I was once told by a funeral director that death is the great equalizer. While there’s some truth to that, there is often great inequality in how one dies. Some slip quietly away in their sleep, while others are taken by brutal force. Both of my parents experienced the latter: My mother died from cirrhosis of the liver when I was 18 and she was just 46. My father died after a grueling bout with head and neck cancer when I was 28 and he was 63.
Eleven years after the first tumor was removed, we were told that the cancer had invaded his lymph system: My father was terminal and looked to me for his end-of-life care. The most grueling and haunting part of his care was dressing and cleaning the enormous wound from the cancer eating into his neck.
To my father, maintaining dignity while this disease ate away at him was important. He didn’t allow anyone to see the debilitating wound he’d developed except for me and a wound care specialist.
This happened to him in 1994 when Dr. Jack Kevorkian was in the news for physician-assisted suicide. Despite being an extremely controversial topic at that time, the practice is now legal in 10 states and the District of Columbia. Even my father who was raised a strict Catholic, (the church considers suicide a mortal sin) towards the end of his life told me, “Now I understand why people need Dr. Kevorkian.” I believe wholeheartedly that, were that option available to him he would have taken it — to end his own suffering and to spare that of his children.
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