MAID Form Completed

I am home, and once agan I am back into the busy social life. I love my life, my friends, the things I can still do. I am tremendously grateful for thier generosity and the generosity of so many who have donated to my blog, and who have supported me for so long. It's at this moment I realize how long it has really been, with 1,768 blog posts.

It's been getting increasingly difficult for me, of late, to be consistent with writing blog posts. Part of it has been exhaustion, part has been ill health, part has been those down moments or days when I just have nothing good to say, about life or living. And as Mrs. Rabbit, think Bambi, not Jessica, said to Thumper, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Some days are best left unsaid.

David did a terrific job in the blog updates he posted for me. He, along with a few others, has seen me through this from the beginning. In fact today he and Liz were here with me to sign the MAID papers, my application for Medical Assistance In Dying. We've taken to referring to it as my death warrant. The document is signed and I will deliver it to the appropriate health care professional sometime in the next few days. Then the process really gets rolling.

It was interesting to watch us today. Tonny was here making breakfast while Liz, DAvid, and I quibbled about how we should fill in the form. whether to use full names or our conversational names, what dates to use, where to sign. As with all things government, it's a long form, a full three pages, with plenty of places for initials and signatures.

Our chatter was not morose. Humour abounds within our group. We laughed about the fuss we were making, about referring to it as a death warrant, about what other information I should leave accessible and for whom. Liz has this deadpan delivery with some of her lines that I am never sure if she is trying to make a joke or if things just come out that way. She certainly makes me, and others, laugh. David, as many of you have read, has is own sense of humour, bitingly funny and often obscure. Tonny finds humour in so much, just as the rest of us do. We did the paperwork, ate our lunch, did some winemaking chores. It's a normal day here on the farm.

I don't think this kind of decision is a sad on. Something is going to take me, be it respiratory failure, choking on my own phlegm, or a good, old fashioned stroke. This document is simply a gateway to manage my life if other things don't beat me to it. My "death warrant" as signed, sealed, and delivered nearly five years ago, in a cold, sterile hospital room, when Liz, David, and I heard those three dreaded letters uttered by the neurologist. ALS is my death warrant; everything else is either alternative or paperwork.