
“Where do I go?….To whom should we go?”
“It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die
‘Cause I don’t know what’s up there, beyond the sky
It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come” – Sam Cooke
Euthanasia (from Greek: εὐθανασία; “good death”: εὖ, eu; “well” or “good” – θάνατος, thanatos; “death”) is the practice of intentionally ending a life to relieve pain and suffering. – Wikipedia 18 January 2018
As the philosopher says:
“It all depends on what you mean by ‘good’.”
For one man here he sees a euphemism
Another says unhappily she would
Go down to Hades into darkest shades
“By hand” if but she could
Ah, there’s the rub!
We don’t know whereabouts our jorney’s end
So should we need a shove?
And is this kicking into touch as rigorous as was promised
A kindly stroke of managed deadly love?
One guy today – now, no, I am divided,
I feel for both sides, but I follow Christ –
One guy today, his melancholy family,
In his behalf, he having months to live,
And too, too scarcely compos mentis to forgive
Them should he meantime change his view
On taking and rejoicing in a final palliative,
His case now in expedition to the courts
To bring to bear the Lords Court of Appeal
Not God Almighty’s, no, not the real deal
A court of fickle men instead, maybe a woman?
Elected by their great discretion valour intellect
Learned in law; of sentience, sensitivity
Are called this time to trespass on God’s own prospect
And give a ruling
This sadly near-to-death unlucky man is trying
So say his family, to bring in comfy death
First for himself, and then for others like him
Who feel severely they have had enough
Of fear, of bearing pain, in lingering
For who knows what disasters, saps the strength
Required so as to say, “Ah, death, you’re mastered”
And then contented go the mortal way
Instead curtailment of a life beforehand
To a ‘natural’ death; ‘by hand’ to legalise
The open prize to hold had from the Law Lords
Should such Law Lords agree, are satisfied
This course is safe, and just, and in their eyes
Not detrimental to the commonality.
Yet though, this sickly man, appelant, now shall see
His case brought forwards by his family
In time and to the height of jurisdiction
And wrought by media channels grievously
He stands unable in his mind to learn
Which way his fate has fallen, and his urn
Whichever way it turns this consonance maintains –
Alas, wherefore they trouble his remains?
Those earnest eager folks who would have victory
And so release from fear, from painfiul death, all others
By way of courting death for all our brothers
And sisters, who are laid in pain, in fear declining
Perhaps these eager beavers make their stands on principle
Or maybe bear a serious compassion:
So they cultivate this idol that they’d fashion
In heart and mind; or consider their own ends
And shudder, for the ghost of death so lends
A cast of pallour over futures contemplated
Although our ‘natural’ endings we shall never know
Unless curated,
Unless we go to death aware and lowly
Mustering prayer perhaps to something holy
With ruth and not presumtion of from where we came
Are going to, nor where we shall hereafter rest, remain,
And what might this control by designating death
Its time, its type, accord to one’s planned wish,
Provide as comfort to us, other than to hide a haste,
Behind a veil of reasoned ignorance
Assuming to presume to knowledge greater
More sure and grounded than the ages sagely tell;
A veil assured by clouded frowned insouciance
Which states and unequivocally holds
The untruth of life’s verities of old
Which statement, which confession hurts me hearing
So often from a people telling, telling me
Who tell it again and over, as it were a tale by rote
Their message is: Get Real!; and tell it like it is!:
A sharp amount of harshness in their fiery steel
A brash abrasive scorning of a sweet compassion
Perhaps excusing in this way a having of compassion
Extending past one’s ‘you and yours’ or out of doors
Or perhaps preferred secured within the nation?
A last ditch wherein to absolve oneself
From taking kindly action
Since ultimately overall there’s nothing matters
World’s problems are too big too many; let us better
For sanity and safety’s sake turn off, be local,
And root to break prospective final pain and loss
Be vocal and protest, make ripples, someone must pay;
On all the saints above make hearty holiday!
For did we something better from a fancied God
Not then deserve, than death’s appalling fate
Who grow to eld and so go take the one-way Exit Gate?
Is it to stand opposed to outgrown courses
On which our understandings all are under-shored
In whom we live and move and have our very being?
Instead by ultimate assertion of one’s primal choice
One’s individuality, ‘brings on the wild horses!’
That dignity of man, our highest integrity,
That self; expressed, asserted, honoured most supreme!
Sad fact; all those things which were once none but a hapless dream
Whose truth has realised upon a cross incarnadine
For all men and all women whom unless would be
Slaves hauling stone in droves for proud Assyrian grandees
Or bought in Egypt, fallen on our faces
Brute masters make amusement at these cattle cowering.
This is the legacy to which our ways are dowering
By battering the issue like a battering ram
Upon the doors of democratic sympathies
And men and women, you are by your lights destroying
What you do greatly pride-in; by your faithless toying
You know not what you do and are too testy sanguine;
The issues of hoar death are not of men nor women neither
These last things they belong to some one wondrous mystery
Myself I say the Lord and God of all our history
Ours is to kneel before it, so allow its higher valour
To accept our time to die, accept our life not ours