AA Gifts & Baskets Idea & Advice Blog

Infants and young children do not tolerate restraint for extended lengths of time, and since a cranky child can distract the driver, it’s wise to stop frequently, get out and stretch. Encourage toddlers to run around in a safe area, to play ball or tag. Place infant on a flat surface or across your lap so can kick for a few minutes. On commercial carriers, walk your toddler in the aisle, holding his hand to protect him in case of sudden lurches.

It is also wise to purchase the best commercial travel accommodations you can afford when young children are involved; the increased space provides greater freedom of movement and the service is usually better.

Keeping children content while confined in close-quarters is often a real challenge. Having an adult ride in the backseat of a car alongside a restrained child is a good idea. The child with adult companionship will be happier and less likely to demand a place on the front seat.

Take along your child’s favorite stuffed animal or blanket, a bag of small, soft plastic toys, or cloth books. Crayons and a coloring book, or a pad of paper will help keep an older child occupied. Avoid hard or pointed objects that could become dangerous in a moving vehicle.

Playing games helps to pass the time, for example, look for cows and trucks in magazines or along the side of the road. An occasional snack provides distraction and may alleviate motion sickness. Cookies and crackers may be a little messy, but they are preferable to lollipops, ice-pops, and hard candies, which could prove dangerous.

If your trip is by car, limit your daily mileage to what your child can tolerate. It is always a good idea to end your driving by late afternoon. This prevents undue fatigue, ensures a night’s lodging for a tired and possibly cranky child, and provides the time for him to adjust to new surroundings before bedtime.

Your young child’s safety, comfort, and contentment helps to make any family trip an enriching experience. By using common sense to organize and plan ahead, what might have been a formidable task could be a pleasant interval in your daily routine.

By making a last will and testament, you are getting the final word on who gets what part of your estate, and, more importantly, who will care for your child when you are gone.  Though a will is a valuable document, people often procrastinate about putting one together.  It’s easy to put off making a will because it isn’t a pleasant pursuit for most people.  But for parents, a will is, at the least, peace of mind insurance.

A common misconception about wills is that they’re only for wealthy people.  Because jointly owned real estate, bank accounts, life insurance benefits, and pension proceeds are typically not covered under a will; many people believe that a will is not necessary if they don’t have extensive personal property.  But from a parent’s point of view, the most important aspect of a will is the designation of a guardian in the event both parents die at the same time.  Maybe you don’t really care how your personal property is divided up, but you do care about how your child is reared.

Therefore, discussions about the person or persons best suited to raise your child, is important.  Do you want someone who knows your child well, who has similar values and religious beliefs?  Take into consideration the age of the potential guardians and their interest in taking on responsibility of a child.  This is important; if they feel they wouldn’t be good parent substitutes, consider someone else.  It is imperative to discuss everything with the guardians you have in mind.

Another question is guardian of the person versus guardian of the property.  The person who will watch over your child does not necessarily have to be the one who will take care of your financial needs.  Of course, one person can do both, but if you have a relative who you feel would be a wonderful substitute for you and your spouse, but not equipped to manage the child’s property, you can name both a guardian for the person and one for the property.

You will also have to name an executor [male] or executrix [female] of your will.  That person is responsible for gathering together your assets, pay any outstanding bills, paying the death taxes, and then distributing whatever assets remain, according to the specifications of the will.  Your executor can be a relative, friend, attorney, or an institution such as a bank or a trust company.  Some people choose an individual and an institution, in order to have the personal approach of a trusted friend and the knowledge of an organization.  Either way, trustworthiness, reliability, and organization are attributes your executor should possess.

Although state laws vary, some common principles apply regardless of where you live.  Though there’s no law that says you must have a lawyer draw up your will, if you want to make sure you have a valid will, hire a competent attorney who is familiar with state law and, to some degree with applicable federal and state estate tax laws.

The written document prepared by your lawyer must be signed by you in the presence of two [or sometimes three] witnesses, although many states allow you to verbally state to the witnesses that you have previously signed the will.  The witnesses should not be persons who are beneficiaries under the will.

Two of the most important requirements in making your will valid are that you tell the witnesses the document they are signing is in fact your will [not just some random legal document] and that each witness sign the will at your specific request.  This may sound quirky, but the failure to observe these requirements has led to the invalidation of many wills.

The original will should be kept in a safe place, but not in a safe-deposit box, since these are often sealed upon notice of death.Your planning will go a long way toward creating a happy and successful future for your children.  But don’t fall so in love with your plans that you never review or change them.  Remember to be flexible; if your financial outlook has changed, perhaps some of your plans should change as well. 

He stared at her, and then suddenly bent double.  This was a much worse pain than any so far.

She was helpless.  Nothing in the world could do to relieve it, except to get him into that hospital.  She clutched him to her, hardly noticing what she was doing, and smoothed his hair.  Edward, Edward, help me, her heart cried.  Edward where are you?  And like her son, in that moment, she felt despair settle so heavily on her and she was sure that her husband was no longer there to help her.

Suddenly the boy straightened up.  “All right, it’s gone. It wasn’t too bad,” he lied, and even managed a faint watery grin.  “Pack my bags then, and let’s go.”

She felt dizzy with relief.  Whether she had capitulated before the force of her arguments, or whether it was the chastising warning of that last pain, she couldn’t say.  She didn’t stop to think.

He watched her lug a case out from one of the cupboards and starts to put his things in, not so quickly or neatly as he had seen her pack for summer holidays, but she didn’t make bad speed.

“Shall I put some books in for you to read, Peter?  Which would you like to take?” and she ran her eye over the brilliant backs of the covers.  Adventure in the desert, the jungle, the town, and the country; adventures on the sea, below the sea, up mountains, in planes.  War books and animal adventures.  His world, from the escape from the safety and security of the room.

He surprised her again; cold, sharp, surprise settled on her.” I don’t want any.  I don’t want them anymore. Throw them out.  No, burn them-don’t give them away.  I don’t want other boys to-“

He broke off and turned his head away.

“But, Peter, you’ve always liked adventure books.”

“They’re not true.  There silly.  The only people who get killed in them are the “bads”-“goods” in those books all get through their adventure and come home and tell their families all about it.  My father wasn’t a “bad”.  But he didn’t come home.”

She finished the packing in silence and went done to phone the hospital and to tell her daily woman what was going on.  Mrs. Walters pointedly removed the cigarette from her mouth and dropped ash on the floor and just listened.

“In hospitable?  Poor little soul.”

“Don’t talk like that Mrs., Walters, he might hear you.  I’ve had such a trouble to persuade him, but he’s agreed to go quietly, and get it over with, and I think it’s the best thing.  He had a very bad pain this morning.”

Mrs. Walters clucked sympathetically and put the cigarette back in her mouth.  “Well. What I say is, I do admire you, and the you’re taking it, Mrs. Farley. If it were my boy, I’d be off with my head with worry, not knowing if I’d ever see him again…”

“Of course, I’ll see him again,” Claire said crossly, but it wasn’t any use arguing with Mrs. Walters.  She did keep the place clean, but she firmly believed that her ideas were right and everyone else was staggeringly wrong.  Claire left her and want upstairs to ready.

The Milkman came.  Peter went to the window and looked down.  He hadn’t gotten his horse anymore which Peter thought was a pity.  The milk float was a mistake.  It whirled miserably, and it was so slow that the other traffic on the road made all the usual noises of frustration until it could be overtaken.  No one likes the milk floats.

But it reminded Peter of the holidays when the milkman had brought his boy round to collect the empties.  The boy had been a year older than Peter, and had boasted about his visit to the hospital to have his verracus burnt off.  More pain than torture in the Middle Ages, the milkman’s boy had said firmly.  Peter decided that it might be a good idea to dust go down and have a word with the boy’s father just to check [without disbelieving his mother’s story, of course but she was the sort of pretty, distracted-looking young woman who often get things wrong.]  If that hospital was a Christmas hospital and whether it was likely that they’d have fun there, which he personally which he could never bring to believe.

He crept downstairs. The pain had eased up a lot. He didn’t waste time worrying about why it should do that, but began to plan his verbal opening.  The Milkman liked to joke and tease.  He would start off by getting in quickly.  “Hello, hello, hello, here’s a young gentleman with a posh speech on his tongue to make, I can tell at a glance!” the milkman was fond of saying when Peter was about, and it was irritating.  Peter knew he must start talking first.  Should he ask bluntly: “Is the Joseph and Mary really a

Christmas

Hospital?” but come to think of it sounded silly.  The Joseph and Mary began to carry weight on its own; the sound about it that is at once suggestive.  It might perhaps be better to find out if it was really called that, or if someone else told his mother the wrong thing.

The milkman was being quiet for once, Peter discovered.  Mrs. Walters was doing all the talking “Stood out against going into the hospital all this time he has, poor little devil, but his mother’s got him to agree at last.”

“Yes, well-“the milkman said, hoping to bring in the story about his boy and the verracus.

Mrs. Walter’s wasn’t going to have that.  “What I say is, shall we ever see him again?  Not a bad kid, that one.  I said as much to his mother.  If it was me, I said I’d be asking my self if he’d ever come out again.  Well I mean to say-hospitals are all alike.  Once they get you in, you never come out.  Look at my Perce-“

Pierce Walters was a tall thin, weedy man who came to do the odd jobs.  He had been by way of being a hero to Peter, because he had the bare minimum of tools which he treasured, and he kept them in a shabby old bag he carried as if it contained gold.  Out of the most unlikely bits of wood and rubbish, that no one else wanted, Mrs.’s Walter’s late Husband, had fashioned things, slowly with a care that had been born of waning energy, but the little boy hadn’t known this.  He hadn’t known that Percy Walters’ days had been numbered then. He only knew that he had liked him and that he had been persuaded to go into the hospital and had never came out.

He didn’t stop to hear of the other similar cases.

Mrs. Walters had known and was loudly citing for the milkman’s benefit, nor that would he have realized that they had been hopeless cases from the state.  He only knew that Mrs. Walters was saying roundly that he would never come back to this dear house again, never see his father when he came home…if his father ever came home.  And Mrs. Walters was speaking in that loud, confident, ringing tone of one who was sure of her facts.

He turned to go upstairs again, but the pain came on again and this time he went grey with it.  His Mother came down and at the same time heard the taxi pull up at the door.

“Are you ready, darling?  Do you think that you could help let you get ready?  We really ought to be getting going.”

He looked at her, his faced pinched and grey and somehow much older. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”  He asked of her, and to her fevered imagination, it was the voice of Edward, lighter weight, of course, but the same tone, the same choice of words.

“Why do you say that darling?  I thought we agreed that it was for the best,” his Mother cried.  Her distress communicated itself to him and he believed he was lost, and that she knew he was lost, but there was nothing else she could do.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he said and he let her help him.  Wrapped in a grim frozen silence borne of grief and despair, a quiet, nagging fear that was worse than the noisy terror of a normal frightened child.  Peter Farely allowed himself be conveyed to the Christmas Hospital.

“No darling, there are masses of people in hospital at Christmas time.  The wards are full as at other times.”

“They are?” He couldn’t believe it.  She smiled at him and pushed the slight advantage she had gained.

“Well, it stands to reason doesn’t it?  Pain just doesn’t wait until after Christmas to come on, now do they?  Pains don’t’ know what season of the year it is, and you’ll always find if there’s fun or a party, or an outing or something nice, you’ll have pains and can’t enjoy the thing.  Pains never sensibly appear when there’s nothing jolly to do.”

He agreed with that too, but looked around curiously shattered/ didn’t understand why.  She decided not to ask, but to push her position she had gained.

Well, for all the people who had been unfortunate enough to be caught in hospital over Christmas and for the sake of the nurses and doctors who had to stay there over Christmas to look after the sick people. They had a lot of fun and decorations and nice food, just the same as if you are at home.

“I don’t believe it!” he exploded

“It’s true.  Its stands to reason-they want their fun too-and it’s nicer, I should think to have Christmas with dozens of other people with you to enjoy it!”

“How can they enjoy it if they’re ill?” he pointed out after some thought “Not ill, exactly, but on the way to being better only not quite fit enough to go home, if you see what I mean.  And some hospitals have television people come and film them so people at home can see the fun their having.”

Peter really couldn’t accept that “Now I know you’re making it up.”

“But I’m not, darling, truly I’m not.  We had it on last year, now didn’t we, only you didn’t watch the screen, you were too engrossed in you  new train set.”

That was a mistake, referring to the year before.  His father had come home on a flying visit. and had been lying flat on his stomach on the floor with Peter, playing with the train set too.  Peter’s lips trembled, but he sternly bit on them and said, “Oh, that! I saw it, but I thought it was a sort of play got up in the studio, not real at all.”

“Oh, Peter,” she said helplessly.  Other mothers didn’t seem to have this trouble.  The Jones children down the road had all been in hospital to have tonsils removed, and the young Marhams, one of whom was Peter’s age, had made no fuss at all when one had been run over and had a broken leg, and the other two had fallen out of a tree and had concussion and cracked ribs.  Their mothers had just phoned ambulances or called the doctor, and briskly gathered things together in cases in off they were bundled, and no questions asked.  But Peter had always seemed different.  A dreamer, not a boy to climb trees or get run over.  A boy who thought and planned, rather than blundered in and out of trouble.  A boy who preferred to read adventure books and dream of the time when he would go to the

Middle East like his father and work with the oil wells.

“I won’t go.” Peter said suddenly, in a rather frightingly final tone.  “Well, anyway, I won’t go for one week, until we give father a chance to come home.  Then we’ll see.”

She gasped.  “No Peter we can’t wait that long-“It was blurted out before she realized it.  All she could see was the grave face of the doctor at the Mary and Doctor Threadingham Memorial Hospital.  A big hospital, with a fine staff, but quite clearly they hadn’t liked this case and they wanted the boy in at once, before matters got any worse.

Peter misconstrued.  He stood up, still bent a little, and not removing one arm from his tummy.  “It’s like I thought.  You really don’t expect my father to come home, do you? Not ever.  I expect they know he’s dead already,” and his face puckered…

He turned sharply away.  She felt he had cut at her with a knife.  She took the blow, steadying herself, and then returned to the attack, because she must do this.  She was all alone now, and Edward would expect her to do it; reasonably, not clumsily and easily. He would expect her to put it to the boy so that he would go willingly and cheerfully, not just throw his things into a case and bundle him into a taxi ignoring the frozen grief and fear that would render him incapable of protesting even if he wanted to.  Edward had had a lot to say about the way some parents take their children to the new strange world of hospital.

She tried again.  “Darling, don’t say such things.  Listen, I love him you too, you know.  He belongs to me as well you.  He’s so dear to me-“

“Then why did you let him go out to that old desert to get lost and shot at when you knew all the time that there was fighting going on near?  I didn’t know there was fighting.  Nobody told me, or else or I’ve asked him not to go.  We’re not so hard up, are we, that father has to go to that place to earn his living?”

It was the worst reproach of all.  Hadn’t she begged Edward to apply to stay in

London at the main office until the trouble died down?  And hadn’t Edward just looked at her, and before saying quietly, “You know I can’t do that, Claire! His look had reproached her for putting to him the coward’s way out.

“People have to go to places like that dear, It wouldn’t do if everyone to stay home just there was a bit a trouble-we can’t run and hide until the nasty things stop, now can we?” He went to the bunks and sat done on the edge of the bottom one, thinking.  She flayed herself into saying some more.” Darling, I promise you it will be all right.  I’ll come and visit you every day-the mother’s do you know.  And the minute I hear from Daddy or about him, I’ll let you know.  If I can’t come at that moment to tell you, I’ll telephone the ward and the sister will come and give you the news,”

“She will?”  He couldn’t believe that.  “Why?”

“Because she’s kind, they’re all kind up on the wards.  Its fun, you’ll love it.”

“I didn’t see anyone kind when I went to the hospital to be poked and prodded by those men in white coats.  No fun, either.”

“That was only outpatients, darling.  They’re very busy and they have to get through their work in time to close the clinic for the day, but on the wards where people lie in beds and eat nice food and have fun, there’s plenty of time.  She swallowed.  “At this very minute, they’re all very hard at working making decorations to put up.  Did you know that?  And the night nurses put presents on everyone’s bed at Christmas time, and they have shows and lovely food-“

“They do?” He was still suspicious.

“Darling, actually it’s a proper Christmas hospital,” she said, making her last effort and deciding that if she must diverge from the truth it had better be a fine and splendid divergence, and completely convincing.  “Well look at the name of the place-that should prove it.  Do you know what they call it? 

The Joseph and

Mary

Hospital.  There, now!”

The word bounty is normally used as a type of reward or payment, especially one given by a government. It is a gift in a way for doing something that the government does not have the ability or the manpower top do itself. Some examples would be a bounty on killing predatory animals, growing certain crops, starting certain industries, or signing up for a term in the military.

However the term bounty can also be used in the form of an ordinary person giving a generous gift. Sometimes the person would give a gift that was very expensive. At other times the person would take an ordinary item and add value to it. This value, of course, lies in the eyes of the recipient of the gift. Because you value the recipient’s friendship enough to add value to a gift, or favor that you perform for them, they will think highly about you. This of course has a boomerang effect. You desire people to think well about you because they believe you think well about them and it actually happens.

Way back in 1776, a Scottish fellow named Adam Smith published a book called ‘The Wealth of Nations’. In this book, the author implies that adding value to goods and services is how wealth is created. For the terms ‘goods and services’ you can easily substitute the terms ‘gifts and favors’. The author felt that adding value would create monetary wealth. What about the wealth of good-will that would be created if gifts were given a bounty by adding value to them with your personal touch or added to a favor by going ’above and beyond the expected’?

The traditional way of adding value to a gift was to wrap it. Nowadays, people buy gift bags instead of wrapping gifts. However there may be a way of personalizing the gift under the wrapping by putting the person’s name on it or a special label from a stationary store or a stamp-booking supply store. When offering a “to-do favor” to someone, you may include an offer to bring along munchies or refreshments and then do it. This would certainly stand out as a bounty and mark you as a person who certainly had generosity in giving.

The unfortunate part of this is that it is normal for the recipient to reciprocate the bounty. If you value their friendship you would feel better about yourself if they acknowledged your bounty in a reciprocal manner. Unfortunately this is sometimes not the case. Sometimes selfishness plays a part. Selfishness implies the concern with one’s own interests in priority to the interests of others. As you have not expressed selfishness in that you have added bounty or value to the gift or favor, it is reasonable that the recipient show their thanks in a reciprocal manner.

It need not be done at the time of the gift, but should be done in a reasonable period of time. If you find that there is no reciprocation after several bountiful gifts or favors, you may still value the friendship and you may wish to discuss this with the recipient. Let me give you an example.

Say I helped mind your children repeatedly or helped build a shed for you or helped with the landscaping on several occasions. I might mention this and ask if it was OK to continue with the help. I might add that I am asking this because the recipient never reciprocates. I might also mention that I feel bad about this situation. I would also ask if the recipient were aware that I had concerns about this. I would then ask if they thought my concerns would make our relationship better or worse. I would then wait for the answer and see if the recipient of the gifts or favors is prepared to reciprocate in a timely manner. This normally will allow the recipient to make some effort to show their appreciation. Good luck with this strategy.

January came in with a biting touch and a grey mantle that year.  Nurse Jenny Drury thought as she huddled further down into her practical new winter coat and quickened her step back to the hospital.

The new coat was warm which the first consideration, but she wasn’t very happy about.  Money wasn’t too plentiful, in Jenny’s case, for a warm and snappy wardrobe.  Other nurses such as Angela and Pat spent all their money on clothes and make-up and visits to the hairdressers, and both of them could ask for help from home if they ran short…  But Jenny couldn’t do that.  There was a large family of young ones at home.

A large happy family, she added in her mind and swallowed hard and fought down the homesickness that threatened to much at this time a year.

Jenny wasn’t going home for Christmas.

She forgot for moment the pleasure of this coat and that had been bought to bolster op her ego. And make here look rather special so the next time she passed David Redmayne in the street, he wouldn’t just be casually friendly, but would stop and linger as if seeing her for the first time, and will be stunned by her appearance, and never look at another girl again.

The shop Jenny was passing had a mirror in the side of the window.  She looked critically ay herself in it, and approached more slowly.  It didn’t help.  She saw a girl who looked exactly as her elder brother, Jim always saw her: a nice brown girl Brown because her hair and dark lashed eyes were that color, and her healthy-glowing skin had a very slight time, even after summer had gone, and brown because she couldn’t drop the habit of choosing new clothes in that shade., which was hardly the colour to attract that handsome young man, David Redmayne, who was R.S.O. at the Shaclestock’s hospital. A friendly and popular young man, the very dream of every young unattached nurse to the special girl in hi life..

Jenny left the mirrored shop window behind and battled against the knife-like wind that shot round the corner to met her and as she bent her head and half-closed her eyes against it, she thought despairingly that she should have settled for the warm red coat the assistant in the department store had tried to persuade you to buy.  But it had made her look like a robin, Jenny thought, and not at all glamorous like the staff nurse on the cardiac word, who wore sky blue in all seasons and was really fabulous with her natural blonde hair and wide tip-tilted blue eyes. The red coat wouldn’t  have let Jenny look glamorous like Angela, ether, who could wear white with cool success, and make all then whistle on her ward even when she appeared in ordinary old uniform on a sharp frosty morning.

Not glamorous like Pat, either, who favored green, all shades of green, because was auburn and played up to that color. Jenny sighed, pushed determinately the question of lack of cash and glamour firmly into the background and thought of the children on her ward, and of the things they could make with the crepe paper she had bought, and the foil she had begged, borrowed and saved throughout the past year.

She was so engrossed in her thoughts that she hardly noticed David Redmayne cross the road, waving to her as he sprinted among the traffic to reach her side.

“Jenny, you were daydreaming!” he told her with mock severity.  Saw you while you were in the bookshop.”

“I was thinking of the children,” she admitted, but she wouldn’t let herself meet his eyes because it wouldn’t do to let him see how he affected her.  Such wild excitement for meeting him, yet to him she was just another friendly nurse.

“Me too, he agreed, and plunged into the external discussion about the Christmas play.  “We must somehow get a hold of a crook for the leading shepard. 

Anderson’s too big and clumsy to make do with a cardboard crook.  Besides, we must have the proper things.  The kids love it. I wish we’d get more money to play around with.

  “Money, yes,” she sighed.  The hospital wasn’t too badly equipped, but at the same time it wasn’t a streamlined modern hospital.  Neither the one thing, nor the other, and so it just missed qualifying for the extras that would have been nice but could have been done without.  As for instance, proper things for the Christmas play.

The day-nurses had made crowns for the three kings in their off duty hours.  They had used gold paper off chocolates, and scarlet and green tinsel shapes stuffed with cotton wool for the “jewels” and very effective too. The night nurses had sewn the djellabahs for the shepherd’s from deckchair striped cotton, and robes for the kings from cast-off curtains from home.  But they still needed a convincing looking casket and goblet for the “gifts” and the crook.

“I asked how much one would cost,” David was saying “At a pinch, I could buy it myself, but it will be so super-looking and it will show up everything else.  I don’t know”. “What do you think Jenny?”

“I was wondering if we could make a crook with a long cane and a wax modeling-clay head, that’s if Bobby Anderson doesn’t knock it out of shape at the crucial moment.”

“Medical students!” David said with resignation.  “Still, it’s an idea.” And then the great bulk of the hospital building appeared, and that delectable conversation was over.  David left her to go in the nurse’s entrance and didn’t suggest any further meetings either for discussions of for anything else.  He just waved cheerily and said goodbye, as he would have to any other nurse…

She watched him go.  His height dwarfed that of other men, and in her eyes he was perfect.  She liked his voice best of all-deep, pleasant, well modulated.  She had heard it said that he had a pleasant tenor voice and had sung in the choir at home.  She collected and treasured those odd scraps of information about him, but he never told him any himself.  They only met by accident in the street and walked together back to the hospital, and on those occasions they talked shop.

Not a lot on which to base the whole of one’s love, devotion, and loyalty, she told herself scathingly.  He wasn’t even aware of her as a person.  Just a pair of ears to listen willingly when he wanted to discuss the social activities of the hospital, and the children in Jenny’s ward [on whom he doubted] when there wasn’t another willing pair of ears handy, she told herself.

Jenny pulled a face.  And that wasn’t often, in all conscience.  If the blue-eyed staff-nurse on Cardiac wasn’t laying in wait to claim his attention, then Hilary Sadler-the youngish and very well-groomed Almoner-would be about and make a beeline for him.  David appeared to like them both-all the younger women in the hospital.  Jennifer brightened as she recalled that he didn’t appear to show any preference for any particular one of them, there might just be hope that one day he would notice her… 

Never before in the history of human life on earth has the number of elderly people in the population been so high - and the numbers are going to grow even greater in the next few decades. In 2006, the first of the Baby Boom generation will turn sixty and the percentage of elderly in most Western populations will steadily increase to more than 20 per cent of the population through to 2030, when the last of the Baby Boomers turn sixty-five. As people age, it is inevitable that they begin to think of illness, disability and death and what, as individuals, they can do to ease their own passage. While critics of euthanasia often predict that vulnerable elderly people could be harmed by any liberalization of euthanasia laws, it has often been the elderly themselves who have been the strongest lobbyists in favor of a choice to die. Indeed, the majority of members in the more than 120 right-to-die organizations to emerge in the world over the last decade are in late middle age or in their senior years. These right-to-die advocacy groups, which include Toronto’s Dying With Dignity, the Victoria-based Right To Die Society of Canada, or the Hemlock Society in the
United States, have almost single-handedly kept the issues in the public eye for the past decade. As
U.S. writer Anne Fadiman notes, meetings of the Hemlock Society during the 1980s tended to be “a genteel sorority of seniors” with educated, elderly women outnumbering elderly men or younger people of both sexes.

The relentless aging of the population means that in future years the debate over choices at the end of life is only going to increase. Just as Baby Boomers focused their attention on sex, then on birth and parenthood, then on middle age and menopause, the Baby Boom generation will become obsessed with the process of dying as the reality of their own death looms closer, giving even more momentum to the issues of the right to die. Indeed, many people are already having to face difficult medical dilemmas. A loved one is in an intensive care unit on a respirator with no hope of recovery - should doctors be asked to remove the machine? Mother has Alzheimer’s and has developed pneumonia, should she be treated with antibiotics? Granny is eighty and frail but in otherwise good health when she goes into hospital for elective surgery - should she request that a “do not resuscitate” order be placed on her chart in case she has a heart attack on the ward? Should high levels of pain killers be given to a loved one dying of AIDS or cancer which will dull his pain but at the same time cloud his brain and hasten his death? These decisions are already being made hundreds of times each day in Canadian hospitals. Yet advancing age might not be a big enough factor to push the issue of choice in dying on its own. It becomes a compelling force when an aging population is coupled with the phenomenal change in medicine over the last fifty years, and how that change, in turn, has transformed the process of dying.

Until two centuries ago, the death of a baby was an accepted, although tragic, risk of childbirth.  Infectious diseases claimed many young lives.  In mid-seventeenth century
Europe, only one in four children survived to celebrate his fifth birthday.  As recently as the nineteenth century in the
United States, one in five children died before the age of one.  Largely due to improved hygiene, immunizations, and antibiotics, babies now die infrequently.

Although infant death is an uncommon occurrence, families sometimes have to cope with babies who have serious who have serious, chronic, and even fatal illnesses.  Approximately ten percent of children in the
United States suffer from illnesses that last over three months.  Parents may walk an emotional tightrope between hope and despair for the long months that their child is ill.

Upon facing the diagnosis of serious illness in their infant or child, parents may at first feel nothing except shock and disbelief.  Grief follows as a response to any loss.  The loss may be the dissipation of their dreams of a healthy child.  If the disease is expected to be fatal, parents may mourn in anticipation of their child’s death.  Despair, fear, anger, remorse, and loneliness are all normal emotions of the normal grieving reaction.

Dealing with Guilt

Unfortunately, guilt is another emotion many parents feel when they learn that their infant is gravely ill.  Parents can torment themselves with feelings of responsibility for the illness.  If the baby has a hereditary disease, the feelings of self-blame may be especially overwhelming.

Self-reproach can be destructive.  Negative feelings about oneself can make it difficult for a parent to nurture the sick baby and other members of the family.  Guilt-ridden parents may either lavish excessive attention on the baby or turn away from her.  Both responses amplify an older infant’s or toddler’s sense that something is wrong with her. 

Parents may suffer further if communication between husband and wife is impaired.  Their coping styles may be incompatible.  Resentments may arise if one parent quits working to undertake the care of the sick child.

The child’s illness need not inevitably impair a marriage.  Couples who can turn to each other for comfort and who are able to communicate find the bonds between them greatly strengthened.

Helping Siblings to Cope

Parents often wonder whether their other children are too young to be told about the fatal illness or death of a sibling.  Most psychologists feel it is crucial for the other children be told the truth in a straightforward manner that they can understand.  Children who are not informed will still know something is frightfully wrong and may invent their own fantastic explanations.

A child’s ability to comprehend death and dying depends on his age and prior experience with death [of a friend, family member, or pet].  Before the age of two years, infants and toddlers are unable to grasp the concept of death.  However, even very young children do react with distress to prolonged separations from loved ones.

After two years of age, given proper assistance from an adult, children are able to achieve a basic and concrete understanding of death.  Still, they may have difficulty comprehending the permanence of death.  Active imaginations lead to wild fantasies about where the deceased has gone.  Because it is normal for children to have occasional negative feelings about their siblings, they may worry that their own thoughts or actions caused the illness.  This sort of magical thinking and self-blame is especially common in children between the ages of five and eight.

A young child’s response to the death of a sibling may be exasperating for parents.  Using denial as a defense, he may act overtly as though nothing were wrong.  Clues to inner turmoil include demanding, clinging behavior; regression to infantile behavior, such  as toilet training; and increased aggression.  Your warmth, understanding, and sharing of thoughts and feelings, help him to grieve in a more appropriate fashion.

By eight to twelve years of age, a child’s understanding of death is similar to adults.  However, the severe illness or death of a sibling may make him overly fearful of his own mortality.

In 1922, when an epidemic of diphtheria was sweeping central Canada, my paternal grandmother sat by the beds of three of her young children, begging God to save their lives. Prayer was all she had. Back then, as it had been for centuries, infectious and parasitic diseases were the biggest threats to human life, especially young life. The challenge of staying alive made the question of a “good death” a moot one. Death was a constant visitor and half of all deaths occurred in childhood. My grandmother knew that reality too well. By the time of the diphtheria epidemic she had already lost two children to infectious disease. Willy, her second child, had died of whooping cough in 1910 at only six months of age. In 1918, Gerald, then five, had cut his foot on the blade of an ice skate. Within a few days his foot had become swollen and red and the infection soon spread through his body. Without antibiotics to stem the spread of the bacteria, Gerald slipped into a coma and died of blood poisoning, septicemia, within two weeks of the innocent cut. Helen, Reg and Rita became sick with diphtheria, a disease that was the scourge of childhood and every mother’s fear. The two older children had been lucky and received a new diphtheria anti-toxin inoculation at school, and they recovered. But Rita was only four and too young for school; she hadn’t been inoculated. Six weeks later Rita died of heart failure. As if the toll of three dead children wasn’t enough, my grandmother was to lose two more before the dawn of the Second World War. In 1929, eight-year old Dorothy died of meningitis in Toronto’s Sick Children’s Hospital. Jack, her eldest son, was lucky and lived past childhood, but he died at age thirty-five of a lung abscess that today would be treated by antibiotics. William, her husband, died suddenly, too, at forty-five of what was probably chronic asthma. His death came two weeks after she gave birth to their tenth child, my father. My grandmother then developed tuberculosis in 1930 and spent two years in a sanatorium while her children were dispersed to relatives’ care. It never surprised me, with such a family history, that my father chose to become not only a doctor but a surgeon, an area of medicine in which physicians have the greatest sense of power and control over the outcome of a treatment or a disease.

While such a litany of grief and tragedy in one family - all caused by what are now treatable or preventable illnesses seems almost inconceivable to modern ears, sixty years ago such a story was commonplace. Families almost expected to lose a child or two, especially if they were poor. In 1921, for every 1,000 children born in
Canada, eighty-eight died before they reached their first birthday. By 1985, just 7.9 of 1,000 children would fail to reach that milestone. Dr. Lewis Thomas, a U.S. physician and essayist, described in his medical memoirs, “The Youngest Science,” how much medicine had changed during his own lifetime as a doctor. “When I was an intern on the wards of the Boston City Hospital the major threats to human life were tuberculosis, tetanus, syphilis, rheumatic fever, pneumonia, meningitis, polio and septicemia of all sorts. These things worried us then the way cancer; heart disease and stroke worry us today. The big problems of the 1930s and 1940s have literally vanished.” They vanished in less than thirty years through a combination of improved nutrition and sanitation, immunization of children, and the discovery of truly effective drugs, particularly penicillin, widely available by the end of World War II. By the I950s, public optimism about what medicine could do had soared. Hospitals, which in previous centuries had been avoided and or held in suspicion, were now almost temples of worship and the doctors the deities who performed miracles. Those miracles seemed all the greater with the birth of “rescue medicine.” One after another in the 19 50S, machines were perfected that could stave off death by temporarily doing the work of the lungs, the kidneys and the heart. These technologies pulled patients back from the brink of death until the organs could resume their function.

 In I968,
Gallup pollsters first asked Canadians the following question:

When a person has an incurable disease that causes great suffering, do you think that competent doctors should be allowed by law to end the patient’s life, if the patient has made a formal request in writing?

Back then, less than half of those Canadians polled answered yes. But it was never to be so low again. Over the last twenty-five years the percentage in favor has climbed up and up - so much so that by 1992, when Sue Rodriguez came on the scene, a full 78 per cent of Canadians felt she should legally be able to have a doctor help her die. The Canadian population is hardly unique. The U.S.A., Britain, New Zealand and Australia all show the same upward trend in public opinion over the same period of time. The exact numbers vary only slightly. Australia, where the world’s first right-to-die legislation was passed into law in the spring Of1995, leads with 79 per cent of its population favoring the choice; Britain mirrors Canada while the U.S. is slightly behind at 73 per cent. The result is that roughly three out of every four people in almost all English-speaking countries now believe that, under certain circumstances such as hopeless terminal illness with untreatable suffering, an individual should be able to ask for and receive euthanasia or assisted suicide.

A similar trend has occurred in Japan, Israel and the European nations. A comprehensive survey of European beliefs and morals, called the European Values Survey, was conducted in fourteen nations in 1981 and repeated in 1990, polling more than 50,000 Europeans on a wide range of issues, including euthanasia. The same increasing trend of acceptance was found in almost all of Europe’s industrialized nations: France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Iceland, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, and even strongly Catholic nations, like Italy and
Spain, showed that a majority of the population could envisage situations where euthanasia would be morally justified. Ireland was the only country where the philosophical acceptance of euthanasia was still in the minority, but even there, the position had gained some percentage points in the nine years between the polls.

Why is the acceptance of euthanasia gaining ground? What is giving such tremendous momentum to the right to die? The answer comes from the convergence of a number of distinct circumstances at the end of the twentieth century: a rapidly aging population, widespread disillusionment with medical technology, the decline of medical paternalism, the decline of religious beliefs and the rise of individual rights.

Each one of these are a powerful force on its own, but when combined, they create an unrelenting pressure to give individuals the power to choose the time and manner of their deaths.