I’ve upset a lot of people over the years. At first I thought this was due to my unwavering history of frank and fearless journalism but it turns out people just find me rather annoying.
It is for this reason that I find the euthanasia debate a little bit worrying. I’ve seen the way my mother looks at me sometimes.
There are also fiscal considerations. I am already in my mid-thirties and drink and smoke far too much. If I were bumped off now it would likely save the hospital system a great deal of money and - from what my bosses tell me - have no discernible impact on national productivity.
This is not just a fear for myself of course but a fear for all of us who are vulnerable at times.
These could be ageing grandmothers and grandfathers who might feel as though they are a burden on their families; chronically or terminally ill people who might succumb to a dark moment in a life that still has much happiness left; people who struggle each morning to fight back the black dog, forgetting they are often rewarded in the afternoons.
Just recently my own grandmother died after a very solid 94 years on the planet. It was certainly not a life cut tragically short.
For years leading up to her death, which was ultimately hastened by a stroke but really caused by the ruthless inevitability of time, she had been losing many of the things that had given her pleasure.
The tennis had gone more than a decade ago - even her rat-cunning drop shots were beyond her by then - and the hearing started sliding soon afterwards, so every family dinner was a shouting match. (Granted they had always been shouting matches, but you get the idea.)
Her mobility declined until she could barely raise herself from bed. At the same time her appetite became more and more particular until she was commanding my mother around the kitchen like a squawkier version of George Calombaris. The plating up was slightly different too.
Indeed for many years my mother was effectively the sole carer of my grandmother, at first being at her beck and call via a special ``Batphone’’ that obviously gave Tony Abbott a few ideas, and eventually spending the last few months living with her in varying degrees of cleanliness. All the while she was working five days a week as an integration aide (clearly my mother has a thing for the disabled) and also tending to my grandmother’s 101-year-old sister Great Aunt Dorothy, a large, blind, demented woman who had both the physical strength and the voice control of an Asian elephant.
That one is still going incidentally.
And it is not as though my grandmother found much pleasure in her final years, nor that she exhibited any particular stoicism. She didn’t spend any significant time marvelling at the wonders of nature or assuring her family that she would be just fine. On the contrary, she complained a lot, demanded dinner at strange hours and often wondered aloud whether or not she would get into heaven.
So let’s cut the usual ``oh you could never be a burden’’ crap. Yes, my grandmother was a burden and caring for her was enormously difficult for my mother. It was physically and emotionally gruelling work, 24 hours a day.
But it was something she did without question. She didn’t do it because she enjoyed it - she wasn’t skipping about changing catheters like Mary Poppins - and she didn’t even do it especially because she wanted my grandmother to stay alive. She did it because my grandmother wanted to stay alive. Despite her grumblings, her constant pain and her crippling depression - strong family qualities that led her to declare me her favourite grandchild (in front of the others of course) - she wanted to live each last second.
And maybe it was no joie de vive. Maybe, again like her grandson, she was just paralysed by a cowardly fear of ceasing to exist. But that is what makes us human: We are cursed by the knowledge that the only certain truth is that death will take us and yet we rail against that certainty with all our might.
This is why historically the earliest signs of human culture are burial sites. The will to live on and the delusion that death is not final is the first marker on our journey to civilisation.
Another early marker of humanity is caring for the elderly and not just leaving them behind when they become too difficult to deal with. Even the Neanderthals managed to do that.
If people genuinely want to die it is almost impossible to stop them. And once they are in any form of palliative care they are often effectively euthanased anyway via the administration of painkillers. Doctors know that there are already plenty of informal avenues for achieving a peaceful and humane death and they use these everyday.
And there’s a reason why they should stay informal: Because more important than any individual’s ``right to die’’ is the right of all of us to be free from any pressure to die - and by that I mean the slightest, tiniest, most minuscule suggestion that the world or their loved ones might get along easier without them.
If you legalise euthanasia, if you institutionalise the concept that people should be weighing up the pros and cons of their own existence, that pressure is inevitably going to follow.
People battling vicious diseases or just the onset of time may start to feel selfish for doing so, when in fact the will to live is the most fundamental and decent desire within all of us. It drives our quest for peace, for democracy and for progress.
If my grandmother or anyone like her felt guilty for living because of a new law passed in her own country, it would be a country that had betrayed its weak and muffled the divine spark in each of its citizens.
Although it would at least give her one more thing to complain about.
Don’t miss: Get The Punch in your inbox every day
Get The Punch on Facebook
Facebook Recommendations
Read all about it
Punch live
Up to the minute Twitter chatter
In my sports column on The Punch tomorrow: why Eurovision was easily the best game on the weekend. Mummy bloggers, you'll like this one!
Recent posts
The latest and greatest
Abbott’s crass logic: trash the Parliament in order save it
An email was sent to almost every politician in Australia this week saying that someone should cut off…
Our special forces don’t always need special treatment
We admire them, but we’re not entirely sure why. We allow them to operate in the shadows; we rarely…
A good holiday is about unrest, not rest
Like a fat full-stop, it lay in my hand. A small orange – not exactly fresh, but purchased anyway…
Nosebleed Section
choice ringside rantings
From: They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
Michael S says:
"A teacher at Geelong Grammar had criticised her for using words that were too long, which had left her confused and had made her doubt her ability to write essays. She became ''quite distressed'' when her English marks began to fall." I can sympathise. My scholastic mentors conveyed to me a causal relationship… [read more]From: Welfare for breeders is a bonus for everyone
Change Up! says:
I have no problem paying my taxes. As a single, childless person on a very decent income, I can afford it and not have my life severely altered. Plus I understand that my taxes paying for things like schools, childcare and infrastructure is ultimately a good thing. A better community is better for me… [read more]Gentle jabs to the ribs
They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
A private school girl’s family is sueing her elite, extremely expensive private school for not… Read more
Most commented