When Mother Comes Home

By Frederica Mathewes-Green
Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Excerpt:
In the last thirty-four years we’ve done a great deal of discarding; about forty-eight million little American bodies have gone down garbage disposals, into incinerators, and into landfills. If we stopped for a moment to imagine that some day Mother might be coming home, we might have a prickle of anxiety.

And if the purpose of life is pleasure, what do we do with people who reach an age or a state of health when they are enjoying substandard levels of gusto? The obvious response is to terminate them, right? No one would want to survive in a permanent coma.

No one would want to survive in a conscious state either, I guess, if they were brain damaged. And they probably wouldn’t want to live even if they were fully alert and aware, but quadriplegic.

Paraplegic. Had a limp. I expect some would look at me, a plump, graying grandmother, and find it terribly poignant, suitable grounds for “release.”

These pink billows of compassion flow outward further and further, embracing all the weak and old and unsightly of the world. Tender poison would free them from their misery—or, at least, make their misery disappear. And a world without misery is a perfect world, isn’t it? Last week I saw a young woman with Down Syndrome, and realized how rare it is to see them any more. the rest