Qhat do the very old really want when they think about their death? The answer is unanimous: die at home, in bed, especially not in hospital, without suffering, without therapeutic relentlessness, surrounded by affection and presence. To be able to slide slowly into death, in a protected environment, without being forced to eat if you are no longer hungry.
Our legislative framework allows it. You still need to know how to anticipate, express your wishes, make contact early enough with a mobile palliative care team. Knowing this reassures the very old, who wonder then why demand a law that legalizes euthanasia or assisted suicide. These two “end-of-life solutions” scare them.
What will be done with them if they happen to be transferred to the hospital at night? They know that 20% of the elderly, in nursing homes, land in the emergency room, and then die on a stretcher, in a form of anonymity and loneliness. This death, they do not want. Nor do they want to run the risk of having their lives cut short without their knowledge. They dread being subjected to a “death injunction”. We sense an anguish in their words. How will their complaints be interpreted? And if they express a weariness of life, won’t we come to them “to sting” ? How to die, then? The very idea of lethal injection disturbs them. The words that come back all revolve around sweetness. “We would like to leave slowly, to have time to say goodbye, to feel ready. » No haste, no radical act.
“Indian Dying”
The more the elderly become fragile, the more they need confidence in their relationships with others, the more they fear sooner or later being perceived as a burden. The current law – which maintains the ban on deliberate killing – is a law that protects them, or so they hope.
But the very old also want to remain subjects of their death. Should we therefore organize his suicide? Can one remain the subject of one’s death, without imposing such a trauma on one’s loved ones? Without imposing on them the double bond with which any person solicited for assisted suicide is confronted? Let’s not tell a story! Participating in someone’s suicide generates a form of guilt, unconscious at least. Whatever we do, we feel guilty.
So, we talk about these old-fashioned ways of dying… The grandfather who stopped eating and drinking, who grew weaker, then sank slowly, gently, into death. We evoke the accompaniment around the bed of the dying, the visits of the grandchildren, the tender little words whispered in the ear, the toilets done with tact, the radio muted with the songs he loved, the prayers silent in believing families. And we tell ourselves that it’s still not bad to die like that. Was he in pain? No, apparently. The doctor came by from time to time to check, and then the grandfather breathed out, like a little candle.
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