This is the season of high hopes and good wishes both generically general and item specific (if you’re still knee-high to a grasshopper) as “The Holidays” arrive in full force. There are greetings and salutations to reflect just about every world religion with an observance unique to its own tradition but sharing in many ways a heartfelt hopefulness that transcends denominations, distinctions, and divisions.
In the midst of all this light and mindfulness, encountering a story with this headline sets a somber accent to the season but, more than that, causes me, and perhaps you as well, to pause and examine who we are and where we are in our own life stories.
Trust me, there are no upbeat versions of this report-I looked. The caption on the photo more than any paragraph within the story breaks my heart, “(A) woman who fears the passing of her youth and beauty has been granted permission to die by the court of protection.”
Every day we read tales of those unfortunates who are overtaken by catastrophe and calamity whose endings always result in death and darkness and yet I for one am still not so numbed by the plethora of those stories that this story does not shake me to my core.
I don’t know if “C” as she is called in the court documents is ‘right’ or ‘wrong;’ I’m not sure those valuations have any validity in this context. She has chosen her path one based on a decision making process I do not pretend to understand but, as a fellow-traveler on Spaceship Earth with more than enough baggage of my own, I must respect, most especially the strength and clarity of the voice with which she calls out to hasten down the wind.
-bill kenny
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