Kelly Grant of The Globe and Mail in Toronto writes about the joint euthanasia of George and Shirley Brickenden:
[T]hey bid farewell to more than 20 members of their immediate family at a bon voyage dinner at their daughter Pamela’s apartment.
The evening of their deaths was more intimate, Pamela, Angela and Saxe told me two days later.
“It couldn’t have been a better way to go. Totally peaceful,” Angela said. “It allowed them to bow out gracefully together, as they lived.”
Present were Pamela, Saxe and Angela, their spouses, the two doctors and Andrew Asbil, the Dean of Toronto’s St. James Cathedral, who later told me he had “without hesitation” supported the couple’s wish for their funeral to be held at the Anglican church.
Mr. and Mrs. Brickenden, dressed in caftans, drank champagne and nibbled on a last supper of hors d’oeuvre of lobster, salmon and filet.
Shortly before 7 p.m., Mrs. Brickenden turned to her husband. “Are you ready?”
“Ready when you are,” he replied.
They walked into their bedroom and lay down together, holding hands. The two doctors, one for each patient, inserted intravenous lines into their arms.
Dean Asbil prayed, while Mozart, Bach and Scottish folk songs wafted through the room. Saxe, at his mother’s request, had assembled a playlist. He called it “fly away music.”
Biretta tip: J. Smith of National Review, who writes:
This is how the culture of death is normalized.
I have no reason to doubt this family loved their folks and think they were doing right by them. That’s part of the problem with euthanasia!
But anyone who doesn’t think that elderly euthanasia could also be coerced or arise out of fears of abandonment, doesn’t understand human nature or our elder-abuse crisis.
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
