Althouse: "It may sound macabre to hold a camera up to a dying woman. But Mary Beth said her mother wanted to spread the word..."

November 5, 2019

"It may sound macabre to hold a camera up to a dying woman. But Mary Beth said her mother wanted to spread the word..."

"... that there was a legal, relatively pain-free way to end one’s life. 'She thought that more people should take advantage of it,' she said. 'She wanted to show people that it could be peaceful and even joyful... For all my life, she used to say, "People should row their own boats"... At every family reunion she would talk about it — "When I get to the point where I can’t care for myself, then I’m going to hasten my death through fasting... Old Eskimos, they would just go off and die," and she thought that made so much sense.'... She said, "I’m sorry, but I have to do what’s right for me"'... Her last meal, for dinner on Dec. 5, was crab cakes. The next day, she stopped eating — and her daughter started filming.... The film does not skip over difficult parts, including the last day Rosemary is conscious, when her mind starts to wander as her organs shut down, and she slips into a deep sleep. In the audience at Iona, the film elicited mixed reactions...."

From "At 94, she was ready to die by fasting. Her daughter filmed it" (WaPo). The woman did not have a terminal illness, just had a spinal compression fracture (from osteoporosis) which doctors said would heal in 3 months.

33 comments:

Shouting Thomas said...: Age 94 is a terminal illness.

My mom recently died two weeks short of her 93rd birthday. She didn’t eat for the last week of her life.

This is normal, not chosen, behavior for a dying person.

There’s something oppressive and annoying about the contemporary (and mainly female) determination to make everything pleasant and joyful.

This must be the German/Irish Catholic in me, but I think that somber, reverent and sacred is a damned good approach to death.

This Mary Beth is peddling New Age fluff.; 11/5/19, 5:17 AM
Darrell said...: So she wasn't dying until she decided to off herself. Cool. Maybe the Lefties that told us how wonderful starvation is during the Terri Schiavo debacle can chime in once again.; 11/5/19, 5:20 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: So many of the great classical piano and orchestral works are very somber reflections on mortality.

I’d rather sit at the piano and play the fantastic (and often morbid) works of Bach, Chopin and Beethoven that struggle furiously with the composer’s mortality than convert to the standard funeral parlor “Celebration of [X]’s Life.”

You have to be reared and indoctrinated in the great, reverent mysteries of Christianity to understand and appreciate these great works of art.

What’s the attraction of this McDonald’s Happy Meal approach to mortality?; 11/5/19, 5:31 AM
tim maguire said...: Fasting may be relatively pain-free, but it’s awfully slow. I’d prefer something faster. So to speak.; 11/5/19, 5:35 AM
Quaestor said...: Suicide by fasting? Acceptable if you do it in private, but Mary Beth's mother seems to want to inflict existential suffering on her audience. Very nice. Just the kind of final gesture one would expect from a total bitch.

Buy a cheap gun and blow your brains out, lady. The rest of us have work to do.; 11/5/19, 6:18 AM
Jamie said...: Age 1 day is a terminal illness, when you come to that.

From the relatively safe haven of my early 50s, I can say this: I've only been at one deathbed in my life, and I think we lost something important when people stopped dying at home on the regular. I know that I benefited from being present at this elderly cousin's death - it was quiet, in his case, and though in a hospital, he was the patriarch of a faithful family who had gathered (for his daughter's wedding, earlier that day, which he insisted go on so that she could visit him as a married woman even if he was too far gone to walk her down the aisle). We all sang his favorite hymns, and talked, and prayed, and took turns holding his hands. And it did the opposite of fill me with dread; it made me much more sanguine about the process of dying, which I worry about much more than death.; 11/5/19, 6:26 AM
rhhardin said...: If you want a proper viral end, there ought to be a virus involved.; 11/5/19, 6:41 AM
iowan2 said...: Our Mom did the suicide by fasting. No water or food. She had had enough. Dementia was part of the equation, but she had always hated the notion of being warehoused until pneumonia took over. As a WWII Army nurse, and farm wife, she had long ago understood life and death, and the fleeting time we are in this earthly phase of "life". Death is much harder for those left behind on earth, than those actually dying.; 11/5/19, 6:50 AM
Dad Bones said...: That didn't work so well for my mother. At 87 she was in enough pain that she told me she was ready to die. She was living in a HUD apartment and was content to peacefully die there. She might have but I happened to mention that to one of the employees at an agency for the aging. A few hours later I received a phone call from her and a nurse who told me that by letting my mother die they would see that I was charged with elder abuse.

So much for her peaceful death. My poor frail mother didn't want her death to cause any trouble so we let the paramedics take her to the hospital where they went to work on revitalizing her. With enough morphine to ease her pain of course she felt better. During her stay the nurses and physical therapists kept waking her up and trying to make her walk, all with good intentions, but their efforts didn't alter my mother's wish to die so after a few days they transferred her to a nursing home where she died five days later.; 11/5/19, 6:51 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Jamie said...

From the relatively safe haven of my early 50s...

Three months ago, I would have said the same thing...; 11/5/19, 6:58 AM
MadisonMan said...: Mary Beth said her Mom wanted to spread the word, and who are we to doubt the word of a woman trying to publicize her own movie that exploits her Mom?; 11/5/19, 7:00 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Facing mortality at age 52, my current plan is to be pleasant, cheerful, and to fight like hell, knowing that it is a fight I will lose.

And also knowing, in the years I've had, I've been luckier than most of you poor bastards.; 11/5/19, 7:01 AM
traditionalguy said...: Having a spinal compression fracture is #1 on the all time suicidal level pain spectrum. And at age 92 faced with going through an 8 month recovery after a 12 hour spinal fusion would seem the wrong choice. Even Bionic people need hope for a reasonable future to go through that.; 11/5/19, 7:05 AM
MadisonMan said...: She might have but I happened to mention that to one of the employees at an agency for the aging.
The less you tell the Government -- or its representatives -- the better.; 11/5/19, 7:08 AM
MadisonMan said...: IgnoranceIsBliss: I'm sorry to read that harsh reality of your life.; 11/5/19, 7:12 AM
Seeing Red said...: What a bunch of selfish, self-centered BULLSHIT.

My mom passed last week. You don’t want your parent to go out that way, trust me.

They tried to sell the same BULLSHIT with Terry Schiavo.; 11/5/19, 7:27 AM
Wince said...: Old Eskimos, they would just go off and die," and she thought that made so much sense.'

If it's not too much of a burden, I prefer to just rub noses, okay?; 11/5/19, 7:33 AM
samanthasmom said...: I was recently faced with the decisions one has to make when one's spouse is dying. He and I didn't always agree with how one should approach death. His living will left the decision about whether things like respirators and feeding tubes should be removed to our daughter so he and I could stop arguing about it. But when his doctor was alone with me, he said while the document left the decision about turning them off to her, it said nothing about turning them on in the first place. He said they would delay death maybe for a few hours or a day or two, but those days would be spent in pain or a complete stupor. There was no "miracle cure" that would reverse the dying. I could circumvent the issue by just doing palliative care. I assembled the family to all be there, but I said nothing about putting him on a respirator or doing anything to revive him. His death was so peaceful it took a few minutes for any of us to notice he was gone. My daughter was relieved she got to be with her dad when he died and didn't have to make any painful decisions. I don't know if I would choose to deliberately starve myself, but neither child will argue with me anymore about just recognizing when the time has come to say good-bye.; 11/5/19, 7:39 AM
Roughcoat said...: I hate death. This whole "circle of life" thing is crap.; 11/5/19, 7:49 AM
JPS said...: Ignorance Is Bliss, 7:01:

When my turn comes, if I am aware of its approach, I hope to face it with something like the spirit you describe.; 11/5/19, 7:54 AM
dreams said...: Old people near death lose their appetite, in the hospital my dad got to the point he wouldn't eat but he wasn't trying to kill himself. He didn't need to for his Dr shot him up with enough morpheme that his lungs collapsed during the night and he died at age 79.; 11/5/19, 8:24 AM
Maillard Reactionary said...: Shouting Thomas @5:31 AM: I always get a chill when I listen to Contrapunctus XIV from Bach's Art of Fugue when it ends abruptly, unfinished, just after Bach has introduced a subject formed from the letters of his name.

I understand that after setting this piece aside, intending to finish it, the last thing he wrote (dictated, actually) was a chaste setting of of the chorale Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit.

Some coda!; 11/5/19, 8:30 AM
Gahrie said...: There was a story in the news recently about a chimp in Europe that did the same thing. A viral video of the chimp's reaction when one of her early handlers showed up to see her near the end. I've seen cats behave in a similar manner. It appears that here is a point at which elderly mammals do give up and stop eating and drinking.; 11/5/19, 8:38 AM
dreams said...: "And also knowing, in the years I've had, I've been luckier than most of you poor bastards."

I'll be 75 in about month and based on the conviction expressed in your comment I'm going to assume it's correct, at least regarding myself. Though, I do feel lucky to have lived 75 years and to have been born and raised in the forties and fifties.; 11/5/19, 8:54 AM
RigelDog said...: Ignorance is Bliss: Praying for you as you face the road.; 11/5/19, 8:55 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: JPS said...

When my turn comes, if I am aware of its approach, I hope to face it with something like the spirit you describe.

I, too, hope to face it with the spirit I describe. :)
I likely still have a few years.

I don't know just how much time I have left; why would I want to spend one minute of that time being unhappy or unpleasant?

(And, for the record, none of you know just how much time you have left. Live accordingly); 11/5/19, 9:17 AM
Sebastian said...: "People should row their own boats"

Libertarian? At least, it's the anti-prog motto.; 11/5/19, 9:40 AM
Wince said...: One of the main reasons my father chose imminent death (by having his ventilator removed) was he had lost the ability to eat solid food.

In hospital he used to watch cooking shows all the time.; 11/5/19, 9:48 AM
rcocean said...: I've had the same experience with relatives. They're old, they're in pain or suffering from some annoying disease and they just forgo medical treatment and die. Because what's the point. Keep on trucking so they can die of some OTHER disease? They all knew that once past 90, they were on borrowed time. They were grateful for a long life, and were ready to end it.; 11/5/19, 10:14 AM
Yancey Ward said...: I have told this story on these pages before, though not with all the details.

My father died in August of 2018, and it happened because he stopped eating and drinking. He had advanced Parkinson's with the associated dementia of both that and Alzheimers. He had suffered from pretty severe lower back problems most of his adult life, and had a lower back fusion in his late 50s that had ameliorated some of it, but not all. In mid July of 2018, he developed a really bad case of sciatica that, at first, made it difficult for him to walk, and within a day or two the pain was so bad he couldn't walk at all. We did try pain medication and prednisone along with the OTC painkillers, but nothing really worked well, and I knew that given his physical infirmities that if he didn't walk within a couple of weeks, he never would again.

The worse thing is that had he been mentally competent, I think he would be alive today. He had had sciatica in the past, and the treatment for it is anti-inflammatories and bed rest, but in his mental state, we couldn't leave him alone for 5 minutes without finding him in the floor crawling around in pain- he simply forgot that he couldn't walk. After about 2 weeks of this, he just stopped eating and drinking when the ER doctors basically told him and us (my mother and I) that there was nothing they could do for him. Our only choice at that point was to have him admitted to the hospital, put into restraints, and fitted with a feeding tube. Without restraints, he would just crawl out of the bed and pull out any tubes including catheters.

His death was gruesome- there is no sugar-coating that. The first week after he stopped eating he was in constant pain that no amount of morphine seemed to really help. After that, he spent three days in a sort of dream state that he only came out of as we and/or the hospice nurses moved him to clean him or change the diapers, and when he did come awake, you could tell the pain was immense. He eventually went into a permanent coma and died 9 days later. If I had it to do over, I would have given him a fatal dose of morphine that first day we had access to it. Letting him die the way we did seems evil in retrospect. I hope most cases of this where the patient stops eating aren't like my father's death.; 11/5/19, 10:27 AM
Skippy Tisdale said...: ""People should row their own boats""

That boat, you didn't own it.; 11/5/19, 12:05 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: Yancey Ward @10:27 AM: "Letting him die the way we did seems evil in retrospect."

I am sorry to hear of your Father's suffering, and yours. I hope that you find peace in time.

Sadly, there was very likely no need for your Father to die in pain like that, but very few physicians know about pain management for the terminally ill. Some hospice nurses, like my wife was, do and none of her patients died in pain unless they chose to do so. There are forms of morphine that most docs have never heard of, much less prescribed. (Before anyone starts up, hospice nurses do not kill people.)

The sad truth is that many physicians simply lose interest in their patients once they become terminal. They forget that those patients are still alive.

Separately, it is common for the dying to stop eating and drinking. It seems to be part of the process.; 11/5/19, 2:31 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: Ignorance is Bliss @9:17 AM: Thank you for your sound advice, sir. The world would be a better place if more of us kept it in mind every day.; 11/5/19, 2:48 PM