It’s for those who are dying, suffering

I’m writing to urge Washington state voters to vote for the Death with Dignity initiative.

In 1959, after many years of diagnoses of benign growths in her breasts, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, which had metastisized to her lymph nodes. After breast removal and a course of treatment, she experienced three relatively comfortable years.

By early 1963, however, the cancer re-emerged in her colon and other areas of her body. I dropped out of my senior year in college to help care for her and my then 10-year-old brother. Her final months were ones of horrendous pain and futile hopes that a medical breakthrough might occur any day that would give her a chance for life. This, of course, did not happen.

My mother died on Aug. 7, 1963. Among the autopsy findings was that every (or almost every) bone in her spine was broken by cancerous growths. You can imagine, I believe, the incredible pain that this caused.

In late July 1963, after she began her final hospitalization, my mother asked me to help her die. (She had saved a large number of sleeping pills over the previous months that were in our home but now out of her reach.) To my ever-lasting regret and shame, I did not have the courage to bring those pills to her.

Initiative 1000 includes significant safeguards, including two doctors’ certification that the patient has an untreatable disease likely to be fatal within six months and requires that the patient ask for the lethal dose several times. Please vote for I-1000.

In memory of my mother, Louise.

Mary Hale