Robert Munsch, Canadian children's author, approved for assistance in dying

If "Love You Forever" doesn't bring on tears, you aren't a Dad. [0]

That's one book that will live forever. I wish Mr. Munsch peace.

> One day the publisher called up and said “This is very strange. It is selling very well in retirement communities in Arizona. It is selling in retirement communities where kids are illegal. This is supposed to be a children’s book. What is going on?”

> “Grownups are buying it for grownups!”

> In fact, it turned out that parents buy it for grandparents and grandparents buy it for parents and kids buy it for everybody and everybody buys it for kids.

> As a matter of fact, everybody buys it for everybody. That’s why it sells a lot of copies. I think it’s my best book. So far it has sold about 15,000,000 copies.

[0] https://robertmunsch.com/book/love-you-forever

As a Canadian this seems great - if someone wants to go, they should be allowed to go.

One of my neighbours ended their life through MAiD a few years ago after becoming fully paralyzed due to ALS - and I can see why - all they could do was watch TV all day - they couldn't even wipe their own butt for like, a year.

Another one of my neighbours was on the fence for a long time, but then after their dementia progressed too far they were no longer eligible and regretted waiting - as they had to wait to die of natural causes at that point.

MAiD is fine.

I think that MAiD is fine.

Years ago PBS had a Frontline episode called Suicide Tourist where a man went to Switzerland to die. I still think of that show from time to time. When he was taking the meds to die he noted that one of them tasted bad, the folks helping mentioned what the medicine was. He said something like "You learn new things until the very end."

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicidetourist/

It's interesting to see the announcement of Robert's approval before the act itself.

I'm happy to see that Robert is the one choosing to discuss this. If that information was being disclosed without his consent I'd be mortified. Let's hope that doesn't become a regular thing.

I wonder what potential such an announcement may bring to the process of dying. Announcing your intentions for assisted death opens the door to public expressions of gratitude and reflection before they have passed. Not just after.

It seems that there's a lot of grace and love to be had in announcing the time and manner of our passing. This feels like a positive development.