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Showing posts from February, 2015

Staying, clinging to hope

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Brittany Maynard : certainly much has been written about her decision to choose her own death in the face of horrific suffering.  And I realize I’m late to the party in writing about her.  Our 24-hour news cycle exploited the life (and death) of Brittany as if it was the latest controversial Miley Cyrus video, and now we hear nothing about her or her family.  I’m not going to critique her decision or make judgement by saying what she did was wrong.  I’m more interested in the way the rest of us reacted to her decision.  So many people that I have encountered either in my day-to-day life, or in the media characterized Brittany as heroic.  Her decision to end her own life is spoken about as brave.  Its as if many of us are envious of Brittany’s superior ability to know when enough-is-enough.  The agony now is too great and the future is guaranteeing a painful, ugly and humiliating death.  So why choose the painful, slow journey through a barb wire covered mine field to the edge of the c