Illustration by Dale Nigel Goble

With around 269,000 deaths reported each year in Canada, the death biz is more invested in our mortality than ever. But this billion-dollar industry needs us more than we need it: big-ticket items and services, such as embalming, caskets and tombstones, are as superfluous as they are environmentally damaging. Green burials came to North America in the early 2000s, and Canada’s first urban green burial site opened in Saanich, B.C. in 2008. According to the Natural Burial Association, there are currently four certified natural burial sites in Canada, with several other cemeteries offering hybrid green burial services. Here’s what you need to know about going green to the grave.

THE ULTIMATE DETOX
Though numbers aren’t readily available in Canada, the Funeral Consumers Alliance estimates that over 20 million litres of toxic embalming fluid are used, and consequently deposited into the earth, every year in the U.S. Common embalming chemicals—such as formaldehyde, a known carcinogen—can leach into the ground, compromise the health of plants and animals, and contaminate our water supply. However, green burial practices prohibit the use of these concoctions in favour of natural decomposition. For open-casket viewings, the body can be preserved via refrigeration and the use of environmentally sensitive soaps, lotions and essential oils—a last spa treatment of sorts.

THINK OUTSIDE THE (VARNISHED) BOX
Caskets and casket liners containing metal, synthetic fabrics, varnish, and concrete take years to decompose and can leave a toxic residue behind. The greenest way to go down is enclosed in a shroud made of biodegradable fibres. Some people even have it dyed (with plant-based colours, of course) or embroidered with a favourite poem. Alternatively you can let mushies work their magic, by going six feet under in an Infinity Burial Suit. The head-to-toe garment is infused with fungi and bio-organisms that speed up your decomposition, allowing you to pass on your nutrients to the plants. A no-frills casket, made with locally sourced and sustainable wood, can be used as a supplement to a simple shroud. But forget the lustre finish and leave it untreated or oiled. Also, lose the swanky padded velvet lining, unless you’re Count Dracula or a very expensive guitar.

GRAVE MATTERS
Green burial sites discourage people from having individual tombstones to preserve the natural landscape of the grounds as much as possible. Unmarked graves and communal memorialization are standard. To mark the spot, instead of propping up a great slab of quarried marble, consider a discreet name plaque on a tree, a rock garden or smooth pebbles—or something sculptural, such as a sundial, a bird table or an art piece made from eco-friendly materials. If your last resting place is in a beautiful setting, your loved ones can just enjoy the ever-changing beauty of the seasons there—no concrete required.

PLANT LIFE AFTER DEATH
Green burials take their cues from nature and follow the principle that life and death are cyclical. As such, green burial sites are maintained with indigenous wildlife in mind. The grounds are managed organically, and cuttings of native plants and flowers are cultivated, to be reintegrated, each time the earth is disturbed. After all, just because you can’t make a comeback, doesn’t mean your burial plot doesn’t deserve the chance.

About a year after India died, my husband, Mark, visited the lab. At the time we were deep in grief and had decided to stay with a close friend. We couldn’t be in our own house. Whenever I walked through the door I was assaulted by images from the past— India trying to catch her breath as she had a seizure on the sofa; paramedics carrying India down the steep staircase on a stretcher; the empty space in India’s bedroom, by the window, where her hospital bed once stood.

After Mark returned from the lab, we sat on our friend’s porch to talk. He looked tired and sad so I was careful not to press him. All that remained of our only child were the cells my husband had viewed through a microscope. Finally, Mark lit a cigarette and said, “It was like looking at a city from space.”

I thought about that conversation on the porch, four years later as I was flying into Vancouver airport at night. From above, the flickering yellow lights of the city made me think of a video I’d seen of a nerve cell firing: the crowded centre was the nucleus; the suburbs branching from it, the dendrites; and the stretch of highway heading into the city was the slender nerve fibre known as the axon. For those who have not lost a child this might seem strange, but when my plane arrived in Vancouver I was hoping to catch a glimpse of her, if only in the shape of a metaphor.

Dr. Steffany Bennett, who runs the Neural Regeneration Laboratory where India’s cells are housed, told Mark she thought our daughter’s cells were beautiful. He thought so too, but he didn’t know if all cells were beautiful in the same way. India would have enjoyed their attentions. Like most teenage girls, she never tired of being admired.

To me, India’s cells are like starlight —a hint of the brightness that was my child. To say she was unique is an understatement. India died of Spinal Muscular Atrophy with Progressive Myoclonic Epilepsy (SMA-PME), a disease that Dr. David Dyment—a clinical geneticist and Dr. Bennett’s collaborator—described as “ultra-rare.” While there are no formal numbers, the condition is seen in significantly fewer than one child in a million.

India’s symptoms began when she was 10 years old, with petit mal seizures that we were told she’d probably grow out of. By the time she was 15, she’d suffered grand mal seizures so ferocious that a veteran pediatric nurse who witnessed one told me later it was the worst day of her career. In the last two years of India’s life, her muscles became so weak that she developed a tremor in her voice and lost the ability to walk or use her arms. The talented teenager who’d once amused herself by drawing detailed manga characters while singing her favourite songs from Rent and Wicked could no longer hold a pencil or a tune.

James Vlahos can no longer sit across from his father, hold his hand or give him a hug. But he can ask him for advice when he’s feeling blue and let his children ask questions about his family’s life in Greece or listen to him sing “Me and My Shadow.”

When his father, John James Vlahos, was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, at the age of 80, James began racing to record his life stories. For months, he sat across from his dad with an audio recorder, asking questions and recording long answers and jokes he’d heard “a hundred times.” In the end, he recorded 91,970 words.

What began as an oral-history project quickly evolved into a quest to give his dad virtual immortality. Vlahos, a journalist and author, had long been interested in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and voice applications. Shortly after his father’s cancer diagnosis, he learned the company PullString was releasing a software that would allow the public to create what are called conversational agents—like messenger chatbots. He wondered: What if he took the thousands of words and audio clips he’d collected and built a virtual replica—a Facebook Messenger chatbot—of his dad, with whom he could converse?

With his father’s and family’s blessings, Vlahos began building the Dadbot. His parents had never interacted with a chatbot before, but they liked the idea of being able to pass on his father’s stories in an interactive way.

“He had a way of sassing people in the friendliest kind of way, like if he thought you were getting a little too high on your horse, he had sayings like, ‘well, hot dribbling spit!’” Vlahos says. “I love hearing those words but I like when they come out at a surprising time. That is one thing I am proud of with the programming—that I got him.”

The Dadbot is designed to respond to questions driven by the people interacting with it, such as “What was your favourite class in college?” And every so often, the bot will decide to tell a story or joke.

Vlahos says building the Dadbot was part of his grieving process, and he still enjoys interacting with the bot.

“It’s comforting for me to talk to the Dadbot…It was neat to kind of step through his life, chapter by chapter, but then also to step into his mind, to a degree. How would he respond if somebody sort of teased him in this sort of situation?”

Digital avatars of the deceased are a rising trend, and go by different names, such as memorial bots or griefbots. When Vlahos detailed his experiences in a 2017 article for Wired magazine, he unintentionally positioned himself as a leader in this virtual immortality space.

“A lot of people wanted to talk about it,” he says. “One man, he was dying, and he wanted to create something for his kids to have, another woman had lost her son in an automobile accident and she wanted something to help remember him. It really resonated with people in a way that no project that I’ve been involved with before has.”

THE QUEST FOR IMMORTALITY IS nothing new but the ways we live and die have changed dramatically. In the 2018 version of the Vanier Institute report, Family Perspectives: Death and Dying in Canada, the first desire listed is “We want to live forever.” As the report points out, contemporary Canadian culture is death defying and death denying. We seek out anti-aging products and praise those who make it to the senior years with youthful lifestyles still blazing.

In Canada, sudden deaths are rare—the majority of Canadians get a heads-up that they, or their loved one, is dying. But in general, we are living longer than ever before. According to the 2016 census, the fastest-growing age group in Canada is actually “centenarians,” those aged 100 or older. The number of Canadians aged 85 and older now represents 2.2 percent of the total population (Japan, the country with the highest, is at just 4 percent).

Could this culmination of longer lives and deaths be making us think more about our personal legacies? Could it be driving our desire to achieve immortality in the most likely way we can—in the virtual world?

ANDREW LOUIS, A TORONTO computer scientist, has accumulated a lot of data. As a Millennial and tech entrepreneur, you’d expect his digital footprint to be large but it’s Louis’ personal archiving project, “Building a Memex,” that takes it to the next level.

For more than 15 years, Louis has programmed the devices in his life to track, record and store his digital footprint, resulting in a massive database that includes everything from what he’s typed and tweeted to the websites he’s browsed and what he’s eaten. He’s created a digital time capsule that can be searched, curated and, potentially, gifted to his children some day. In theory, someone could recreate a day in his life—or even recreate him.

“Pretty much every email or chat message I’ve ever sent is in there,” he says, joking that most of it “isn’t worth ever reading again.”

Last year, Louis decided to put his database to the test. He took the extensive MSN chat logs he’d saved as a teenager and resurrected his teenage self into a chatbot, using Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), a class of AI that creates vocabulary and speech recognition patterns. RNNs process all words in a text database, then develop a sequence or speech pattern based on those words.

This is no easy process. Chatbots require training to work and can require months of tweaking and training to create ever more complex and original sentences. The more times they run through a database of conversations, the more words can be stored for future retrieval. It’s also not a flawless process. As Louis points out, “All your typos and autocorrects will come back to haunt you.”

After 10 training sessions, a conversational structure emerged but it was only after 100 training sessions that his teenage replica started to sound more human and was able to understand and ask basic questions. Louis demonstrated the chatbot during a conference in New York City last year.

“Hello, are you there?” types the real Louis.

“Ya,” replies his teenage replica.

“Do you know how to use words?” asks the real Louis.

“Ya.”

After more training sessions, the common “ya” responses became a series of “lol” answers, even when inappropriate. Louis explains that without extensive training, bots choose the safest and easiest routes.

“There’s no general, structured knowledge that a bot can rely on,” he added. “Stuff like short-term memory is really difficult so if I say ‘I’m feeling sad’ and then continue on with the conversation, there’s no way for the bot to remember and work it into a future chat.”

Louis had high hopes going into the experiment but came away feeling decades away from realistic, human-like interaction with bots.

“Even if we can get a chatbot that has really good conversations, I don’t think there’s enough history yet that a single person has typed into a computer to really make a replica of a person that sounds like them and has all the general knowledge,” he says. “My dataset would be a best-case scenario and it’s minuscule compared to the amount of data you would probably need to do this properly.”

He also points out that who we are and how we speak isn’t always best captured in our correspondence.

“If a bot is just being trained on things I’ve said, there’s a whole set of experiences that have never made their way into text messages,” he explains. “At some point, you’re going to be really disappointed or frustrated by something the bot doesn’t remember.”

SCI-FI MOVIES AND LITERATURE have long inspired real-life tech innovation. A 2013 episode of the Netflix series Black Mirror, titled “Be Right Back,” is often referenced in articles and debates about digital immortality. When character Martha loses her partner Ash in an accident, her friend signs her up for a service to turn his digital life into a bot. She quickly becomes dependent on virtual Ash, alienating herself from the real people in her life. But as she trains the bot version and upgrades her account to phone conversations with his voice, then a life-sized robot replica of him that lives alongside her, things become too real—and unrealistic. The more he fails to remember important details about their life or react in the exact way Ash would have, the more he disappoints her.

“You’re just a few ripples of you. There’s no history to you,” she tells the bot. “You’re just a performance of stuff that he performed without thinking, and it’s not enough.”

Several start-ups are experimenting with memorial bots. One of the more well-known companies, Eternime, touts itself as “an artificial intelligence platform that collects your thoughts, stories and memories and stores them forever into an intelligent digital avatar that looks and talks like you.” It’s still in private beta but the company says more than 40,000 users have signed up for access when it’s available. The current version tracks daily personal habits, social media interactions and even physical movements to create an automated biography and generate an AI avatar.

But with bots still far from feeling emotions, and replicating personalities, are we limited to building griefbots that are more reminiscent of bodies without souls?

For Vlahos, the Dadbot fulfilled his needs. He hadn’t hoped for a virtual copy of his dad, but rather a storytelling device to help serve up his voice and stories. But Vlahos had a lifetime of knowledge about his dad to draw from. Companies are only as good as the data their users contribute.

“Imagine being a company, and they have never met the person and they are trying to create something that captures the essence—that’s hard to do,” Vlahos says. “Despite what you might see in the movies, there’s no just ‘oh, we’ll dump all the emails and text messages into a computer program and the computer magically recreates the persona—that tech is not actually here yet. And even if it were, it would be a very distorted and incomplete replica of a person. Think of what you put in text messages—there’s a lot of ‘I’ll be home at six, can you pick up some milk?’”

Toronto grief counsellor Lysa Toye says it is important to keep in mind people present different facets of themselves in online environments, and some of them aren’t necessarily meant to be public.

“Depending on where information is culled from, it can be really problematic,” she says. “We have different identities that we share with different people in our lives, strategically sometimes. There are reasons why my romantic or sexual relationship is a different kind of relationship then the relationship I have with my kids, which is different from the ones I have with my friends or my parents. I don’t know how you navigate those different kinds of identities and self-states in one glommed-together version of a person.”

Dr. Hossein Rahnama envisions a future where we are not trying to replicate entire beings, but rather memorializing and “borrowing” parts of people’s identities—specifically, their knowledge. Rahnama is a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto and CEO of Flybits, a company that uses AI to create micro-personalized experiences.

His Augmented Eternity project is making waves in the digital identity space. He has spent the past few years researching what he calls “swappable identities” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Rahnama and his team of computer scientists are working on ways to use digital tools to democratize and socialize philanthropy.

Rahnama thinks the future of digital immortality is in allowing people to preserve and gift specific parts of their identities, like an entire body of professional knowledge, in the form of a digital avatar—or some other digital representation—that can be activated and accessed by communities. Similar to how chatbots create vocabulary and learn to interact by drawing on massive databases of previous text conversations, Augmented Eternity could mine someone’s body of knowledge and then create patterns and predict what advice they would give. Instead of paying a human big bucks for their expertise, someone could activate their digital avatar for free or a low cost. This could help people in sectors where knowledge is pattern-based, like medicine or law, ensure their professional legacies outlive them.

“When we started this project about three years ago, the first use cases we were hearing from our focus groups were very much around ‘I want to stay in touch with my loved ones, I want to leverage their expertise and I want to remember them,’” he says. “As we continued, one thing we noticed was there’s a philanthropist in every single individual. Everyone wants to leave a legacy behind, but based on the physical world and what we have seen so far, philanthropy is very limited for certain groups of people, based on their wealth or their ability.”

Rahnama believes society is tracking toward a more decentralized data economy, where our digital lives are not all stored by Google or Facebook, but housed in decentralized systems like the blockchain, allowing people to maintain more control over their digital footprints and decide how it’s used—or what it becomes—in life and the afterlife.

“[Millennials] are generating gigabytes of data on a very regular basis,” he says. “We said, what if we can allow them to own that data and turn that into an expertise? Let’s say after about 50 or 60 years worth of developing insights and gathering knowledge, they can now pass their expertise to a loved one or family member, and be able to kind of make their digital identity more sentient.”

But if we’re closer to being able to borrow someone’s identity and could turn their correspondence into a service or product, it raises the question: Can your identity or brainpower not just be borrowed, but stolen if in the wrong hands? Who owns your digital footprint when you die?

“That question is a very new question, even for the legal system. If you look at the terms and conditions that you find with Facebook, it’s very scary. They basically own all of your data, like whatever footprint you leave there is owned by them,” Rahnama says.

Ann Cavoukian is one of the world’s leading privacy experts and the former Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. Cavoukian says she isn’t aware of any concrete ethical or legal guidelines around who can own and use your data after you die, and she has “been in this area a long time.”

“There’s a hope that the family members, etc. will honour the wishes of the individual, assuming that they had any wishes declared to their family relating to their personal information, but it’s really soft.”

And, she adds, “How do you ensure that the control you want or your expectations are met?”

For now, it seems the virtual afterlife remains as mysterious as the physical one.

In Canada, we generally don’t like to talk about death. Even our medical profession is reluctant. And rightly so: Doctors are committed to preserving life, and we wouldn’t want it otherwise. But death is a part of life, and assistance in dying is increasingly being recognized as a medical option for terminally ill patients.

It was only a few years ago—in February 2015—that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled it would no longer be a criminal offence in Canada for physicians to assist a person with ending their life, in certain circumstances. On June 17, 2016, the federal government followed up by passing legislation that details the circumstances in which someone may be deemed eligible.

Each province is responding differently. In Manitoba, specialized professionals, including a doctor, a social worker and a nurse, provide this service under the Winnipeg Health Authority. This centralized team, known as Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), provides a referral source for medical practitioners who recognize assistance in dying is a medical service beyond the scope of their present practice or who won’t participate for reasons of conscience. My wife, Jean, was one of the first 100 patients in Manitoba to use the services of MAID to die with dignity.

In February of 2018, I had taken Jean to the emergency department of our local hospital in a wheelchair, as she was having trouble breathing and too weak to use her walker. The triage nurse took Jean’s vital signs, admitted her right away to a private room and hooked her up to oxygen. “The doctor will be here shortly,” she said. Jean and I held hands when she left. A young doctor appeared almost immediately. He smiled and introduced himself as he quickly examined Jean. “I want to consult with one of my colleagues,” he said. He returned with another doctor, who also examined Jean. The two physicians looked at one another knowingly. Then the first doctor began:

“You are in the process of dying. There are four options: You can keep on going from doctor’s office to doctor’s office and from hospital to hospital. But obviously, that’s not working. You can come into Comfort Care here—and we are arranging that now. Alternatively, you might be able to go home into Palliative Care, once we get your pain and heart medications balanced. It will take some trial and error with close supervision and observation on our part, both here in the hospital and at home, however. A fourth option is Medical Assistance in Dying.”

Now it was our turn to look at one another knowingly. Jean and I had talked about this eventuality for some months. We just couldn’t understand why none of the medical people we’d seen weren’t as open about it as we were. They were always offering hope.

Jean smiled and looked at the two doctors: “Don and I can relate to what you’re saying. We’re in our 80s and we know that we’re on the back nine of life. I’m close enough to the 18th hole that I can see the clubhouse. We’re content with that. So what you call Comfort Care makes sense. But I want to know more about Medical Assistance in Dying also.”

We’d known Jean’s medical prognosis was critical for almost 25 years, when a cardiologist had discovered Jean’s heart murmur was not caused by a childhood illness, but by a hole in her heart from birth. He offered that he could add another five years to her life by open heart surgery, but she felt she knew her own body. The operation to repair her heart, back then, would have been risky and, besides, her heart was managing to function, even though it was slightly enlarged from overwork. Instead Jean opted to see a heart specialist, who prescribed medications to support her heart in its day-to-day work. He agreed to monitor her progress on an ongoing basis. Jean was proud that she had already enjoyed life for an additional 25 years, rather than just the five predicted by the surgeon. But now the past was catching up with us. Her heart was failing.

To make things more complicated, Jean had developed hip problems and was in line for a hip replacement, then ultimately disqualified by the anesthesiologist. Over the years, her heart had become increasingly enlarged. “While the surgeon is doing his work, it’s my job to keep you alive on the table,” the anesthesiologist had said. “From your records, I can almost guarantee that you’ll have a stroke. I’m recommending that you try pain management instead.”

To manage Jean’s pain, we’d gone from one specialist’s office to another. My wife even tried medical marijuana. Nothing had a lasting effect, and her heart was getting weaker.

Now we had to deal with the inevitable. The second doctor left the room, while the first doctor remained with us to explain the options. He regarded what he was offering as a continuum service, depending on how far along Jean was in the process of dying and how well she responded to medical interventions along the way.

“For now, Comfort Care will give doctors the opportunity of monitoring Jean’s medications and the nurses the chance to build her up. She will also be referred to physiotherapy to get her walking again,” said the young doctor, who arranged to have Jean admitted into a private room in Comfort Care. We did not think that she would be coming home. This doctor also said he’d make a referral to the MAID team.

Our feelings were, of course, mixed, but Jean took advantage of her private room to invite family and friends and inform them. The room was filled with flowers, and I was able to be there from morning to night without the inconvenience of hospital hours.

Three of our granddaughters were already in Winnipeg, but two of our grandchildren flew in, one from British Columbia, with our youngest great granddaughter, and the other, from Houston, Texas. When our grandchildren were all assembled, Jean discussed the situation openly and distributed her jewellery to each of them, explaining the significance of her choice for each piece.

In Comfort Care, the doctors and nurses carefully administered Jean’s medication for her heart and for her pain, expertly balancing the two. And while in hospital, we received counselling as well and were referred to a volunteer from “Dignity Therapy.” The volunteer interviewed Jean about her life, and afterward we received a transcript of the interview. Jean was proud of it and distributed copies to family and friends. A local doctor had discovered that terminally ill patients had benefited from this process. As it happened, Jean rallied. She became strong enough to walk with her walker again and was overjoyed when the nurses said she could be released from the hospital into Palliative Care at home.

Palliative Care no longer has to happen in a hospital setting. Instead, professional assistance, medical equipment and training for the husband or wife of the patient can be provided at home. In our situation, a nurse visited two or three times a week to monitor Jean’s medications, and we had round-the-clock access to medical advice by phone. Jean would be transported back to hospital and admitted back into Comfort Care, in case of an emergency.

The services of the Palliative Care staff were focused on the whole person, tending to physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs. Although on oxygen 24 hours a day and highly medicated, Jean was enthusiastic. She used her nine months of Palliative Care to write her own obituary, plan her celebration of life and visit daily with friends and family. Most important, Jean and I had time to reflect on our lives together and prepare ourselves. Jean would say: “We can’t be greedy. Don. We’ve had a wonderful life together. Our two boys are successful. We have five beautiful granddaughters and four wonderful great grandchildren. What more can we ask?”

Medical Assistance in Dying can be seen as the next step in the continuum of services for patients who are terminally ill. But it is very new—and very revolutionary. And because it’s so new, it’s not always known to doctors and patients, nor accepted. Fortunately, the young doctor had already referred us to the MAID team back at the time of Jean’s admission to Comfort Care.

We had three interviews with the MAID team, all within the first week of that hospital stay. Jean’s first interview was more or less an explanation of how the service would be made available to us, if Jean qualified. We asked that our two sons, Ramon and Anthony, be present for the second interview.

Not surprisingly, our sons came prepared to argue in favour of their mother living longer. But as it played out, the MAID team only confirmed what our sons had already suspected: Their mother was terminally ill and, even with her medication, in excruciating pain. The third interview happened only a few days later. Again, by our request, our sons were present when we learned Jean qualified for assisted dying. It was now up to her to choose where and when.

Jean spent three weeks in the hospital and nine months at home, before the time came to decide. All along, we had agreed Jean would take the lead, with my full support.

On December 18, 2017, two doctors visited at the request of the Palliative Care nurse. They said they could adjust Jean’s pain medication. They also said Jean’s heart was failing rapidly.

The next day, we talked at breakfast and Jean phoned the coordinator of the MAID team to meet with our sons and us the following day. We were all familiar with one another by now, and the doctor heading up the MAID team hugged Jean, when we got there, and said: “We were surprised and pleased, of course, that we hadn’t heard from you sooner.” Jean smiled and responded: “It’s time.”

We settled quickly on December 23, 2017, at 10 a.m., as the date and time when the procedure would be administered. Jean and I wanted it to happen in our apartment, which meant we didn’t have to book a special hospital room. Jean gave our sons a list of 15 people she wanted invited. A few days earlier, she had had a friend bring a selection of new clothing for the occasion. She chose a red top with long sleeves, black slacks, and red earrings to match the top.

On December 23, 2017, Jean sat in her favourite chair in our apartment. The 15 invited family members and friends were present, along with the MAID team. She urged everyone to reflect on the happy time we had all had together and to be grateful. She assured them she was at peace within herself and felt fulfilled. There were tears of course, but also much laughter and happiness, just as Jean had wanted. Jean called each person forward, to speak with them individually. I sat beside her and held her left hand. Our sons sat on the other side of her and held her right hand. The doctor who was to administer the drugs sat on a small stool behind Jean. Jean had asked our granddaughter, Jessica, to sing her favorite song, “Smile”—the Steven Tyler rendition. Jessica sang it a capella.

Finally, it was my turn for a few private moments with Jean. We had already spent the past few days preparing one another, but what happened in Jean’s final moments was completely spontaneous. We leaned toward each other to touch foreheads. Jean began the mantra we had written for ourselves some years earlier. It had carried us for the past few years, and we had repeated it together nightly:

“Look for beauty in all things,” Jean said.

“Expect love at all times,” I replied.

“Give from the heart,” she continued.

“And be grateful for life itself.” I said.

“And smile,” we said together.

Then we smiled at one another, even though by that point it was very hard. The doctor from MAID asked Jean again—by way of a legal requirement, as much as a part of the process—whether she still wanted the assistance in dying. Jean said “yes,” quietly but firmly. Then we said our last words. The MAID doctor waited and then introduced the drugs into the IV, hidden by the long sleeves of Jean’s top—a sedative, an anesthetic and a muscle relaxant. Jean fell asleep, then into a coma and then finally, her heart stopped.

It’s been a little more than a year since my wife chose to surround herself with family and loving friends at home and be medically assisted in the process of her dying, and less than a year since our family spoke of Jean with affection to the large crowd at her Celebration of Life at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg. Afterwards, there was the jolting shock of losing a loved one, followed by a period of calm. Then, we began talking among ourselves as a family.

This experience opened up the whole discussion around dying with dignity for us. Through Jean’s example, we realized it was alright to talk about death, because it is an inevitable part of life. We saw how important it was to understand end-of-life care options. And we saw how a person who has purpose and is intentional about life can be the same way in death. Jean chose dignity, not victimhood at the fate of a medical process that is often very linear and often misunderstood. In the timing and the details, she was guided by her own sense of peacefulness.

My eldest son, Ramon, has since said a better way to describe what the MAID team provided was a “liberation.” Those of us who accompanied Jean in her last months and on her last day agree that it’s much more fitting than the very clinical sounding Medical Assistance in Dying.

Over the past year, we all have been questioned by friends and acquaintances, even by medical professionals. How did we find out about MAID? How did we learn Jean qualified? How did we support her? How did we feel afterwards? Almost always, there is an awkwardness. There is a lack of experiential knowledge out of there, of course, and a constant search for the right words to communicate freely. That’s why, even though it’s still so raw after one year, I write to share our experiences more broadly.

As Canadians, we don’t like to talk about death. Yet Canada is one of the first countries to offer medical assistance in dying to patients who are terminally ill and suffering. People need to talk to understand it’s a new way of valuing life. The conversation is only just beginning.