Australian Women's Book Review Volume 14.1 - School of English ...

JM
Let me turn now in the minutes we have left to the toughest of issues in the book, the issue of death,
and the means of death when someone is unravelling slowly and suffering. The character in the book
goes to a nursing home, did your husband go to a nursing home?
KJ
He did go to a nursing home, and I have to say that the day I put him in a nursing home was the worst
day of my life because he had enough of a mind left to know what I was doing. It was truly ... truly,
truly awful. And he said he never wanted to go into a nursing home, he never ... I think there's a
sentence in the book where he says: `I never want to get like that.' And he did get `like that' and he had
said that he wanted the Doctor and me to take care of it when the time came, when it was time for him
to die and of course, I can't do that. So, all those issues did come up in the end, because after about two
years in the nursing home I became aware that they were going to keep him alive regardless, and there
is one episode in the book that is actually true, every detail in it is true, and that's when Bailey starts to
haemorrhage and he is taken to hospital and Cath wants him to die, and they start transfusing him
regardless of what she says. And that happened, and so after that I really had to think about what I was
going to do. Will I let this go on? In real life he died of a massive stroke. But I became very interested
in that issue and of people who have to make those kinds of decisions.
JM
And so, euthanasia is addressed in the book. (I hate it when you ruin a book by saying what happens.)
Will that be tough in the United States, given the deep faith of that community?
KJ
It will be tough, yes, America is a very churchy country, outside of New York it is very churchy and we
have an Attorney General, Mr. Ashcroft, who is actually making it his personal mission to go after
doctors who help with dignity in death.
JM
You mention the faith of America, but I'm not sure there's faith for you. Let me read a fragment from
the book:
I can't abide the sentimental scaffolding that people erect around their lives,
but when I am beset, I allow myself to talk to him, imagine what he might
have said in response. He could always make me laugh at stupidity and
meanness. .... Sometimes, in the spirit of Frank O'Hara, I tell him I do not
totally regret life. All the same, he asks too much of me, my darling husband.
Is that a bit of Kate speaking?
KJ
Yes, that is me speaking.
JM
So, no sentimental scaffolding, no faith at all?
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