I’m at work on a book about medical assistance in dying, the working title is: Exit Stage Rite: Lessons for a Brand New Way of Dying
On what I knew was my father’s last evening, I propped him up in his hospital bed, squared my toned shoulders against his emaciated ones and proceeded to pin his wrist to the table. It wasn’t until after he died and I reviewed my brother’s video of the match that I noticed Dad’s grin. That arm wrestle was the first and last time my father let me win at anything.
I suppose it was a parting gift. One of many. Thanks to his choice to die with assistance, my father opened the way for a healing parade of “lasts.”
Watching Dad navigate his choice to have MAID challenged my notion of courage and upended my estimation of his character. Then, our rabbi offered to attend his assisted death and what might have been a clinical medical procedure was transformed into a healing rite of passage.
We use ritual to ease our path from one social role to another: children become teenagers, students become graduates, and daughters become orphans. However, unlike graduations, weddings, or even funerals, when it comes to rites for MAID we don’t have centuries of tradition to guide us. My book tells the stories of people who’ve made considered and thoughtful end-of-life decisions, and of the loved ones they left behind. It offers insights from experts and shares the often poignant and sometimes audacious ways families and friends have chosen to honour their loved ones before it was too late.
Candid, vulnerable, sometimes irreverent, and ultimately uplifting, Exit also includes my family’s story, and the parade of lasts in the ticking days and hours between my father’s terminal diagnosis and the eight slow minutes it took him to become an ancestor.