TRIGGER WARNING: This article involves a story of losing loved ones. If you are actively recovering from grief, please read carefully and turn around if it’s not feeling good.

It was Friday, the 22nd of February 2013. It was a pretty normal day. I got back from school, did my homework, and then went to my grandmother’s house, which was my weekend tradition. She got the door for me and then I made her tea. An hour after the tea, she asked me for meds and kept repeating that sentence. I wasn’t sure what was happening so I called my mother. She eventually stopped responding to us or recognizing me. She was in a semi-conscious state. My uncle came over and drove her to the hospital.

By Sunday morning, the doctors mostly knew that she wasn’t gonna make it. Her lung infection had spread to different parts of the body including her kidneys which meant there was too much urea in her blood for the brain to handle. She also had very unstable blood pressure. My parents got a call around 7 pm and they left. I was not told anything. She passed away at 8:54 pm. That time is eternally etched in my memory. I was brought to her home at 1 am. I slowly walked from the side, shaking more and more as I could see more of her body. She was my closest friend, the person who understood me, the one person who I could always talk to, and the one person who could make me laugh with her stories any time of the day. But I didn’t get to say goodbye or thank her for everything she did for me.

She was a tough woman who managed to get a Bachelor’s of Sanskrit in 1964 in India. She pushed hard and did multiple jobs. Her motto was ‘keep moving’. She raised me, she taught me to respect and care for everyone around me, and she taught me to never give up and keep clinching my dreams (I don’t fully believe in all of them given the stress and anxiety that they can induce in a person). But I also knew she was in a lot of pain, physically and emotionally. While they pushed and pushed to keep her here, they forgot that the story was about her and not them. More importantly, they kept pushing until the moment she was gone and we didn’t get to say goodbye, I didn’t get to say goodbye. The same adults then asked me, given that I was the closest person to her, to be the one that would cremate her and do all the rituals. I went through all of it, without a single tear. I did it for her even though I didn’t get to say goodbye.

I had a flashback of this story when I read an article in AP about Vermont expanding access to Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) to non-residents. There are countless other stories of people losing their loved ones, pushing so hard to keep them there until the final moment. We rely on the smallest of hope but we forget to see the pain that we put our loved ones through just because we thought there was hope. Is our hope worth their pain? Maybe we should think about it. There’s a lot of criticism of PAS mostly by conservatives and pro-life activists. But I don’t understand what is pro-life about putting your loved ones through so much pain. Activists have done a great job in expanding access to PAS, mostly in democratic states. They have many different talking points about health costs and time, especially for people who are terminally ill. But I think we all forget one thing — We usually never get to say goodbye.

PAS gives us a chance to thank them for all the work they did for us. A chance to tell them that they can rest in peace and we’ll be okay. A chance to console and say your final thoughts while the person is still there with you. A chance to give them one final hug, one final kiss, or any way you express love. A chance to avoid those emergency calls. A chance to let your loved ones leave in peace rather than in agony. A chance for you to shake their hand while their muscles and bones are still alive. A chance for you to look in their eyes and feel the love, one last time. A chance to cry together while they’re still here rather than crying alone (the tears are gonna be there, one way or not).

There is so much trauma saved in people around the world, resulting from the grief of the death of a loved one. If only, one could process it properly while the person was still here, say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done, and fulfill their last wishes so that there is no guilt left to process. We all wonder if we can go back and ask them certain questions, but we didn’t because we didn’t want to lose hope. But if we ask them our questions and we get a chance to resolve our differences before they leave. We’ll get to say ‘all is forgiven’ with our loved-one before they leave so that we don’t carry that burden around. You can ask for their forgiveness while they’re still here. It’d feel like they’re going on a long vacation, a never-ending one.

My grandmother died in agony, not peace. I don’t feel guilty about it because I had no control but I do wish I did. I wish we had access to PAS and I wish the adults took the right decision. I don’t blame them either because they didn’t know any better. The education of emotional intelligence is non-existent in almost all societies. We aren’t taught how to deal with these situations, we just roll with it. We can keep denying reality and hanging on to a hope that doesn’t exist, or we can acknowledge the fact that people will leave eventually. When people do leave, they should be able to leave at their timeline and their choice.

This brings us into more controversial territory — A chance for people without terminal illnesses to leave if they really want to (If you didn’t like that sentence, turn around. Don’t send me petty emails or messages). The pain we hide in our bodies and our head isn’t always a terminal illness. But living with all that pain might actually be worse. I have met people who have nothing to look forward to. They were born on the streets and made some life, but have no one around them anymore. It’s a sad, lonely, and painful life for them until some illness catches hold of them. They leave eventually, but in agony, a lot of agony.

I am not saying every person with problems should get this right. I believe people should have access to psychiatrists, therapists, and the necessary medical care. But when all is said and done, we know that there are people with so much pain and so many problems in their lives that there’s no way to turn their lives around, whether it be their fault or not. We need to acknowledge that there’s no hope sometimes. And when hope dies completely, one should be allowed to leave without going through the pain every day knowing that there’s no hope. The limits on age and illness (terminal or not), should be set by experts and I am not one. But I do believe that we need to acknowledge the pain in our minds even if we’re still moving. If the person themself has hope, then it might just be worth pushing on. But if they or modern medicine loses hope, then it’s not worth it. We should let them leave in peace and have the chance to say goodbye.