Coastline Pilot "My life, my death, my choice'
CATHARINE COOPER

This is my life.

These are my fingers, pressing computer keys to communicate
my thoughts.

These are my arms, my hands, toes, feet and stomach.

This is my body, which when last I checked, did not belong to the federal, the
state, nor the local government.

I am not the chattel of my country. I bear no identifying number, although my fingerprints could be used to isolate me as a unique individual habituating this planet.

My mother likes to remind me that when I was 2 years old, I declared my independence. She's right. The date
coincides with the imminent birth of my brother. With all the attention and care focused on him, I determined that independence was a valuable entity. The price of this declaration would figure when I turned 5 and wanted to run away from home. I was told to devise my own solution to retrieve the suitcase from the closet's top shelf. Never one for subtleties, mother raised me in a strong Germanic tradition of self-reliance and responsibility.

Through the years, these guiding principles have manifested in an ever-evolving fashion. There were the years of study and learning, the years of job search and career decisions, the choice of mate and the creation of children. At every turn, not only was I responsible for the decisions, but for their outcome. If things did not go well, it was no one's fault but my own.

As a citizen of the United States, I've been granted overwhelming freedom to make these ongoing choices. The foundation of these decisions rests upon the Declaration of Independence's inalienable Rights: "... life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

The right to life is a uniquely controversial subject. Its orientation has fluctuated throughout human history. Ancient Greeks callously discarded deformed or retarded babies. The Chinese, under a one-child rule, quietly disposed of newly born females.

As medical science has advanced its understanding of the human form, it has become common practice to save everything -- no matter the emotional or fiscal cost.

The right to life is inextricably entwined with the right to death. As I grew from child to adult, conversations found their way to the question, "Would you want to live if ... ?" We would fill in the blank. At the time, the threat of nuclear war was a daily topic, so an obvious choice was "... if everyone were destroyed?" "... if you were maimed or severely burned?" "... if you could no longer walk?" "... if you could no longer speak?" "... if you could no longer care for yourself?"

The conversations were not then, and are not now, treated lightly. Countless films, books, and religious texts have been written on the right to die. The title of the Richard Dreyfuss film, "Whose Life Is This Anyway?" brings the heart of the subject to the forefront.

Death is the one thing we grow up knowing. We have not yet managed a scientific solution to surpass the gate, and the ongoing joke, that no one gets out of here alive, stands true. There are various religious beliefs that deal with the passage from life to death, but the certainty of the demise of our bodily form is not in question. What we do wonder is when and how we will die.

When my college friend took his life in the midst of a struggle with AIDS, I was saddened but understood. He was a brilliant thinker, who said that his mind was failing, and that, for him, to live without the power of thought was untenable.

My grandmother was 94 when she broke her second hip, and was in no mood for another lengthy rehabilitation. She refused to eat, and doctors advised my father to insert an intravenous feeding tube without fully communicating to him that its removal would define her death. For the next two years, my grandmother slipped in and out of lucidity, stared at a television screen and whispered in my ear that she wanted to die. Finally, pneumonia freed her of a body that she long wished to leave.

It seems our power to love must be tempered by our power to let go. I want the decisions that surround how I live and die to continue to be my own.

Thanks, Mom, for the independent push.

My medical directives prevent family members from loving me into a form of life I would not choose for myself, or a government from intervening.

This is my life.


* CATHARINE COOPER can be reached at (949) 497-5081 or ccooper@cooperdesign.net.
Copyright 2005 Daily Pilot