When someone you love is dying slow and hard of a disease like ALS, you find lots of things to be thankful for: the closeness of family and friends, the gentle respiratory technician who takes panicked phone calls at any hour of the night, all the devices that smart people have invented to make the life of a quadriplegic more bearable.
In fact, during the last few months of my father’s life, my family became quite expert at counting our blessings. One of these blessings is that our home state of Florida is not an assisted-suicide state. “Thank God that kind of thing isn’t legal here,” my mother said on more than one occasion. “I would hate for your father to think he should end his life to save us from trouble and pain.”
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