Last May, I had to jump on a plane to reach Montréal in time to spend some precious final moments with my grandfather. It had become clear that he had entered what is generally called “end-of-life”. I was born and raised in Québec. Although I now live in Switzerland, I remain very close to my family – and I dread the looming prospect of having to take a plane back under such circumstances.
I was close to my grandfather, whom we all called Papou. He and my grandmother were our neighbours as I was growing up. They were a constant presence and source of support throughout my life. Generous and welcoming, my grandparents loved people. Their house – the kingdom of my childhood, that was built next to my uncle’s stables and overlooked the paddocks – was always filled with family and friends. My grandfather was a warm, colorful, strong-willed person. At 94, age had quite literally caught up with him. In a way, as time moves forward, there is something peaceful in this inevitable process. It is the end of a cycle. The end of his cycle. Everything is slowed down. He slept most of the day, and one could feel depth in the silence that filled his room. In the years that preceded his end-of-life, he seemed less and less in contact with reality, living in great part through his memories. We might say that he spent most of the last months of life meandering the paths of his childhood, with his mother Agnès and his brother Paul, of whom he spoke often. He sought less and less contact with others and spent his awaken time quiet in his room. Yes, it is as if he was withdrawing himself from the world. On the other hand, we know that he dreaded the end fiercely, like we dreaded him fading away.
I spent about a week at his side. Not for long moments at a time because it seemed to tire him. In fact, I later found out that in end-of-life periods people need solitude. They do need to feel our presence to some extent, perhaps our support, but their mind needs peace to allow for a sort of preparation: it is effortful to die.
That same week I also visited my old equine friend Bucky. He lives on a small farm north of Montréal, where the forest is mostly made of evergreen and birch trees. He lives with two mares and an old retired standardbred named Undersky. Bucky turned 29 years old on May 4th, 2024. I luckily visited him on the 6th, almost in time to congratulate him. In time also, I must say, to witness the passing of time. It is difficult to see one’s old friend age, and with it, deteriorate. Bucky came into my life as he was 4 years old, and I 10. Now, 25 years later, I properly dread the inevitable.
Bucky had lost weight over the winter. His tail bone was showing as well as his ribcage distinctly. His belly, at 29, is hanging low, and he has little of his characteristic muscles left. He has, otherwise said, an old body now. When horses age, especially when they enter a geriatric stage, caretakers have to be more vigilant. One must pay attention to subtle (and sometimes less subtle) changes in the body and the general mood and energy of the horse. At 29, Bucky now has bad teeth that grew into a slight inversed parrot mouth. He needs food supplements to help maintain his health. However, it is important to note that despite the obvious aging, his life can still be going well for him even if the physical changes are hard for us to accept or even witness.
Hence, between the time with my grandfather and that with Bucky, I was surrounded by age: by the mark of time, of lives changing, of lives approaching the end. Their world, together with part of my world, were slowly and irremediably taken away, like the grounds wash away as the tide flows back in.
Unlike my grandfather, Bucky has not yet entered the end-of-life period. He perhaps even has some good years ahead of him. Nevertheless, I cannot help but be sensitive to the similarities of both situations. And I cannot help but acknowledge the fact that two central figures of my life, my upbringing, my childhood, are well into the winters of their lives. One need to make sense out of this ; I need to make sense out of this.
I think one needs to make sense of their experience of old age. One must stay attuned to the pain it might cause them, perhaps even the distress. Does Bucky realize he has aged? That is difficult to answer. Horses live in the present, thus their distress will be caused by very real, invalidating situations – cold, for instance. Older horses will suffer from colder weather much faster because their metabolism is slower, they are thinner. Within the months before his death, I could often not say whether my grandfather was aware that he was slowly fading away. He spoke little, and often his words did not convey much information. Nevertheless, there were sharp moments of lucidity, dispersed amongst the rest, that seemed to reveal how very in touch with reality he remained. I have one striking memory of such a moment, it was about 4 months before he passed away. I had been sitting with him for about an hour, trying to compose between his refusal to eat and his muteness, taking for granted that he was miles away, when he suddenly cautiously looked at my boots and said: “Be careful, your laces are undone.” Was he with me all this time? Faced with these questions, one also has to make sense of one’s own experience of the situation. One is often shaken by this process, even thoroughly disoriented, as one wants to help, or at least one wants to assist, an unraveling process that is far beyond one’s control; sometimes even beyond one’s understanding.
This brings me a few years back, when two horses I was well acquainted with passed away. I had known O’Beid for five years, when, at age 33 he had to be euthanized. And I had known Iduna at this point for about 6 years when, at age 29, she faced the same faith. Being part of their lives into their old age, spending quality time with them, getting to know them, learning from them, introduced me to novel experiences, new understandings of equine lives. I am immensely grateful to them for that. Eventually, it opened a set of questions about end-of-life and euthanasia.
I became interested in the ethics of equine euthanasia specific to end-of-life contexts after Iduna and O’Beid passed away. I was an active member of their equine/human community, but I was not their main caretaker. Both their stories are complex and at the same time they are textbook examples of justified equine euthanasia. As I was forced to recognized, however, one does not learn through a textbook what makes euthanasia the right thing to do. One experiences it in the flesh. What I found significant is that the months that preceded O’Beid’s and Iduna’s departures showed us, through a series of small changes and events, that the situation was building up to it. What is “it”? “It” is the moment you are brought to acknowledge that their lives are no longer worth living : there is a shift, after which the prospect of keeping them alive becomes senseless.
Of course, there are several difficulties here. One is that of knowing whether horses have entered an end-of-life period – that means that they are past the point of recovery or improvement. The other difficulty is that of knowing at which point this period is no longer meaningful: the time when death becomes preferable. Thus comes the real meaning from euthanasia: from ancient Greek, the prefix eu means “good”, and thanatos means “death”, a good death. A death that comes as a profound relief.
When is death warranted? This question is the most difficult to be sure. It is a properly ethical question, even existential. However, it might be less strenuous to figure out an answer to that question if it is properly informed. The question does not limit itself to that of suffering. The question “Does this horse suffer?” is not yet informative to justify euthanasia. In addition, one needs to know whether this suffering causes a change such that this life is no longer worth living.
O’Beid and Iduna showed me the distinct meaning of this investigation. They both lost their lives following a significant loss of mobility. They entered end-of-life period on the day when they could no longer get back up on their own on soft ground (sand). At first, although one is surprised, one quickly helps the horse back up (often with the help of 2 or 3 more grown-up humans) and hopes that things will be ok.
Four grown-up humans were needed to lift O’Beid back up to his feet. This was the major change in his life that said: “Careful, something will never be the same.” At 33, one does not build back muscles, and thus, his caretakers had to start being vigilant, to be able to discern when this would become too costly for him. However, although the beginning of mobility loss marks a turn of things, it was not yet the moment when euthanasia would have been justified. Indeed, 48 hours before his departure, I went on a lovely walk through the woods with O’Beid. Just feeling the arrival of the Spring together, all joyful. But the degeneration, and thus weakening, of his hindquarters marks when the caretakers must become thoroughly attentive to the evolution of these changes. Remaining aware that there will come a day when these changes will have affected the horse’s quality of life so much so that it is no longer worth living. For O’Beid, it was due to a recurrent incapacity to get up on any ground. This change made his daily naps no longer quiet delights, but torment.
What makes a life worth living? And why do we suppose that it is justified to proceed to euthanasia in the case of equines when a life is no longer worth living?
Euthanasia is socially and ethically accepted for companion animals in ways that it is not accepted for human friends, companions or family members. Although, and this is my point here, both seem to be undergoing very similar end-of-life processes. This raises questions about the value of life, the justification to definitely terminate suffering, the actual reality of suffering and the possibility, for those in charge of care, of making sense of it all.
This is where the story twists. End-of-life is a more or less long period that precedes death, and that is marked by a number of physiological and psychological changes. Some markers are very clear, some lesser so. Loss of mobility is, for instance, a common marker, as well as a distinctly reduced appetite. Is it too harsh to say that some horses receive more compassion than humans do during this period in those cases when caretakers actively shorten the aged horses’ suffering through euthanasia? Is it always justified for humans to be expected to journey through end-of-life, even when it seems to be a cruel and dark path?
I do not want to address here the general debate about the ethics of human euthanasia, but I feel the need to emphasize what was for me very similar experiences due to very similar changes in the lives of those I loved. It is remarkably difficult to say what makes a life worth living, but at times, overcome by sorrow, at the sight of my grandfather losing himself, being not even a fraction of the man he was, I think I got a clear glimpse of what makes a life no longer worth living. The very same sorrow that overcame us when Iduna struggled helplessly to get up on her straw bed: there was still life in her eyes, but the meaning had gone.
Maude
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