Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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FEB. 25 - MARCH 3, 2015 UCW 5 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM A cousin and I took in a movie one recent frigid afternoon. Still Alice is the searing story of a bright and articulate communications professor at Ivy League Columbia University in New York City. She is a wife, a mother, a runner. Life is good. Then she is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease at only 50. The film is both powerful and painful. Still Alice struck a chord with me. Many years ago the mother of close childhood friends received that same diagnosis in her late 40s — it was the first time I ever heard the word Alzheimer's. As her disease progressed, her daughter, then a college student, called home collect as we did in the days before cell phones. When her mother answered, the operator announced the caller by name. My friend's mother, genuinely puzzled, said, "Who?" It was a breathtakingly sad moment for my friend, and a story I have never forgotten. In one of Still Alice's most poignant moments, the recently diagnosed Alice records a video on her computer for the woman she knows she is going to become to find. Alice instructs her future and much diminished self to locate a hidden bottle of powerful sleeping pills, to take them all, then lie down and go to sleep. At the point she made the video, Alice was both well enough to want to enjoy what time she had left as a functioning woman and aware enough to reject any other way of living. She wanted to control her death. Just days after I saw the movie, which will haunt me forever, I stumbled across a Washington Post article about Diane Rehm, the venerable NPR talk show host who has become a strong voice in the right to die movement. Like the fictional Alice, Diane believes human beings have a right to make that choice for ourselves, a position with which she has personal experience. Diane Rehm's husband of 54 years suffered from Parkinson's Disease and had reached the point where he could do little for himself, including eating. He asked his physician to help him end his life. The doctor refused. Only three states recognize a right to die, and the Rehm's home state is not among them. A few nations also recognize it. The bedridden John Rehm took matters into his own hands, refusing to eat or drink. He died 10 days later. Diane, age 78, works with the end-of-life organization Compassion & Choices. She said, "I feel the way that John had to die was totally inexcusable. It was not right." Diane is a practicing Christian, as was her husband. The right to die issue is viewed by some as our country's next big social battle, with comparisons to volatile questions like abortion and gay marriage. It is not a new issue. Dr. Jack Kevorkian raised the question more than two decades ago and went to prison for assisting people to end their lives, acts that some said were murder. The issue reared its head again in a headline last year when a 29-year-old woman suffering from terminal brain cancer moved to Oregon, one of the states which recognizes a right to die, to do just that. She did. This young woman's decision to end her life brought new focus to the issue. It seems fair to say that the right to die issue is really being driven, like so many other changes in American culture since the mid-20th century, by the great demographic bubble of Baby Boomers. America's biggest generation is graying, with roughly 10,000 Boomers turning 65 every day. End of life issues loom large. Pushback on this round of right to die is guaranteed. Any hint of proposed legislation in the 47 states that do not recognize a right to die, or in Congress, will draw immediate and strong opposition from major religious faiths as well as from the medical establishment. It views right- to-die as incompatible with a physician's duty to heal. The medical community also argues that recognizing the right to die would be difficult to control and would have serious societal consequences. Many of us have had loved ones with terminal illnesses; individuals and families cope in their own ways. Some of us have faced the wrenching decision of discontinuing life support for someone we hold dear. Few of us, I suspect, have wrestled with the sort of end-of-life issue — some would say a civil right — that John and Diane Rehm and the young woman with the terminal brain tumor confronted. Part of this is that Americans live longer than ever before. Part of this is our individualism, which Baby Boomers hold dear. Part of this is that we have technology that can prolong our lives whether we want that or not. Right to life is playing in a theater near you. Ready or not, here it comes. THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET Serving Fayetteville Over 50 Years! 484-0261 1304 Morganton Rd. Mon-Sat: 6am-10pm Sun: 7am-2:30 pm Daily Specials • Breakfast • Lunch • Dinner Fresh Seafood • Hand Cut Steaks • Homemade Desserts • Italian & Greek • Children's Menu Banquet rooms available up to 100 guests Contest&RequestLine: 910-764-1073 www.christian107.com KeepingtheMainThing...theMainThing. visitusonline FocusontheFamily 20Countdown Magazine Adventures in Odyssey MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer, COMMENTS? Editor@upandcom- ingweekly.com.. 910.484.6200. Saying Goodbye On Your Own Terms by MARGARET DICKSON