I know this is a bit of a grim topic for a Tuesday as we are all probably feeling a bit grim anyway having to be back at work after the holidays, but I read this article about twins that decided to have themselves Euthanised and thought WTF?
In a nutshell (and I quote):
The (deaf) twins had lived and worked together their whole lives. They worked as cobblers, suffered spinal and heart disease, and were about to lose their vision from glaucoma.
and
“Many will wonder why my brothers have opted for euthanasia because there are plenty of deaf and blind that have a ‘normal’ life,” he said. “But my brothers trudged from one disease to another. They were really worn out.”
“They lived together, did their own cooking and cleaning. You could eat off the floor. Blindness would have made them completely dependent. They did not want to be in an institution,” said Mr Verbessem.
It could be that I’m super sensitive to the fact that twins decided to have themselves Euthanised because I have twins, but this just strikes me as very, very wrong.
Dying is not really something I spend a lot of time thinking about and I have wondered on occasion under what circumstances I would choose to have myself Euthanised. I have thought maybe if I had dementia or Alzheimer’s, but at which point do you draw the line, because generally speaking when you are ready to draw the line you wouldn’t care anyway.
Terminal illness? No thanks, I would want to suck those last few days/minutes/hours out of life and spend them with my family.
If you knew were you going to die on a certain day you could probably plan things properly and book your funeral in advance and choose your own casket etc, but in my heart of Calvinistic upbringing hearts I can’t get my head around it. It just seems very cold and calculated. Maybe I just like the fact of NOT knowing when I’m going to die, I prefer the element of surprise, if you know what I mean. Or am I very old school and narrowminded in my thinking?
What do you think, would you choose to have yourself taken out of the gene pool and if so, under which circumstances?