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cnorbury's review
4.0
The Last Resort is a powerful story, written with sensitivity and compassion, and isn't preachy in any way. The topic, assisted suicide, causes a lot of emotion from both sides of the issue. Ms. Holtz does a delicate balancing act to present both sides of the issue with honesty and, I think, accuracy.
I've been touched by this topic a bit. A brother-in-law suffered from an ALS-type of disease for more than twenty years. Watching him gradually deteriorate to the point where he could barely move was painful, especially since his mind was unaffected. He was a man without a body.
My mother-in-law suffered a different fate. She suffered from dementia (thankfully not Alzheimer's). She'd suffered a few heart attacks and had a bypass in her early 80s, but otherwise was very healthy. She was a woman with a healthy body but no mental capacity to even remember the names of her daughters.
Neither of them chose, nor seemed to want to choose, the option of assisted suicide. Had it been more widely available and not so stigmatized, perhaps both might have chosen that as a more dignified way to die, rather than waste away over many long, painful, frustrating years of becoming shells of their former selves.
If you have elderly parents or grandparents or are getting up in years to the point where you must contemplate your inevitable demise, READ THIS BOOK. We owe it to ourselves to at least get serious about the discussion of whether society needs to make the necessary changes in beliefs and attitudes that will allow humans to die with as much dignity and peace as we allow for our family pets.
I've been touched by this topic a bit. A brother-in-law suffered from an ALS-type of disease for more than twenty years. Watching him gradually deteriorate to the point where he could barely move was painful, especially since his mind was unaffected. He was a man without a body.
My mother-in-law suffered a different fate. She suffered from dementia (thankfully not Alzheimer's). She'd suffered a few heart attacks and had a bypass in her early 80s, but otherwise was very healthy. She was a woman with a healthy body but no mental capacity to even remember the names of her daughters.
Neither of them chose, nor seemed to want to choose, the option of assisted suicide. Had it been more widely available and not so stigmatized, perhaps both might have chosen that as a more dignified way to die, rather than waste away over many long, painful, frustrating years of becoming shells of their former selves.
If you have elderly parents or grandparents or are getting up in years to the point where you must contemplate your inevitable demise, READ THIS BOOK. We owe it to ourselves to at least get serious about the discussion of whether society needs to make the necessary changes in beliefs and attitudes that will allow humans to die with as much dignity and peace as we allow for our family pets.