In October 1991, Gilbert Meilaender, who chairs the theology department at Valparaiso University, wrote an evocative essay on making decisions through living wills. The article appeared in First Things and is called “I want to Burden my Loved Ones.”
Professor Meilaender makes the point that family members need each other to make it through life. He discusses how many hours he spent playing boring board games with his children, how many diapers he changed, and so on. If it is ok to burden parents with their childrens’ upbringing, why is it wrong to burden children with their parents’ end-of-life decisions?
Why is it that we want to spare our loved-ones from the hard work that must be done at the late end of life’s spectrum? The other night the call nurse requested that we put a 24-hour nurse at a patients’ bedside to administer medicine. The family was emotionally spent and “just couldn’t do it, ” she argued. I asked her to change course. You see, I didn’t want the family to miss-out on a precious service to their parent. We were able to teach a family member how to give the morphine in a way that controlled pain but didn’t over-medicate. It was beautiful in the end, and allowed the adult child to carry their parent’s burden. Priceless.
Living Wills are a hot topic right now. A lot of good people feel that a signed document would have cleared up the Terry Schiavo case, and we wouldn’t have had to burrow our way through the political maelstrom it became. Others feel differently. They worry that Living Wills tread too closely to ending human life prematurely.
Although I have a living will, and at times encourage my patients to write one, I think the folks who worry about Living Wills have a point. Keep in mind that physicians are rewarded financially for keeping medical costs down. The only way to do that is restrict access to care, and tightly written Living Wills can do that. The legislation written by Oregon Representative Blumenauer pays doctors to insert themselves into the discussion which traditionally has taken place within families. It is not difficult to push emotionally-burdened people into opting out of care.
So where does all this discussion about living wills leave us? What does being a Jesus-follower have to do with all of this? There are no easy answers. Pardon triteness, but I must say that each case has to be decided on its own specifics. As a family doctor, I have been involved in many end-of-life decisions. Each is unique.
Overlaying all cases is our inherent value as being image of God bearers. Human lives are prized. The Creator of the universe became a human, and for the humans, willfully submitted everything to save them.
Our Lord prayed that we would be one, as the Son is one with the Father (John 17). So, maybe one-ness applies when an elderly, unconscious father is not capable to make the decision to turn off the ventilator. The decision falls to the child of that father, who in a special one-ness, becomes his father.
Professor Meilaender would probably see it as part of receiving the burden that the parent carried so long when the child was young. I think he makes a compelling case. What we can’t do is make draconian statements about living wills, one way or the other. It is often a good thing to press on when there is not clarity. That is often when we experience the Father’s leading presence.
