The angels of death

A mother has been given a life sentence for giving her severely-brain-damaged son a lethal heroin injection. Tom Inglis suffered severe head injuries after falling out of a moving ambulance, out of all things. His mother, Frances, tried to put her 22-year-old son out of his misery twice. The second time she succeeded. Tom's brother, Alex, asks: "How can it be legal to withhold food and water, which means a slow painful death, yet illegal to end all suffering in a quick, calm and loving way? It's cruel and illogical."

I wonder how many of you have, in the course of this balefully blighted life of ours, asked the same question. It is a question that has no answer and, yet, it must be discussed for, at one point or another, we will face the same dilemma. Unless the Angel of Death steals us away in the twinkling of an eye, we will all cling on to this life for very few of us are desperate to go to Neverland or wherever and if ever one goes after the soul leaves the body like an empty husk. When all hope is lost, when the morphine is inadequate, when the brain has atrophied, what is the point of it? So why do we have this confused if not hypocritical attitude to assisted death? And why do we resort to the most horrible way out, death through slow starvation, to supposedly salve our consciences?

Our civilisation is Judeo-Christian and, therefore, any tampering with people's lives is intrinsic anathema. The result is Mrs Inglis serving a life sentence for ending the painful charade that was her son's life. Tom was, to all intents and purposes, already dead. Everything that made up the persona of Tom had disappeared. Nothing remained of him. He had no memory of love, no communication and was merely a body that once was. Can any mother stand that? Can any mother bear to see her son suffer like that?

Had science not progressed as it has, it is probable that Tom would have died a natural death long before but, in today's world, I feel that sometimes the great strides in medicine work against us as they are misused and abused. We are kinder and more humane to our pets than our own nearest and dearest.

Our faith is all about death. Its great raison d'être is that Jesus Christ defeated death. Death, we are told, is sin. Therefore, while we "look forward to the life to come", paradoxically, we cling as tenaciously as bullterriers to this present life: the one we know. Faith is faith. It stands alone. As I had once said in the case of the Da Vinci Code, "history is debatable but faith is indisputable". It is a complete waste of time to attempt applying logic to it.

Had one to discuss any faith, not ours alone, but all faiths, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever, the tenets on which they are built defy reason. The cornerstone on which all these religions base their success is the promise of an afterlife. Therefore, trying to prove the existence of an afterlife depends entirely on faith unless one believes in mediums, which, to the majority of us, are charlatans spouting gobbledygook.

It is in this scenario that acts of mercy such as Mrs Inglis's cannot be tolerated, no matter how much sympathy one has for her and her family. Prosecutor Miranda Moore said it would be a hard-hearted person who didn't have sympathy for her (Mrs Inglis's) position. It is a tragic case but it is not a defence to end someone's life to put them out of their misery. What then, Ms Moore, is the alternative?

Each time cases of this sort reach the newspapers they invariably start up a great polemic between those who thankfully have never been in that position and those who have. It is luck of the draw. Nothing more and nothing less.

Death is supposed to be the gateway to life. Mors janua vitae and, yet, nobody in their right mind is comfortable with death and will try to cheat it for as long as possible. Many are those who hanker after immortality. For Mrs Inglis herself, the prospect of life imprisonment probably fades into insignificance compared to the pain and anguish she experienced as a mother seeing her beautiful son reduced to a mass of meaningless matter after his accident. Doing what she did was a great act of courage, yet, even thinking of condoning it throws our beliefs and our common sense out of synch to such an extent that we are in a complete frazzle and no middle-of-the-road solution is possible.

I find it hard to accept that Mrs Inglis will, for the rest of her life, find herself rubbing shoulders with criminals who have taken away lives for gain or because they are sick. Mrs Inglis is no criminal. She is no Medea but a mother who simply loves her son to the extent that she put his priorities before her own maternal sentiments.

kzt@onvol.net