Eliminates opportunity to reconcile life

There is an alarming trend in attitude, and it’s rearing its ugly head in the form of Initiative 1000. It’s the attitude that it is a greater evil to live out one’s life to its natural end than to kill one’s self.

Courageous is the person who lives out his or her life to its natural end and those who help them face death’s advent. When we face the challenges that come with being human, we are teaching our children perseverance and hope.

As a child, I watched my mother battle with a form of cancer from which a client of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the “suicide doctor,” suffered. Had my mother decided to kill herself to spare us, she also would have prevented me and my brother from witnessing how a family can pull together in spirit, no matter how great the physical distance. Had my grandmother, upon learning she had Alzheimer’s disease, decided to end her life to keep from becoming a burden to her husband and their sons, she would have deprived them of the chance to give back all the nurturing she had so quietly provided all those years.

I traveled across the country to care for my great aunt during her final stages of emphysema. Lying in the dark listening to my beloved Aunt Betty gasp and groan, I found myself praying that God would end her suffering. Once I got over my idea of “the right time to go,” I could see that my aunt needed each and every day to reflect. That was her time to reconcile her life.

There are many stories of those who are teaching by the very act of allowing themselves to be cared for.

Please vote no on Initiative 1000. We are much stronger than we imagine ourselves to be.

Ann C. Velasco

Marysville