Tuesday 26 January 2016

If I ...

If I turn into that person, that shambling undignified wreck who doesn't love living, who is an embarrassment to myself and my relatives.  If I smell of wee, an I drool and there's no joy to be had from anything.  If I'm reduced to feeding from a tube, cannot walk without help, but importantly, if in all this I lose my faculties, my ability to make decisions or to communicate my needs then don't just let me go, please push me.  Push me down the stairs, or give me leave to find my own route of departure head first down a flight.  Don't let me live like this.

But that's not how it works.  Someone may deteriorate, their quality of life may become eroded, their bodily functions carried out by someone else without their say so, wee in a tube, poo hand balled out, but still, we say, they are themselves, they laugh and talk and react and love, still love coherently and truly, and no, we can't push them downstairs.  It's not how it works.

It's a killer.

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