ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603180014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN M. LEVY
As a somewhat conservative sort of guy, I am not always a big fan of the federal judiciary. But every now and then, it gets things exactly right; when it does, credit should be given. We'll come to the case in point in just a minute.
A decade ago, my mother, then 84, was killed in an auto accident. My father, 86, was driving. He should have given up driving years earlier, but that's another matter. It was foggy out, his vision was impaired by cataracts, and he made a left turn into the path of an oncoming station wagon.
My father and the young man who hit them were uninjured, but my mother died half an hour later in the emergency room. One minute she was sitting up and talking. A minute later her blood pressure collapsed and she was gone.
The day after, I called relatives to tell them what had happened. One call sticks in my mind. It was to my cousin Judith, then in her 50s. Her own mother had recently died of a long, debilitating illness. Her father, in his middle 80s, lived in a nursing home with his body relatively intact but his mind largely gone.
"Just where was your father taking her when it happened?" she asked me.
"He had picked her up at the hairdresser and he was taking her to the library," I replied.
"From the hairdresser to the library. Oh, how wonderful" she responded.
Then there was a pause, for perhaps she felt that she had been just a bit tactless. But she went on. "I'm sorry I can't sound sad, John. But I'm not sad. I'm jealous. I hope that you can understand."
And knowing about her experience with her own parents, I understood perfectly.
In fact, I appreciated her honesty.
My mother had reached 84 in reasonably good health with her sight, her hearing and her mind intact, and then she had gone in an instant. What percentage of the human race would sign up for a deal like that if they could get it?
Some years before my mother died, New York's former governor, Nelson Rockefeller, died of a heart attack in the apartment of a woman much younger than he. Quite a few men thought that was a fine way to go. Once you get past the obvious "died in the saddle" remarks, what you have is very simple - the wish to be here while it's good and to not have to drink too many dregs at the end.
My father lived on to 94. A few months before his death, I found myself explaining to his cardiologist that he had signed a living will and did not want to be the object of any heroic measures.
I was pleased and a little surprised to see that the doctor understood totally. "Sometimes I think that I should have 'Do not resuscitate' tattooed on my own chest," he said.
And that brings us back to the federal courts. In San Francisco the other day, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a state of Washington law banning assisted suicide. The court held that there exists a constitutional right to a "dignified and humane death."
I don't claim to understand the constitutional arguments in detail - but what a civilized, reasonable and kind decision it is! No doubt it will be appealed. Let us hope the Supreme Court has the sense to reject the appeal.
And me, I'm 60 and in good health. I still ski. Students still find my lectures coherent - unless they are just being very polite. And, not to boast, but I don't think that I look a day over 59. I hope to be around for quite a while.
But when the time comes that it's down to the dregs for me - by my definition, not somebody else's - I'd like to have some choice. This once, I think the court got it exactly right.
John M. Levy is a professor of urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech.
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