(Host) Yesterday we heard the first of Two Views of the Right To Die debate by commentator Bill Mares. Today, we hear a second perspective by commentator Norman Runnion, who was editor of the Brattleboro Reformer for 20 years before becoming an Episcopal priest. Runnion, now retired, has been thinking about his friend, Dick Mallary, and how end-of-life issues are both highly complex and intensely personal.
(Runnion) Richard Mallary, one of Vermont’s greatest public servants, committed suicide last September. Images of Dick and his wife Jean have been appearing on television in recent days as they endorsed the so-called Death with Dignity bill that is now stranded in the state Senate. The consensus in Montpelier seems to be that the bill will have a dignified death. Very few senators want the state to be involved actively with something as personal and private as suicide.
Dick Mallary obviously would disagree. He was suffering from an incurable case of prostate cancer that was increasingly painful. I guess he decided that to hang on to life in that condition was no longer worth it. Certainly he lived a full life. He started his political career as a selectman in his home town of Fairlee. He was elected to the House, then House Speaker, then state senator, then a U.S. Congressman, and finally he became a utility executive.
Dick and I knew each other for more than 40 years. We both were born 82 years ago. After many career moves, we wound up living a few miles from each other in Brookfield.
I saw Dick by chance only three days before he died. He told me at the time that he had prostate cancer. I sort of joked that if men our age didn’t have prostate problems there was something wrong with them.
What I did not know at the time was how far the cancer had spread and how painful it had become. Dick chose his personal way out. It would not have been my choice.
For one important thing, in my careers as a journalist and then an Episcopal priest and chaplain, I have witnessed some apparent miracle cures – including my own, when I was diagnosed with lymphoma 20 years ago. The lymphoma vanished 24 hours before I was to start chemotherapy, much to the surprise of my doctors at Dartmouth Hitchcock. I have been cancer-free since then.
My personal lesson from all this is that you take what comes, you never give up hope, and you do not put your own life in your own hands. Lawyers say that anyone who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.
Actually, the current Vermont bill is not exactly a “Right to Die” bill; it is a directive to “think this over.” Anyone choosing to ask a doctor for life-ending drugs is asked, in effect, “Do you really want to do this?” followed by: “Are you sure?” and then: “Are you certain?”
That might deter some, but not all. Probably the Legislature will decide that it is not worth it to pass this bill into law.
Nevertheless, the very fact that end-of-life decisions have been debated publicly guarantees that the issue will not go away. We live in a new era of pushing the limits. I think Dick Mallary understood this.