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Death Came Knocking
My dad said, “come in.”
Conversation topic: death
For about two years now, the topic of death has been incredibly present in my life. While death itself is nowhere near unique, I had a special opportunity surrounding the death of my father (May 2020).
After a three-year battle with cancer, he called it quits. Nine months before his death, when his cancer returned, he decided he didn’t want to do chemotherapy. He’d rather fill the months he had left with a grand quality of life, instead of trying to survive. The destination would be all the same. In line with his desire for quality of life, my dad organised that he would die before the disease could kill him. Euthanasia.
It’s somewhat legal in the Netherlands. There are a lot of rules and regulations around it, and the preferred term for many is ‘assisted death’. When I’m angry or sad, I prefer to call it suicide. But no matter what I call it, in the end, my dad got to die in a way that he was happy with, suicide or not.
There was something incredibly unique and powerful about knowing my dad was going to die. Not only because it allowed us to spend quality time together, but because we got to converse about everything. It was special because we got to talk about death.
