Personal Journal

Euthanasia

I don't understand how this memory thing works. I notice that I don't really want to believe that I'm having flashbacks. They aren't really like movie flashbacks. And I tell myself only people who have suffered a trauma have flashbacks, and I haven't suffered any trauma.

On the one hand, it's not uncommon for me to get lost in a thought completely sometimes.

But this is a lot more than losing myself in a thought. This is reliving a moment. A moment that seems to stand still and I can move around it, as if an observer of my own mind in that moment. And I see what I'm feeling, and I'm thinking them through now, because in those moments, I couldn't think them through.

I don't know how Kim and I got to talking about it, but I got to a memory I haven't thought about since the day after she died. I had only told Kim about it, I think, and I don't even remember telling her the day after. She says I did, and I believe her.

At one point, night had fallen and Jean was somewhere into about two or three hours of our bedside vigil as her breathing broke down. It ultimately took 5 or 6 hours, or maybe a little more. It was exhausting and I don't remember much of it at all now.

I was getting a dose of morphine, and Amy (the veterinarian friend of Jean's) somehow broached the subject of giving Jean an overdose of the morphine to kill her and end that respiratory breakdown cycle. Brenda was there, and Brenda and Amy were both saying that they would understand if I did want to. Amy was basically saying it wasn't wrong to ... kill ... Jean to make the end quick and painless. Brenda wasn't really commenting on the morality, just insisting it wasn't her decision. I couldn't tell whether she was comfortable or not with the idea, but I thought she was.

It doesn't occur to me between then and today that at that moment, I pursued a thought where I literally put myself in the position of having Jean's life in my hands. So I thought about it.

I know Jean had a Do-Not-Resuscitate order from long ago, so I knew she wanted her death to be as quick as practicable once the end was reached. So a part of me thought Jean wanted me to ... let's use the word "euthanize" her. I think also that if Jean had been told that those last few hours were going to be like that, she would have said to euthanize her at that point. But I know now that Jean wasn't able to imagine how life would be like for me, on this side of her passing.

At the moment that decision was being contemplated by me, I remember thinking that if anything looked unusual in her death, the nurse who would come pronounce death later would call us on it, and at the least, the life insurance money would be forfeit (if not it being an outright jailable crime). And I knew that I needed the money.

And I said at that time to the girls, no, I didn't want to do that. But I didn't tell them any of my thought about "getting caught". I was ashamed that I wasn't doing something to ease Jean's suffering because I was thinking about a financial consideration for my life after her death.

I've been ashamed of that, silently, since that day. I thought I had been a coward.

But tonight when I was talking to Kim, I had my flashback. And now I can see an instantaneous stream of thoughts that went through my mind before I ever thought about life insurance.

I thought inside myself somewhere, that Jean was already not suffering, her mind and body separated, and perhaps only her soul still existing nearby. The next few hours would be no real toll on her.

And I thought, very succinctly and briefly, that the power to decide when Jean will die belongs to God. And I felt certain that to usurp god's plan of my own free will was not something I could do in the midst of this spiritual passing of Jean. And I know now that that's the real reason I didn't euthanize Jean. The money issue was just something underneath which I buried that awful feeling of having to decide whether or not to kill Jean.

I wouldn't have been able to look ahead into this life after Jean to know this, then: No matter how much I felt that euthanizing her would have been a moral duty, there is no way I could have lived with myself if I had been the hands that had taken my Jean from the world.

And I'm so thankful that I found a way to do the right thing in that moment, even though a part of me was telling me it was wrong. I really did think about killing her. And I cannot believe I did that.