I profoundly hope that Maine will become the seventh enlightened, leadership state to legally acknowledge the right of our residents — in the terminal or final stages of life — to choose to die with dignity, on their own terms.

I am passionate about this for several reasons.

In 1997, I almost died from a sudden series of medical events. It has been noted that, as of the spring of 1998, I was the only person in medical history to ever survive the conditions I had. In short, I had a miracle, there really is no other word for it.

An experience like that gives one a lot to think about and I am hard put to fully describe my gratitude for living…. “overtime,” if you will, in which to meet and fall in love with my wife, to see my children grow and flourish and to be able to continue to live here in Maine and contribute to the community and state in which I live.

I treasure life.

I also lived to see my mother and several dear friends age into the hell of aggressive dementia and cancers. Hell really doesn’t begin to describe the half of what they went through.  

My mother, who was English, survived the German bombing of London where she moved to serve in the RAF during World War II. She almost died in the Blitz. She subsequently survived the raising of her three sons (we were not choir boys), and quietly lived life passionately and with resolve. She was a ceaseless contributor to the world around her and, although it may sound strange, she profoundly loved humankind.

Yet when it became clear that the ravages of dementia would someday claim her, and knowing full well the agony that it would cause her and those she loved, she expressed over and over and over how she wished that, when the right time came,  she could chose to simply stop living…. a  last courageous, incredibly thoughtful and selfless gift to the many who knew and loved her.

I cannot count the hours and times she begged to be allowed to go to sleep and again be with my father. It was a brutal process although she was in the best possible medical hands.

It just wasn’t right. It was cruel and beyond terrible.

And this kind of prolonged torture happens to countless people all the time.  It’s not right.

Last June we had to put down our beloved dog Lucy. Lucy died with more comfort, grace, peace and dignity than my mother was allowed.

How can that possibly be right?

I beg you to vote for carefully and thoughtfully constructed laws that will allow Mainers to die as they so individually choose at the end of the long road, with dignity and with their core spirit intact.

That would be right.  That is a right.

Peter Ralston lives in Rockport