In 2013, our mother was diagnosed with dementia; she was 77. A year later, my father died and at that point my mother’s cognitive decline had advanced due to many aggravating factors. Due to the unfortunately poor care that my father was able to provide, her health and cognitive state had degraded to the point at which she was unable to walk unaided, dress herself, feed herself, or attend to her personal grooming or toilet. She could not even find her way out of her own home of thirty years; she had not stepped outside for six months. She was near death due to malnutrition and alcohol induced dementia. 
 
We, her children, with the assistance of nurses and doctors at various hospitals, were able to improve her health until she was able to walk and communicate again. Healthier than she had been in years, sober and well nourished, her dementia was not as severe but still rendered her unable to remain living alone in her own home without support. Her mental state made it impossible for her to live without round-the-clock monitoring and care. 
 
And so, the inevitable script was played out. She had to move out of her house, which had to be sold to pay for her care. She moved from facility to facility as beds became available, and as her care needs increased, decreased, and increased again. She had lost her husband of 50 years, her gorgeous rural home in Alberta’s Kananaskis country, her sweet dog (taken in by her children), her cherished garden, her collection of 5,000 books, her autonomy and her freedom. She was physically healthy, mentally fragile, and miserable. She told the same story to her children, family and friends, over and over: “I want to end my life”. She craved the ability to control her destiny. To her, the life she’d known and loved was over. 
 
Of course, MAID did not exist then and even if it had, she would not have qualified thanks to her dementia diagnosis. She was “psychiatrically certified” and her fate was sealed. 
 
She hated the loss of her ability to come and go as she pleased. She wanted to go for a walk with her dog, to go out to restaurants with friends, to travel, to cook meals, to go out and enjoy live theatre and music, and raise a garden. She didn’t want to live the life that was left to her. Largely trapped in locked dementia-care facilities, she repeated to us constantly that she wanted to end her life. And yet we were powerless to help her. When MAID was introduced, we watched mutely from the sidelines, knowing our mother would have jumped at the chance to explore that outcome. 
 
She remained imprisoned in this existence for more than a decade, as Alzheimer’s advanced and ravaged her body. She was eventually wheelchair bound, unable to use her hands, unable to understand conversation or communicate verbally. Hand fed by her children and by strangers, she was unable to read, watch television, chat with a friend or even listen to an audio book. She was an inmate in her own body.
We held her hand as she stared off into space. We read to her, played music, told her stories of her friends and family, and showed her pictures of the life she used to lead. She could barely focus on the images, and it wasn’t clear if she even knew what she was seeing. Working with the facilities, we ensured she was warm, nourished, clean, medicated and comfortable. 
 
And then the inevitable call came: After being on a mostly pureed diet for more than a year, she was finally unable to swallow. The facility’s doctor had instructed that she was to be taken off food and water. With her helpless children moistening her lips and squeezing her hand, she contorted with the pain that resulted from her body shutting down. Reduced from an imposing 5’11” tall, she was now a tiny and emaciated creature, curled in a hospital bed. Despite her being in the care of a government funded physician in a licensed facility, and despite our repeated calls for compassion – more drugs, more comfort – she spent her last 60 hours in total agony, without sleep, terrified and gasping for air. 
 
 
She never wanted any of this. She had wanted to die ten years previously and all the way through the following decade. During her ordeal, she wanted to be rid of this world. But she had no power over this decision. She wanted her life to end peacefully, surrounded by loved ones. All had been taken cruelly from her. This last piece of autonomy over her own life, her own body, was denied her to the end. 
 
Hers is – sadly as we know – not a unique story. Over the ten years, our mother was confined to eight different facilities in two different provinces. We saw thousands and thousands of aged Canadians trapped and unhappy in these often-grim wards. Cared for by professionals yet unable to find joy or passion for life. 
 
It’s not what she wanted for herself, and it’s certainly not what we wanted for her. 

She died on November 9, 2024, a few weeks after her 88th birthday. More than ten percent of her life had been lived “in captivity”, against her own wishes. 
 
There’s little we can do now, except support the work that organizations like Dying With Dignity Canada undertake to improve the outcome for all Canadians and ensure autonomy over the disposal of that one possession that is truly our own: life. 
 
As a sad and sobering footnote, we kept careful account of Mum’s finances, her income, expenses and taxes. Our math conservatively shows us that between her pension, her old age security, and the additional Canadian-government funding that goes into each bed in a care home, Canadians spent approximately $1.2 Million keeping her alive against her will from 2013 to 2024. Our mother’s life cannot be reduced to dollars and cents, but we know that her own frugal nature and lifelong disgust for wasteful ways would have bristled at this pointless expense.