Yeah, I'm a really big hypocrite on this issue. Here's my present situation.
My mother is 94. She is bedridden, she doesn't know where she is or who she is, she is totally incontinent, she wears diapers and lies on a waterproof pad over her mattress, she is almost blind, almost completely deaf, and suffers with advanced arthritis. She wakes up frequently at night and has to have constant surveillance to keep her from trying to climb out of the rented hospital bed and falling in the process. We hire sitters to sit with her several nights a week so my sister can get some sleep. My sister, my wife, and my daughter spend the rest of the time caring for her 24 hours a day. My wife and I live 90 miles away from my sisters house and drive there every other week to take our turn, and my daughter drives 120 miles round trip on weekends when she isn't working at her job. The bills keep mounting up and my mother's savings keep going down.
I didn't describe that situation hoping to cause anyone to feel sympathy for me and my family. I described it because we would not allow her to be treated like an aging pet dog by having her euthanized if our own lives were at risk if we refused. God gave my mother life, and only God can deliberately take it away without committing a crime. I know that my mother would rather have died before she came to this point, but that was not God's will. I don't know what he has in mind for her, but it isn't up to me to decide when she leaves this earth.
Beginning approximately 11 years ago we went through a similar ordeal when my dad's Alzheimer's disease reached a critical final stage. The last 10 months of his life were spent completely bedridden and receiving nourishment through an abdominal feeding tube. He was also totally incontinent and had to be bathed in bed and cared for like a newborn baby 24 hours a day. I quit my job before I had planned to and moved 600 miles away from my wife to live with my mother and care for my dad for those 10 months. He died a natural death during one of his increasingly frequent stays in the hospital near the end. At no time during these ordeals would we have considered for one minute having a doctor prescribe a fatal drug overdose for either one of my parents if that had been legally possible.
I'm sure that some people reading this thread are now undergoing similar ordeals or worse, or have in the past. You may feel the same as I do, or you may have wished for a law like the Oregon law. I don't claim to be holier than thou or anyone else, but I can't accept the idea that human life is subject to expiration at our own choice of time and manner of death.
If anyone here thinks that I have been posting hypocritical messages on this thread tonight, that's your right but you're dead wrong if you do.
First of all I'm very sorry that you have to go through your situation.
I can somewhat relate. I'm a generation away from you. My grandparents suffered like your parents have. One grandma had parkinsons and was bed ridden for 5 years. The other had alzheimer's as well. Obviously being no more than 22 at the time I didn't have any authority to make any decisions.
I know that my family on both sides were and still are Christians. Neither family decided to push their parents toward death.
Sometimes God has plans that are beyond are comphrension at the time. Sometimes we search for understanding that is not there. I know that on my mom's side with my Grandma that had parkinson's.. my grandpa sat by herside everyday of those 5 years. Loving and caring for her and I know praying for some different outcome. But maybe God's plan was for us as his family to cherish that undying love. When she finally passed it was if he was holding on just for her. He died just two short weeks after from puenomia. I don't have the answer for that. But I do know that is the kind of love that I can only hope to attain for my wife.
Was it a wonderful thing for my grandma to go through that? Depends on who you are I guess. I learned alot and my Grandma & Grandpa I'm sure are to be awarded with the wonderful gift for heaven. Something that both of them I'm sure would of given many many more years of being bedridden in order to be acheived.