Before going to sleep, my wife and I regularly watch the reruns of "Everybody Loves Raymond." some episodes quite a few times. One of the jokes about the benefits of Alzheimers is "you can hide your own Easter Eggs." Well, you can also watch your favorite programs over and over and still enjoy the surprise ending.
The details of California's assisted suicide law in the film "Paddleton" is an accurate depiction of this complex law, right up to the pills having to be opened individually. This law, which a few other States have enacted, is designed for inoperable terminal cancer and other diseases where death follows within six months, which excludes dementia, where the individual may suffer for many years.
Our culture and the laws in this country still see suicide as an anti-social act based on our majority religious tenets that only God gets to decide this. Of course it's also decided by medical-nursing home interests, that reap billions from those who live on, cowed by the opprobrium of suicide for ending a life of distress.
This film was not a polemic, but something rarely elevated to this level of reality, a friendship between two men. Friendship, while in one scene mistaken as an intimate relationship, actually was so, but not of the sexual way. In fact is was deeper, more personal -- a caring for each other that had nothing to do with sexual gratification.
We may be a long way from curing cancer or dementia, but this film, in the guise of entertainment, maps the path to normalizing life's end, not as a choice of God, but of we mere mortals.
The details of California's assisted suicide law in the film "Paddleton" is an accurate depiction of this complex law, right up to the pills having to be opened individually. This law, which a few other States have enacted, is designed for inoperable terminal cancer and other diseases where death follows within six months, which excludes dementia, where the individual may suffer for many years.
Our culture and the laws in this country still see suicide as an anti-social act based on our majority religious tenets that only God gets to decide this. Of course it's also decided by medical-nursing home interests, that reap billions from those who live on, cowed by the opprobrium of suicide for ending a life of distress.
This film was not a polemic, but something rarely elevated to this level of reality, a friendship between two men. Friendship, while in one scene mistaken as an intimate relationship, actually was so, but not of the sexual way. In fact is was deeper, more personal -- a caring for each other that had nothing to do with sexual gratification.
We may be a long way from curing cancer or dementia, but this film, in the guise of entertainment, maps the path to normalizing life's end, not as a choice of God, but of we mere mortals.