Stephen Perlstein

“Freedom has been defined as the opportunity for self-discipline.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

“The good thing about everything being so fucked up is that no matter where you look, there is great work to be done.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

“People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”
― Samuel Johnson

“He told her he was tired and didn't want any mechanical intervention. "No breathing tubes! No shocks, and no pushing on my chest. Just let me go." He was willing to try treatments that would make him feel better (comfort care), Rebecca says, such as wound care and pain management, as well as the treatments he was already getting.
But, he said, "If they are giving it to me just to give it to me, then forget about it."
At that point, Rebecca turned to her grandmother, who would be the ultimate decision maker should her grandfather become unable to make his own choices. "Well, darling," she said, "of course I would tell the doctors to do everything possible to keep my husband alive." Rebecca was stunned. She'd just had a lovely, candid, and specific discussion with her grandfather about his wishes. Hadn't her grandmother heard what he'd said?
She then asked her grandmother to tell her what she had heard her grandfather say, and her grandmother repeated his wishes but said she loved her husband too much to let him go. "If he is with me just one more day, it would be worth it to me," she told her granddaughter. It would be worth it to her even if he were
"hooked up to machines and not able to talk to me."
Rebecca then turned back to her grandfather and asked, "Did you just hear what Grandma said?" He said he did. She asked how he felt about her going against his wishes and requesting a feeding tube, ventilator, shocks, and other treatments he had said he did not want. "Is that okay with you?" she asked in disbelief.
Her grandfather said it was. "I am ready to go, but if it helps your grandmother to feel that she did everything possible for me, even if it is because she doesn't want me to go, that is okay. She is the one who has to go on living with her decision. If this is what she wants, then this is what I want because I love her."
Rebecca realized in that moment that her grandfather's wishes were being honored; above all else, he wanted a death that his wife could live with.”
― BJ Miller