When My Time Comes: Conversations About Whether Those Who Are Dying Should Have the Right to Determine When Life Should End
Acclaimed NPR host Diane Rehm adds her voice in conversation with opponents and proponents of the Right-to-Die movement.
Written by Jade Adgate
Diane Rehm’s iconic interview style turns its eye to the right-to-die movement as she crafts a thoughtful investigation in her recent book, “When My Time Comes: Conversations about Whether Those Who Are Dying Should Have the Right to Determine When Life Should End”. Following the death of her own mother in 1955, Rehm took note of the lack of options for those wanting a death with dignity, whose pain could not be controlled. When her husband, John Rehm, wanted to hasten his own death after his Parkinson’s Disease progressed, Rehm witnessed as voluntary stopping of eating and drinking (VSED) was his only option. In response to her firsthand experience of these two deaths, Rehm is certain that when her time comes, she wishes to enter into her dying phase with as much control and autonomy as possible, utilizing mAID.
Diane Rehm and her late husband John Rehm on their 25th wedding anniversary in 1984; image from next avenue.org.
This fierce little book debates the issue of right-to-die, volleying from Rehm’s interviews with proponents of the movement to its opponents. Rehm converses with a diverse mix from politicians to physicians, theologians to those living with terminal illness themselves. In her characteristic style of moving gently into head-on conversations, I found Rehm overwhelmingly convincing that the right-to-die is a highly necessary legislative change that must be made accessible across the nation.
Even if you are not a death worker with an eye on the ethics of death care and trends shaping the holistic death care movement, Rehm’s work is an essential read. Rehm demonstrates, in the last interview of the book, how to have an honest conversation with your loved ones (while being recorded) about your specific wishes so there is no doubt. On audio, Rehm reads her work in a conversational tone that feels like an extended NPR segment, as pleasurable an experience as this conversation could possibly offer.
“Until we overcome our fear about talking about death, few of us can have the end of life we envision. We’ve been so focused on living and accomplishing and moving forward that we don’t think about death as part of life.”
