This article is based on this Dutch article of Martijn Benders
A Christmas child passed away on St. Nicholas Eve
My mother passed away yesterday around 7:30 PM on St. Nicholas Eve. A Christmas child passed away on St. Nicholas Eve.
I woke up last night at 3 AM and decided to work on poetry. The first 70 poems are solid now, I think.
Witnessing endless suffering is no joy. Euthanasia is prohibited for people with dementia due to some rigid belief that they are no longer capable of deciding their own fate. You might think the decision would then fall to the immediate family, but no: the demented must also be “protected” from them. In short: the religious zealots are once again behind this inhumane prohibition. This is how God supposedly intended it. But the idea that someone with dementia no longer knows what they want is utter nonsense: they simply hold onto those thoughts for a shorter time. Countless times, my mother begged me to end it for her, and it came very close to me doing just that myself. And that’s because in the Netherlands, things are poorly organized, based on outdated pseudo-science and superstitions. Someone with dementia knows very well what suffering is and whether they want to continue enduring it. You can hear echoes of a similarly ignorant stance in the grotesquely foolish claim that “animals can’t feel pain,” an assumption scientists dared to proclaim for far too long. My goodness!
Sadly, my mother lacked the foresight to fill out an advance directive in time.
Fortunately, I didn’t take matters into my own hands, and fortunately, Annie’s ordeal has finally come to an end. She will have a distinguished place in my forthcoming poetry collection.
A drawing Veronique made of Annie
I think I’ll create 30 different colored versions of that drawing for a slideshow at the funeral.
I checked, and Operation Christmas Joint is still on my YouTube channel:
A suggestion of my father’s. He suddenly texted, asking if I could bring a joint for my mother. Apparently, she had once been curious about it but had never dared to try. I suspect my father had discouraged her back in the day and now felt a kind of guilt to make amends. It wasn’t a great success; she only became nauseous from the joint. But the gesture itself was beautiful, I thought.
A beautiful St. Nicholas Eve ascension, Annie.
Martinus Benders, 05-12-2024