Choice

I sat in the morning sun, watching the river.

The sky was gin clear and as blue as the blue eyes of Modigliani’s Woman.

Old Father Thames was done with the high-tide and was letting-go the water. A brief moment before the beginnings of low-water. An ebb-tide.

Not a breath of breeze disturbed the calm. The sun joined in with the moment by dancing its light, sparkling, dazzling on the surface of the water.

A magic moment of joy, that only nature or perhaps your God can provide. A precious moment.

It’s moments like this that makes me think that I am overdrawn on my threescore years and ten. Seldom a day goes by, as I nudge three score and a lot more… I wonder, how many more.

How will it end?  

Perhaps, confused and careless I’ll drown in an oatmeal latte in Starbucks.  

Perhaps, I’ll slip in the shower and be discovered when a nasty smell pervades the landing?  

Perhaps, a masked assassin from the DH’ secret-service will finish me off. I’ll be found in an alleyway.  

Perhaps, some awful illness will invade me and I’ll be left begging to be released.

Perhaps, Baucus will hand me to Morpheus and I’ll know nothing about it.

If you are the same age as me, the recent discussions about the end-of-life will be weighing heavily on your mind.

The debate is dominated by young, middle-class, healthy people who will claim to know better. 

Or, the discussion will be hijacked by people who are facing their end and have made up their minds.

The rest of us are left wondering about the ‘perhaps’ of life.

If we look to the Health Secretary for direction, we’ll be disappointed.

Streeting, once a supporter of assisted dying has now devised a cunning escape from controversy. He says; without the support of end of life care, ‘which is broken, like the rest of the NHS’, there is a false choice and it’s the Tories fault… he can’t make up his mind.

As he is with most things, he is wrong.

In 2013, in global rankings, the NHS was number one for end-of-life care… access, specialised staff, community engagement and a strong hospice movement. Same again in 2016.

In January 2022 the Duke, global health institute ranked UK the best.

Like everything else, Covid has taken its toll on services. If end-of-life care services have slipped, (and it’s not looking good) we know where they could and should be. It’s not irretrievable. It’s Streeting’s job to fix it and remove any impediment from the equation of decision. 

Others say it’s against their religious beliefs. Faithful worship brings its own dilemma… to impose well-held beliefs on others goes beyond faith and can border on bullying. 

So, we are left with the question I meuse at the beginning… what about the end?

It is nobody’s business but MPs have to make it their business.  

The average age of an MP has dropped from 50, with the latest intake, to 46.

What do they know about old age or the dread of illness? Few will have experienced living in a crippling cul-de-sac of illness or disability.  

They can still cut their own toenails, get out of bed, run upstairs, stand on a bus and cook their own tea. Unscrew a jam jar and start their day without painkillers and sleep o’nite without tablets. Their risk of dying enhanced only by the subsidised booze in the House of Commons bar.

It’s nobody’s business but in today’s social-media society, it’s made everyone’s business.  

What about the sinister business of juicy assets and squabbling relatives, eager to inherit.

What about relieving an exhausted partner unable to carry the burden of care.

What about the friend or relative desperate to help but reduced, by law, to a spectator, for fear of 14 years in prison, to punish any act of compassion.

What about the hundreds of scenarios the variety of life and how we live it can throw up, that might give others a say in our private end.

What about making a law; no-one who helps someone to commit suicide, providing they are not acting out of selfish motives, can be punished.

Sitting watching the light sparkling on the ever changing tide…

… might be the moment.

This is all about a word so often used in our care services, so often devalued and counterfeited… choice.

Don’t try and tell me how my story ends, only I know what I have loved and lost, squandered and cherished. Given too little and taken too much. What burden can be borne and what cannot.

This is the biggest choice we can ever make. A choice we won’t live to regret.

I will know if the time is right to make my choice. So will you. All the rest have one job… … make sure we have the choice. 

News and Comment from Roy Lilley
Contact Roy – please use this e-address roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
Reproduced at thetrainingnet.com by kind permission of Roy Lilley.