Guest Post on Euthanasia

A guest post by Martin Ryan on euthanasia:

Simon, Louise and the kids came to visit today.  Little Katie had her first day at school last week, she was so excited about it and showed me the picture that she drew for me.  I’m running out of room for them!  It’s lovely that she remembers her old grandma.  It’s so wonderful to see them every couple of weeks and share their little milestones.

Simon’s having a hard time at the moment though.  The recession has hit his plumbing business very hard.  He reckons he’s got another three months and then they’ll have to look at selling their home.  He’s worked so hard to get where he is.

I know this place is costing them a lot. $500 a week is a big additional expense at the moment.  Since I lost all my money in Blue Chip finance I’ve had to rely on Simon and Louise and they’ve been great about it.  He never mentions it and bats it away as the least he can do whenever I bring it up.  Tom and I raised a great son.

But it’s not fair on him.  He deserves to have a better life than that.  He needs his house now more than he needs a rattly old mother.  I figure if left to natural means I’ve got another few years in me.  I’d love to see Sarah hit school too, and perhaps even finish the memoirs.  But that’s at least $50k out of Simon and Louise’s pocket.  Out of Sarah and Katie’s university fund.

Such a fall.  I used to make such a difference in this world, teaching, speaking.  Now I’m nothing but a burden on my family.

Yes, they’ll be fine without me – better off in fact.  I’ll speak with the doctors tomorrow.  I’ll play something up, maybe the kidneys.  I hear they don’t ask too many questions if you’ve got all your marbles.  

I remember when they introduced the euthanasia law they talked about all the safeguards they’d put in.  But of course the standards slip.  They have to, there’s too much work to do to check every old lady’s reasons.

I’m always happy to run guest posts. It goes without saying I don’t agree with the perspective in this post as being at all realistic, but I accept some people think that could happen.