I guess it's because no matter how hard we fight it, no matter how rosy a glow we try to cast on old age as life's "second act," filled with mellowness and self-discovery and whatever the hell post-menopausal zest is really all about, the truth is, death comes at the end of it, no matter what. I might have answered "yes," too-though, to be frank, age 70 strikes me as pretty young for conversations like this-and I wonder why. When you think about it, this is all pretty revolutionary: a significant minority of people in a small country in Western Europe believe that old people who are healthy should be allowed to die, and should be helped to die, if they choose death as an alternative to facing the inevitable catastrophes of aging. According to an Associated Press report, the organization's spokeswoman, Marie-Jose Grotenhuis, said the group was "overwhelmed" by the response, "especially because people took it so seriously and reactions were mostly positive." The AP report went on: (My fellow Psych Today blogger Ira Rosofsky mentioned this movement in a blog post a few years ago.) To get their proposal debated in parliament in March 2012, the group needed to collect 40,000 signatures in support of the idea they said they collected 112,500. The group that sponsored the initiative, Out of Free Will, is composed of well-respected professors, former ministers, lawyers, and other professionals. I thought about it again recently while reading about an effort in the Netherlands to legalize euthanasia for people a lot like her (or the version of her I've concocted in my mind): people over the age of 70 who are "tired of living." That's the intent of the "Completed Life" initiative-and apparently it's not as oddball an idea in Holland as it might be in the US. I don't know, obviously, whether that was the source of this woman's distress, but it spoke to me, and I've thought about it a lot over the years.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |