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Grandfather
Saves Child I can’t imagine
at my age of 62 and moving on, standing over any child
of mine or grandchild watching them die when my heart
was just going to allow me to continue to live and
experience another decade or more, knowing from that
point on I’d be filled with the heartache of loss. I’ve taken very
good care of my liver, kidneys, and other critical
organs and would certainly pass on at least those to
my own kids and theirs if the need arose but the heart
should be part of that package so they’d have many
more decades to live versus my last decades. Certainly
when my grandkids bodies are large enough to be able
to successfully carry any of my organs, heart
included, I should have the right to donate so they
might live. That should be an absolute given. It’s not that I
don’t love life; I still wake every day early and
embrace it; I adore life, and live it fully daily but
I’d want my kids and theirs to spend at least as long
as I have done loving life as much as I have loved it.
It’s hard for many folks to understand, because
they’ve not yet lived enough. Teeth &
Molars
As a very small example, a couple of years ago
I finally got an appointment at UBC Dental Surgery to
have a molar implant. The school has taken care of my
alumni teeth
regularly since I retired. My lower back molar was
cracked in three (rugby eh!) and had to come out. Then
my son said he’d had an infected molar yanked while
working up in Fort McMurray. I immediately asked UBC
to consider giving him my spot. They did, and voila -
he had a beautiful, tough, more carefree, implanted
molar which should be around many years longer than it
would have been with me. Makes complete
and total logical sense eh!? A no brainer eh! Not The Way
It’s Done!
OMG! What? Whenever other folks suggest
things aren’t done a certain way, I sometimes wonder
where they’ve been hiding. There are so many ways we
Boomers have changed the society of our grandparents;
and too many of those ways are not for the better. In
general: we no longer know nor take care of elderly
neighbours - we don’t shovel their walks of snow and
recently we’ve found out we couldn’t possibly stop by
daily, to offer to pick up their mail from pending
Canada Post Superboxes. Oh no! - Don’t stop our
daily delivery! We can’t handle
that! We don’t keep our home temperature at a
reasonably sustainable 15 degrees and wear a sweater
indoors like they did. Hanging clothes to dry on a
line like they did is too much work. We don’t walk and
take public transit nearly as much as they did. We eat
far more sugar and fatty processed food and are far
less fit than they were, now breaking the national
bank when it comes to escalating health-care costs and
sugar related Alzheimer’s disease. The list of ways we
have changed their society is endless. |
Yes, we don’t
do things the way they did. We simply accept that
society changes. So why is it we find it so difficult
to accept that those who choose to, should have a right-to-die
on their own terms? Are we really so incredibly
selfish? Embrace Life
to Die
I embrace life fully every day and I will
continue to do so, but I encourage others to start
today to wake early and get lots done so that they
have no end of life bucket list and then end up
fearing death when its time approaches on the
down-slide. Empty Bucket
List
Unlike too many of my typical Boomer peers who
now scramble to cram their last years with experiences
they missed having chosen to sit in front of TV or
drink relatively in excess and sleep through too much
of life - my bucket list now remains near empty. I
don’t need to be - jumping out of any more planes,
romping white-water rivers, or scuba diving yet again.
I’ll not be backpacking, or motorcycling or camper
van-ing through any more exotic places. I’ve seen and
experienced more than my fair share of my grandkid’s
world, something they may never be able to do with
climate change / global warming. My bucket
list now consists of helping teach grandkids to
help out with home renovations and to hoe, plant,
prune and harvest home food garden; to tool and craft
leather and wood and perhaps teach them to sail, canoe
or kayak. Hey “God” -
Slightly Used – Good Condition
Having taken relatively excellent care of
the body and all of the organs I was gifted by the
earth mother creator I should now be able to do with
them as I
choose. I am
not personally bound by any dogmatic religious
constraints. My society’s laws should not be
constrained by them either. The separation of state
and religion should not only be by law as it in fact
is, but also by sentiment - unconstrained by bias as
in that of fundamentalist evangelical religious types
- e.g. Prime Minister Stephen Harper et al who might
take to heart their own ‘lords’
dictate – “Greater love hath no man than this, that he
lay down his life for another”. When I come to what feels like the end of
my naturally worthwhile, healthful life I should be
able to choose what to do with that well cared for
body and all
of its parts. If my grandkids or my children do not
need those parts then I should be able to donate them
as I see fit. I should have, under Charter of Rights
and Freedoms, a Right-to-die
on my own terms. Doctors who do not agree with ending an
old life so that a young one may live, need not -
simple as that. But neither should they tell other
doctors who see it as a viable and logical extension
of their Hippocratic Oath. The Right to Die must be enshrined in
the Charter of Rights and Freedoms April 26,
2014-04-25
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