The Last Goodnights: Assisting My Parents with Their Suicides Book

'Do not go gentle into that good night': A Superb Book on Assisted Suicide

John West is a fine and a very brave writer: his polished writing style suggests he could well succeed in literature and give up his career as an attorney. His willingness to take on the sharing of his personal experiences with assisting in the final hours of his parents' lives demonstrates not only courage in making this public, but also offers an excellent argument for changing our laws to allow assisted deaths. The fact that West is able to take the reader through not only the decision making and the actual preparation and implementation of two deaths, but also the emotional roller coaster ride he endured in the process is what makes this book more a memoir, a novel that happens to be true, than an chest-pounding diatribe as this subject matter usually produces in the hands of other writers.

The only son of two professional, highly regarded people, John West is approached first by his father, a prominent physician from UCLA who is diagnosed with severe metastatic carcinoma and elects (after a trial of radiation and chemotherapy) to spare himself and his family from the rigors of a painful exit: he asks his son to assist him in ending his life before it incapacitates himself and those around him. West agrees and we are taken through the mental and physical preparation for the final goodnight of his father. Every aspect of the deed is related with dignity and with eloquent prose.

West must then fulfill the same promise to his equally famous and revered clinical psychologist mother from the Veteran's Hospital in Westwood. His mother has been failing due to Alzheimer's Disease as well as debilitating osteoporosis and kyphosis. She and her husband had always decided that they would elect the time and manner of their end, and after West has successfully fulfilled his promise to his father, his mother asks for the same modus exodus nine months later.

This extraordinarily well written book is important on many levels and will satisfy those who ponder the methods of assisted suicide as they perhaps have similar living experiences as the author: it will also offer keenly felt information for encouraging the passage of laws (already present in Oregon and Washington) to permit assisted suicides. West is bright, compassionate, and wholly human in his manner of writing. The reader comes away admiring his courage in offering the complete love his parents' request, feeling the anguish of his decision, and supportive of the stance he has taken in sharing this information with the public. Dylan Thomas' poem 'Do not go gentle into that good night' may seem the antithesis of this book's message, but if the 'rage against the dying of the light' is a standard bearer for calling for reform of our current cruel laws about suffering and death, then it is a pertinent resource for us all.

Grady Harp