Letter: The end

Last night I visited an elderly friend in an assisted living facility for their Christmas party. It was a very nice physical facility with spacious rooms that was obviously high end. When I walked in the smell of feces was overpowering. The food served was recently frozen and overall awful. Conversation among the patients was nonexistent. My dear friend wanted desperately to die, but her body will not let her. The facilities desperately need her to live so that they can make money. I find myself indignant that younger healthy people make rules about how we must spend our last days when they cannot possibly understand the gradual, inevitable decline in ability that all seniors have. Not allowing responsible individuals to decide when their own life should end is cruel punishment. Once in these “rest homes” you are trapped just as surely as any prisoner in jail.