Me Before You (Literally)
Fun fact about me: like most women, I am a sucker for a good romance novel. I also suck at writing Romance and it makes me mildly uncomfortable. You'll never see something like Fifty Shades of Grey come out of this author. I have been seeing a lot of buzz about the movie/book Me Before You. I have not yet seen the movie. I believe in reading a book before seeing the movie, and since life has been a little busy of late I just finally got around to it over the Holiday weekend. I finished it three days, I couldn't put it down; I cried, I laughed. I felt good at the end of the book, I related to it on many levels.
Then I hop on Twitter/Facebook to recommend this read to my friends, and as I'm typing the hash-tag one I didn't quite expect pops up that startled me: "#mebeforeyoueuthansia". I did some more research and found that this isn't just some small, grass-roots movement. A lot of people are mad, dare I say pissed off, about the way this film/book portrays disabled people, that there's this assumption being made that disabled people are better off dead because they couldn't possibly live full, productive lives.
So, this leads me to a few more fun-facts about myself:
1. I have worked in the mental health field in my part of the universe for seven years. I have worked directly, one-on-one with people like our main character, Will.
2. I studied Geriatric Social Work in college, Euthanasia is a huge topic of conversation in this field.
3. I suffer a chronic illness that may, eventually, leave me disabled.
4. My Mother passed when I was fourteen; she too, had many chronic health issues. I have personal experience with the death of a loved one and how it affects the trajectory of peoples lives.
So, keep these facts in mind as you read on.
I was not offended, or shocked, by Will's choice and desires even remotely. I suspected this was the type of ending that was coming when I saw the movie trailer and became interested in this book month's ago. Call me something of a voyeur if nothing else, I wanted to see how she was going to write that one out because it could've been done very poorly.
Also, I appreciate the healthy debate that this novel has brought to the surface. If often takes a great work of literature or a personal story to make a social issue relate-able to the masses. As Evidence, I'm going to cite Brittany Maynard. The nearly thirty year old women that went public with her advocacy of the "right to die" movement after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. She passed in November; her decision, her terms.
One thing that I really appreciated about this story was that, more than once, Will told his family, he told Lou (his caregiver) that all the choices in his life were ripped from him after his accident. In a great scene after Lou has decided she's going to do everything in her power to make Will see that he still has quality of life, she makes this grand plan to take Will to the horse races because she thinks it'll be fun. It turns into a nightmare, and then Will flat out tells Lou after they leave that had she asked, she would've known that he hated horse racing and that she once again,took the choice from him about his own life.
As Caregivers, we often make this mistake. We often charge full-speed ahead into what we think is the best possible thing for our friend/client/family without really ever taking a moment to ask ourselves if it's what they really want. This can be something as small as taking someone out to eat or as big as making medical decisions. We, as a society, somehow dehumanize those we view as sick or weak and make ourselves believe that they can't possibly make these decisions without guidance or assistance. It's like we have have elevated ourselves into a god-like status in their lives.
So, where's the quality of life in having your decision making ability ripped from you? Where's the quality of life in having absolutely no-control in what you wear, what you eat, where you go during the day, what medication you take? Now we're going to tell people that we, as a society are so afraid of death, that we're going to control when they can go. Whether they want it or not, we're going to do everything medically possible to keep them from it. I see absolutely nothing humane or loving about this.
I also want to add that the survivors of these type of events are selfish. Despite seeing our loved one suffering, we spend all our time thinking of what we can do to make sure that person stays alive. Praying for a miracle that will likely never come. When they eventually pass, our initial reaction is abandonment. How could they leave me here alone? In the book, Lou gets pissed to the point of nearly abandoning Will in a foreign country when he says that despite what he feels for her, he's not changing his mind. I can say, after my own journey into grief, that I understand her grief. I appreciate the fact that she goes to Switzerland with him to full-fill what he wants, finally putting his needs above her own.
People also talk about Lou's inexperience in care-giving, someone even wrote that he was sure that "an eight year old could've done a better job of taking care of Will." Let me drop some truth into this argument and say that this is not uncommon, at all. Our society has deemed this career-path unimportant and in most company's all you need to do Lou's job is a High School Diploma. You walk in the first day and witness the flurry of activity that goes with these type of roles and think to yourself: My God, what have I gotten myself into? People don't go into that line of work for the money, though Lou may have been the lucky one that found a "caring career" that paid a decent wage. The reality is that most of our clients have little to nothing to give us, they have little money for themselves and just barely scrape by. We go into it because we have a compassion for people, a servants heart and a need to help. We see, day-in and day-out, tragic things that dehumanize and hurt the people we grow to care a lot about and yet we still return everyday with a smile on our faces because if we don't do it, who's going too? We're afraid if we leave, that the person after us is going to be less knowledgeable, less patient and possibly abusive. When I left my first caring career, I agonized for weeks over the treatment of my clients.
So when people ask me if I'm offended by Will's choice to want to end his own life? No, no I am not. I am often offended by how we as a society treat our most vulnerable, but I am not offended by his educated decision to want to end his own life; knowing that there is no cure for his ailment, knowing it's eventually going to get worse and not better. I am offended that we continue to rob people of their choices, thinking we know best about a situation many of us have never faced. Most of us can't even contemplate the idea of our mortality. I am also a bit offended by how romanticized the role of a care-giver is going to be in the coming months with the release of this movie.
There are a lot of things to be upset about, but the very natural process of death is not one of them.
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