It’s What’s Best for Her, Isn’t It? : Euthanasia: No one is fit to judge the quality of another person’s life.

I was told that her name was Mary; our only common thread. Other than casting quick glances toward her room, this Mary avoided that Mary. I convinced myself that I had come only to visit my great aunt who, at the time, was living in a nursing home.

But as a regular visitor, I started taking interest in other patients, stopping often at different bedsides and wheelchairs to chat or share a pleasantry. I avoided the room where Mary lay curled in the fetal position, her face resting on her hands, which were clasped together as if in prayer. I noticed the nurses go into her room to turn, bathe, feed or change her; all the necessary things to maintain a human being in reasonable comfort, except one. That is not why I finally went in to see Mary. Curiosity compelled me to go in; not kindness, duty or love. The basest of reasons pushed me to do something that would forever change my feelings about dying, aging and our treatment of the elderly.

Just inside Mary’s door, I stood staring. She wasn’t pretty; I wondered if she ever had been. I noticed that there were no pictures of her as a young woman, none of the favorite quilts, wedding or baby pictures that families put in rooms. It was the starkness of the room that wouldn’t let my eyes wander from Mary. Her face was almost continuous with her scalp, a few wisps of hair over translucent and wrinkled skin. I knew she was blind and possibly deaf. The nurses said that she never spoke.

Mary appeared to be sleeping, so I pulled up a chair and moved closer until I was positioned next to her bed. My eyes never tired of her. Sitting there, I began to ask myself, “What is her quality of life?” Then, answers came in. My thoughts were so ugly that I was embarrassed. She stirred and touched me, grasped me, pulling me forward as if to hug me. She raised herself, forcing me to reciprocate the intimacy. Then Mary relaxed and found my hands. She brought them to her face, alternately turning her cheeks so as to kiss and touch my fingers. Her mouth felt dry but her face was wet. My hands were damp with tears, hers and mine. Then she dropped my hands, turned on her side and resumed her fetal position.

For some among us, the Marys of the world are vegetables, leaving cost effectiveness as the criterion for their treatment, life’s intrinsic value translated into dollars and cents. The all-too-common phrases of expediency--”It’s what’s best for him; It’s what she would have wanted”--are death knells that eventually haunt all those involved. Mary was not a vegetable. Vegetables don’t cry. I would like to think of her as an angel. Angels are messengers and Mary carried a message. Sometimes it takes more courage to live than it does to die.

Recently passed legislation in Oregon improved the prospects for euthanasia. Coupled with abortion’s daily assault on unborn life, this makes it an ugly time in America to be sick, poor, elderly, handicapped or a child in his mother’s womb.

If you believe in angels (and according to cash-register receipts, you must; they are the hot-ticket item this year, the dominant theme on calendars, books and cards) here is a gentle reminder: Spiritual fulfillment or trendy religion, across this land there is a serious soul-searching and a craving for winged guardians. But Lucifer also was an angel.