This letter is in response to the article in Sunday’s newspaper, “Physicians need not help patients die” (Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, June 2).

I’m eternally grateful for the new law, the Our Care, Our Choice Act, and hope I will never be in a situation to make use of it. However, until I have that ultimate choice and need to make it, it gives me the comfort of dying when it is time and my life is unbearably painful and no longer meaningful.

The cavalier mind-set of the writers with the hollow phrase, “to cherish life,” is cruel to the affected persons and ignorant of real-life situations. I still remember my dear grandmother praying daily, “Dear God, please let me die,” until she finally passed away after years and years of the best available care under great agony and persistent pain, and to the horror of the well-meaning health professionals, friends and relatives who were unable to help in fulfilling her last wish.

Walter Leu

Punchbowl

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