Just Let Me Die! Voluntary Assisted Dying, Identity & Choice - Talking Freedom with Caroline Wingdén

Assisted dying, suicide and euthanasia. These are profound topics, but they're complex, so we sweep them under the rug.

Today we break that silence. Join me as I sit down with Caroline Wingdén, a remarkable soul who's just accompanied her mother, Kristina, through her final days.

Yesterday, Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) finally liberated Kristina from the talons of chronic pain. This discussion touches at the heart of our humanity and challenges us to rediscover our values, beliefs and even our own identities.

It focuses us on how important it is to see ourselves as more than just statistics and numbers, like cattle to be legislated and regulated as we face the gravity of our final journey.

Caroline opens up about the idea of seeing the lady who gave her life, released from her own… and with it, the relentless grip of chronic pain. Half a decade of suffering has passed into the pages of history, leaving memories of a rich life and the legacy of individual choice.

The reason for Caroline’s happiness, among all the other emotion, is in the name… “voluntary”. Yet this outcome required a lot of bureaucracy and a long trip to Switzerland to make this liberation possible.

We must reconsider our black and white approach to assisted dying. It’s forcing people to terminate their own lives in underground, black-market ways and that’s a stain on our culture’s reputation. State involvement in the dying process inverts the presumption of self-sovereignty. It’s a bureaucratic hand reaching into the palliative care bed and holding the person down by the chest while saying “you’ll die when I let you”, like some line from a Schwarzenegger movie. It’s intimately invasive.

Caroline shares some pearls of wisdom for those of us left behind.

paulgconlon.com