263 Words on Death

This May Seem a Startling Title…

Is this some deep philosophical meandering that many writers so love to do? 

No.

This is my first plea to you, dear subscriber friends, to help me in my efforts to ask MPs to not vote yes to bring in Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill (read more on my views here), which is being brought to Parliament this Friday 29th November. 

This legislation will affect me directly. No matter the rhetoric, or the cries that it will not concern me – because I am disabled and not terminally ill.

In my life – in the past, right now and, yes, no doubt in what future I have – I experience pain. Deep pain and perhaps to some ‘intolerable suffering’. Under the details of this proposed law, and those around the globe that are already in place, I would be put at the front of the assisted suicide queue, offered as the absolute solution to my pain.

So, it most certainly does concern me.

Like many disabled and chronically ill people I already face immense battles in order to survive and more, to thrive, when the NHS and social care is so grotesquely underfunded.

I absolutely love my life. I love my dear close friends with whom I have shared so much adventure. I love my family, my darling mother who has just turned 88 and fought with me every tiny second to keep me happy in all that I am.

We do not need more pressure that devalue us and makes us wonder whether we are, as Liz Carr says, ‘better off dead?’

I will write again before Friday.