Читать книгу Healing Death - Christopher Levan - Страница 7

I began this research with the click of a mouse. It was early spring 2016, and the high holidays were approaching. Passion week for Christians is the season when the cross looms large. The predictable Good Friday sermon was inviting me into the valley of the shadow again. And I thought the Internet might have some light to shed on the debate around medical assistance in dying, which was prominently featured in the news of that year. The deadline for federal legislation responding to the Supreme Court decision on the Carter case1 was closing in on the Canadian Parliament. In that decision, the country’s highest court upheld the right for some individuals under certain circumstances to have medical assistance in dying.

At the time, I thought I knew what I believed: contrary to the federal court’s opinions, I saw this step as a thoughtless and potentially dangerous capitulation to liberal individualism. Life is a gift not a possession. We are stewards of our living, not owners, and to usurp the role of Creator and fashion our own ending is the height of hubris. How can we take what is essentially a gift and turn it into personal property to be discarded at will? To think we have a right to control everything was absurd. God holds out some surprises in life, and those unknowns are often the source of great miracles. Theologically, I was opposed.

Ethically, I was worried for our common life. Our society changes when we gift the power over life onto individual hands. We are a new people when something that had been forbidden suddenly becomes a “right.” At first glance, medical assistance in dying offers a compassionate, dignified end to insufferable pain. However, it also removes the absoluteness of living, no matter the circumstance. So, what presents itself as benevolence for the intolerably sick also places many other people at risk, for there is no longer an a priori justification for life. It’s now a matter of choice. And the more vulnerable of our society—the elderly, the differently abled—will now have to argue for the merits of their continued existence.

That was my thinking . . . at the time.

To prepare for my sermon, I was driving down the electronic highway looking for websites and ideas to support my opinions. (Isn’t that what we all do? The World Wide Web is a mirror. We surf the net to find ourselves?) And while there was no lack of sites trumpeting my cause—home pages with helpful biblical passages attached, all condemning the preemptive ending of human life—the more I searched, the more I was drawn deeper and deeper into the reality of human pain. And that changed everything.

Of course, there are whole libraries on death. Likewise, there is a mushrooming stack of published articles on dying with dignity—especially since Bill C-14, the Canadian federal legislation of dying with medical assistance, was enacted. Keeping track of the increasing number of online podcasts and blogs, which explore personal experiences at the hospital bedside, could be a full-time job.

It was one, pre-Bill C-14 article on an older woman’s painstaking journey to end her life, not involving her partner who might otherwise be charged with a criminal act, that was so poignant, so heart-wrenching, that I felt drawn to work harder at my own position. It was a story told from a time before the current legislation was even considered. In this woman’s context, there was considerable risk to those who might consider helping anyone end their life. Several well-meaning individuals had previously found themselves charged with accessory to murder under the criminal code. I read how, even while terribly crippled, this individual was obliged to drag a mattress by herself down to her “sacred place,” the one that afforded her a view in front of her country home. She arranged her method of ending her life on her own, not involving a soul, so no one could be accused of colluding to take her life. Her ending was a solitary act, painful, and, in many ways, nobly tragic! The family watched helplessly as she struggled to do everything on her own. That story struck me deeply, and I felt, surely we can do better than this. Quite separate from my church’s position or my personal opinions, this kind of anguish was unconscionable. If our end is close and nothing remains but crippling suffering, must we force people into such devious and grievous manipulations in order to accomplish what seems to make so much sense?

From that single story has grown a year’s worth of reading. I began asking how death could be a healing process, and it was through this study that I began to understand why our current vocabulary about and models for celebrating the end of life are inadequate.

During this research, I have heard many similar stories of great courage and compassion. So let me begin by acknowledging how honored and grateful I am to those who have been so open in sharing their stories of great emotion, distress, and physical pain. I am humbled by their spiritual strength. In all the cases I encountered, medical assistance in dying was not used as an easy escape, not a cheap evasion of human responsibility to live fully with the gift God has given. On the contrary, those who came to the place of using medical assistance in dying were doing so as the faithful way to complete their life. In equal measure, those who opposed medical assistance in dying were highly compassionate, aware of the pain that many suffer at the end. They were deeply moved by the need to offer care and compassion at the end, while refusing to hasten that end in any way. The debate proved to be as complex and as lively as any I could imagine, and this book will hopefully reflect that complexity, avoiding simplistic responses while offering some pathways forward.

I recall, distinctly, the debate I had with my daughter-in-law, Tia. She was clear, coming from her hard-nosed common sense. She asked me if I was in favor of “making people suffer? Surely not! If you could heal them of that anguish, wouldn’t you?” It was Tia who helped me to realign my thinking, seeing medical assistance in dying as compassionate “healing” rather than as orchestrated “suicide.”

In addition to the many individuals who contributed to this project, I would like to thank Robert Oliphant, the co-chair of the parliamentary committee that studied this issue and presented their report, which was used in the establishing of the legislation, Bill C-14. Rob’s intellectual leadership, his theological and ethical insights, have been invaluable. I am especially grateful for his work with groups of religious leaders . . . both in listening to their alternate points of view and in presenting his own.

It was through the Louisville Institute of Louisville, Kentucky, that this research received its primary support. Their sympathy to a uniquely Canadian reality and their very professional and sympathetic response to my ideas have been invaluable. Through their financial generosity and moral support, I was given the time and resources to research and write. I am so thankful.

When I explained my work to a colleague in Cuba, his response was to comment on how giving my local congregation had been. “They let you do all this study?” he asked. “They are certainly generous!” And so they are!—grace-filled and encouraging. I owe a great deal to College Street United Church in Toronto for their healing and forgiveness . . . both of which have brought me home to my primary vocation, which is to write.

I am writing this section of the book at the country inn of my closest friends, Ann Vickers and Ray Drennan. If I turn to the left, I can look out to the bay at Bouchtouche, New Brunswick. For the peace of their home and their constant encouragement . . . not to mention the whiskey . . . I am always so thankful. Likewise, I owe an eternal debt of gratitude to Bronwyn Best who edits and improves my words and thoughts.

Finally, to my wife, Ellen. Thank you so much. I am so grateful to you, because you taught me to laugh at myself and yet to take every minute of living with a deep seriousness. In our short time together, we’ve walked down some pretty crazy and beautiful pathways. There is no other life we are given, and when we come to our last day, surely it should have as much meaning as those days which preceded it. Sometimes, we think safety is found in guarding ourselves and our hearts, but Ellen has taught me the joyous, wild truth of the aria she sings from Carmen: “Si je t’aime, prends garde à toi.”

Bouchtouche, May 2017

1. The “Carter” case refers to the constitutional challenge put forward by the family of Lee Carter et al., of British Columbia, which resulted in the Supreme Court decision that mandated a change to the Criminal Code, essentially decriminalizing medical assistance in dying.