"In the garden under an English sky. Or, if wet, the library..."

My day job (for the moment anyway) is located in a facility for people who, for the most part, are in late-to-end-stage dementia. The lives these people live, the way they are spending their closing years or months, and the great ignorance with the way people conduct themselves around them, is all too painful to contemplate, and I experience something heart-breaking every time I am there. I myself frequently have death on my mind as a possible near-term option. I probably won’t resort to that anytime soon, because I always emerge from the depression eventually. But if it ever happens that I end up with the choice of dying by my own hand, or perhaps with some help, or dying of Alzheimer’s, I know I will make the same choice that Terry Pratchett evidently has. (Usually this topic ends up causing me to go off onto a tangent and start ranting about embryonic stem cell research and how dumb I think the "pro-life" ideology is, but I'll spare everyone that today.)

I could just link to the original article, but I want to keep record of this remarkable item in my own journal. So I reprint here, in full, Terry Pratchett’s essay, with acknowledgement to Pratchett and the Daily Mail. Thanks, Sir Terry, for saying this and thanks to the Mail for spreading the word. If you would rather read it at the newspaper’s site (there are several photos accompanying), then the link is http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1203622/Ill-die-endgame-says-Terry-Pratchett-law-allow-assisted-suicides-UK.html  , and it is preceded by an article summarizing Pratchett’s comments. I would skip down past that and get right to his own words.

Pratchett:

We are being stupid. We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still. At least, that is what I thought until last week.

Now, however, I live in hope - hope that before the disease in my brain finally wipes it clean, I can jump before I am pushed and drag my evil Nemesis to its doom, like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty locked in combat as they go over the waterfall.In any case, such thinking bestows a wonderful feeling of power; the enemy might win but it won't triumph.

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