Unsound Minds in Charge

My mother has forgotten she wants to die. For as long as I can remember she has been, not exactly planning it, but asserting her right to control her manner of death. When our family gathered for an Easter lunch during my freshman year of college, I announced that I had received a full scholarship to study abroad. She announced that she was going to kill herself at 80. She would have been 48 then. She is 78 now. In the interim, packages have arrived in the mail every now and then from ‘living will’ companies. Advance directives have been stashed in locked filing cabinets. Powers of Attorney have been signed and placed in safe-deposit boxes to which she alone has access (folks, do not do this). Also in the interim, a long-fought battle for Medical Assistance in Dying triumphed in our jurisdiction and just this month the government announced new legislation to allow advance requests in cases like Alzheimer’s. You no longer have to play roulette with timing—just make the request compos…