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Article: Angel of mercy did the right thing; Anne Lamott committed herself to help a cancer victim die after having watched her father suffer unnecessarily on his deathbed.(Dispatches)
- Article from:
- The Sunday Independent (South Africa)
- Article date:
- July 2, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Independent News & Media PLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The man I killed did not want to die, but he no longer felt he had a choice. He had gone from being tall and strapping, full of appetites and a brilliant manner of speech, to a skeleton, weak and full of messy needs.
He and his wife still loved each other very much, but he'd lost the ability to do the things he had most loved during their 30 years together: cook and overeat, hike and travel. He had always been passionately literary, but he was losing the ability to read and write. Both elegant and down-to-earth, he was 60 when he was diagnosed with cancer.
One day he'd been like the rest of us, comically forgetful, trying to live as fully as he could ...