The Terminally Ill Will Not Harm You

To the residents of Windward Shores Homeowners Assn. who “are anxious that others not consider them heartless in opposing” a home for the terminally ill: How can you compare the value of a house--which is after all nothing but stone, brick, cement, plaster, wires and plumbing--above a human, a breathing, living soul. Where would you want your terminally ill spouse, child, parent or sibling to spend their last days?

These people will not harm you. Let them be. Let them spend their last days looking across your lake, seeing your trees in bloom, smelling the fragrances of your well-tended gardens, watching butterflies and bees and birds flit across your lawns. They ask nothing of you. They only ask to be allowed to spend their last days in dignity and serenity.

I am a young wife who has a young husband with cancer. We don’t know what the outcome will be, but I know that if he doesn’t make it, I want more than anything in the world for him to spend his last days at home. And if there were some reason that he couldn’t die in his own home, I would be so thankful for someone like Isobel Oxx, who would give my husband that last bit of dignity.

JUDY CASLEY-BROWN, Thousand Oaks