HEALING DEATH
Finding the healing to live well into our dying
By Christopher Levan
HEALING DEATH
Finding the healing to live well into our dying
Copyright © 2020 Christopher Levan. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-9525-4
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-9526-1
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-9527-8
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Names: Levan, Christopher.
Title: Healing death : finding the healing to live well into our dying / Christopher Levan.
Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020 | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-9525-4 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-9526-1 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-9527-8 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Right to die | Ethics, medical | Euthanasia | Euthanasia—religious aspects.
Classification: R726 .L374 2020 (print) | R726 (ebook)
Manufactured in the U.S.A. September 15, 2020
Dedicated to Tia Levan, a daughter-in-law, who holds and changes our hearts and minds
Those who claim they can always alleviate the suffering of the dying have either not had enough exposure to the problem or are lacking in a simple quality: compassion.
Dr. Christiaan Barnard Good Life, Good Death: A Doctor’s Case for EuthanasiaI choose medical assistance in death because I love and cherish life. For me life is to be lived as Thoreau described: “deliberately. . . . I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear. . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”
Martine Partridge in a letter to her family and friends, explaining her decision to seek medical assistance to end her life. Calgary Sun, June 16, 2017
Acknowledgments
I began this research with the click of a mouse. It was early spring 2016, and the high holidays were approaching. Passion week for Christians is the season when the cross looms large. The predictable Good Friday sermon was inviting me into the valley of the shadow again. And I thought the Internet might have some light to shed on the debate around medical assistance in dying, which was prominently featured in the news of that year. The deadline for federal legislation responding to the Supreme Court decision on the Carter case1 was closing in on the Canadian Parliament. In that decision, the country’s highest court upheld the right for some individuals under certain circumstances to have medical assistance in dying.
At the time, I thought I knew what I believed: contrary to the federal court’s opinions, I saw this step as a thoughtless and potentially dangerous capitulation to liberal individualism. Life is a gift not a possession. We are stewards of our living, not owners, and to usurp the role of Creator and fashion our own ending is the height of hubris. How can we take what is essentially a gift and turn it into personal property to be discarded at will? To think we have a right to control everything was absurd. God holds out some surprises in life, and those unknowns are often the source of great miracles. Theologically, I was opposed.
Ethically, I was worried for our common life. Our society changes when we gift the power over life onto individual hands. We are a new people when something that had been forbidden suddenly becomes a “right.” At first glance, medical assistance in dying offers a compassionate, dignified end to insufferable pain. However, it also removes the absoluteness of living, no matter the circumstance. So, what presents itself as benevolence for the intolerably sick also places many other people at risk, for there is no longer an a priori justification for life. It’s now a matter of choice. And the more vulnerable of our society—the elderly, the differently abled—will now have to argue for the merits of their continued existence.
That was my thinking . . . at the time.
To prepare for my sermon, I was driving down the electronic highway looking for websites and ideas to support my opinions. (Isn’t that what we all do? The World Wide Web is a mirror. We surf the net to find ourselves?) And while there was no lack of sites trumpeting my cause—home pages with helpful biblical passages attached, all condemning the preemptive ending of human life—the more I searched, the more I was drawn deeper and deeper into the reality of human pain. And that changed everything.
Of course, there are whole libraries on death. Likewise, there is a mushrooming stack of published articles on dying with dignity—especially since Bill C-14, the Canadian federal legislation of dying with medical assistance, was enacted. Keeping track of the increasing number of online podcasts and blogs, which explore personal experiences at the hospital bedside, could be a full-time job.
It was one, pre-Bill C-14 article on an older woman’s painstaking journey to end her life, not involving her partner who might otherwise be charged with a criminal act, that was so poignant, so heart-wrenching, that I felt drawn to work harder at my own position. It was a story told from a time before the current legislation was even considered. In this woman’s context, there was considerable risk to those who might consider helping anyone end their life. Several well-meaning individuals had previously found themselves charged with accessory to murder under the criminal code. I read how, even while terribly crippled, this individual was obliged to drag a mattress by herself down to her “sacred place,” the one that afforded her a view in front of her country home. She arranged her method of ending her life on her own, not involving a soul, so no one could be accused of colluding to take her life. Her ending was a solitary act, painful, and, in many ways, nobly tragic! The family watched helplessly as she struggled to do everything on her own. That story struck me deeply, and I felt, surely we can do better than this. Quite separate from my church’s position or my personal opinions, this kind of anguish was unconscionable. If our end is close and nothing remains but crippling suffering, must we force people into such devious and grievous manipulations in order to accomplish what seems to make so much sense?
From that single story has grown a year’s worth of reading. I began asking how death could be a healing process, and it was through this study that I began to understand why our current vocabulary about and models for celebrating the end of life are inadequate.
During this research, I have heard many similar stories of great courage and compassion. So let me begin by acknowledging how honored and grateful I am to those who have been so open in sharing their stories of great emotion, distress, and physical pain. I am humbled by their spiritual strength. In all the cases I encountered, medical assistance in dying was not used as an easy escape, not a cheap evasion of human responsibility to live fully with the gift God has given. On the contrary, those who came to the place of using medical assistance in dying were doing so as the faithful way to complete their life. In equal measure, those who opposed medical assistance in dying were highly compassionate, aware of the pain that many suffer at the end. They were deeply moved by the need to offer care and compassion at the end, while refusing to hasten that end in any way. The debate proved to be as complex and as lively as any I could imagine, and this book will hopefully reflect that complexity, avoiding simplistic responses while offering some pathways forward.
I recall, distinctly, the debate I had with my daughter-in-law, Tia. She was clear, coming from her hard-nosed