I bring this up only because there is a elderly woman on campus who sets off my "danger sense" whenever I'm near her. She's been attending the school as a student for some time now as an art major, or at least she's enrolled in classes as an evaluator, I'm not sure the circumstances. Suffice it to say I don't know why she's in the college and I wish she weren't.
This particular woman has mood swings, I'd say bi-polar but really I'm thinking crazy. One day nice old woman with a cart that's always with her, next day hissing viper. I've even been warned by one instructor to avoid contact with the old lady as she's not stable. Physically I don't think she's scary but it's the fact that I couldn't easily deal with her if she flipped, that makes me uncomfortable. I mean you can't just punch someone that's mean.
Anyway I'd say she's lonely but she treats everyone like shit. Except the pigeons. Still I can't say that's a redeeming quality.
Thinking about her made me think of Terry Pratchett and how he feels about his Alzheimer's disease. I'd hate to get to a point where people only have to glance at me to see that something's wrong, and that everyone would be powerless to do anything about it.
Before writing this post I had to look up the infamous Dr. Kevorkian and see exactly what that man is about. I've only ever heard his name as associated with evil and I think that when a person gets that kind of reputation in controversy you need to know more about the situation.
He claimed to have helped 130 patients and was convicted on a video of his assisting a patient with als to kill himself. I've heard it said that suicide is one of the most selfish acts a person can commit but when a person can't move their limbs, or is in constant pain with no relief other than to lose their ability to think, I'm not convinced that that state something that we should inflict on them.
The scariest thing to me is to "lose my mind" and no longer be me. It seems to me to be a type of living death or worse that someone has stolen my identity to destroy the memory of me. This is an area in which I think careful consideration must be taken in every case but the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness surely include the rights of choosing how to die (part of life) and how to live your life(liberty) and if a person is trying to end pain and misery (happiness) then I think that our country ought to support people in these hard situations instead of ostracizing them.
None of which helps me when I think of the crazy old lady. She'll live on just to spite people like me.
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