‘A Good Death’ by Jason Warick

This profile from CBC News follows Jeanette Lodoen, an artist from Saskatoon before, during, and after her death by medical assistance in dying (MAID) at the age of 87. The profile begins on the night before Jeanette’s death as her family gathers to decorate the lid of her coffin with drawings, handprints, and poetry, and to say goodbye. The profile then recounts when writer Jason Warick and videographer Don Somers met Jeanette, two and a half weeks before her death. Jeanette recounts why she chose MAID and describes telling her daughter Phyllis that she had had enough of the pain from her deteriorating heart, lungs, and kidneys and from osteoarthritis. Jeanette tearfully describes her relief when she decided to have an assisted death and when Phyllis supported her in that decision. The profile moves through Jeanette’s final days with her family. As Warick and Somers document these moments, Jeanette tells them about her life, about her childhood growing up in a Doukhobor family, about her marriage at 18, about raising her five children, and about becoming an artist with the encouragement of her adult children. The day of her death, Warick and Somers document the living room at Phyllis and her husband Terry’s house where Jeanette will die surrounded by flowers, her paintings, and the mementos and photographs that she would like to be placed in her coffin. They document Dr. Rob Weiler’s preparations as he speaks with Jeanette alone to complete the final consent to MAID, he inserts an empty intravenous line, and he fills syringes with a sedative, an anaesthetic, a coma-inducing agent, and a neuromuscular blocker. The reporters witness her final goodbyes and her death surrounded by her family. They describe how Dr. Weiler declares Jeanette dead, how her family place her body in the coffin they built for her, and how funeral home workers, who had been scheduled and were waiting outside, come to take the coffin away. The profile closes in the spring, as Jeanette’s family gathers to spread her ashes near her family’s homestead.

As the title suggests, the profile shows that death by MAID can be ‘a good death’. Warick was drawn to the subject in light of the increasing number of Canadians choosing MAID, especially in the province of Saskatchewan, and of the planned expansion of the law to grant access to MAID to applicants whose sole underlying condition is mental illness. Jeanette proved to be an ideal candidate for the profile given her own artistic work drawing on aging and femininity. In the exhibit notes for her 1995 solo exhibit Women & Aging, Jeanette wrote that, ‘From the moment of birth to the moment of death, aging is inescapable… In our society, older women are devalued through gender bias, ageism and consumerism. They are no longer youthful, so they are no longer useful… This work is intended to be a celebration of these women.’ Warick canvases how MAID was legalized in Canada, quoting Dr. Weiler who says, ‘[MAID] didn’t start with us physicians. It was other women, three women who changed things,’ referring to Sue Rodriguez, Kay Carter, and Gloria Taylor. Warick includes Dr. Weiler’s observation that there are often disagreements about MAID within families and uses Jeanette’s son-in-law Terry as an example. While Terry was not initially in favour of MAID, he was supportive of Jeanette, building her coffin by hand and allowing her to die at his house. In the final paragraphs of the profile, Warick includes a quote from Terry in which he says, ‘Seeing the relief Jeanette had with the end in sight, and participating in it, made me a bit of a convert.’ The profile is a glowing portrait of MAID.