AND THEN
What a difference a few decades make! When I was a growing girl in the city, our doctor lived a few streets away. He practiced from home, and would make a lot of house calls; needs must, because in those days just prior to WWII, there would be only one car to a...
MY BREAKFAST COMPANION
If I am engrossed in reading something (perhaps The Bulletin?) he will let me know he is there. Oh yes! He is impatient for me to notice him, for he wants to be fed. Not later, but now. This instant. I know he is not popular with bird lovers. They say he frightens off...
MY TAP DANCING DAYS
The Hollywood Theatre once stood proudly on the corner of Logan and Chatsworth Roads in Greenslopes. Every Saturday morning in 1938 I would take my sixpence (five cents) to attend the tap-dancing class that was held at the back of the stage. I was ten. There was a...
LIVING WITH A DISABILITY
I have a granddaughter who has ataxia, a form of cerebral palsy. She has a weakness in her hands, her tongue muscle and in the muscles of one leg. This means she cannot run, her fingers will not grasp smaller objects and her speech is sometimes hard to understand. She...
TRUE STORY: MUM’S FEET
It was during the Great Depression, when money was in short supply, that the collector would visit weekly to pick up a small amount of cash toward the sum that was owed. The two young boys who were sitting at the top of the outside stairs glimpsed the gas man...
ENAMELLED PLAQUE
During the last war, my parents befriended two American soldiers, brothers from Idaho. We became very fond of them and were devastated when the younger one lost his life in the fierce fighting in New Guinea. I wrote to his mother until she died and vowed to visit the...
REMEMBERING OLD SCHOOL DAYS
How I love reading of the old days in the Tamborine Bulletin! Not only does it inform me; it sometimes takes me back to my childhood at Buccan and my school days at Logan Village. This time, I was transported to the one-teacher school where headmaster Mr Alec Brown...