It takes a certain type of person – and a certain type of relationship – to actually "pull the plug" on a parent. Maybe it's easier to do that on a grandma.

"Take me to the hospital and let them give me a shot and let them end it."

My 86-year-old father, suffering from the spread of a bladder cancer that could not be removed surgically, was in the intense pain that cancer is famous for causing. It was spring 2003 and my memories are a bit out of sequence of events, but I believe this was before our Easter "Saturday" middle of the night visit to the emergency room at St. Mary's Hospital in West Palm Beach. On that night, he had gotten a shot of Demerol and a prescription for Oxycotin, a stronger painkiller than the one he was previously using. It helped much with the last months of his life.

Previously, on the late night my father wished I would take him to a hospital for euthanasia, I had been working around him all day, even lifting him into and out of a soothing bathtub around midnight. When he walked into the living room of his Florida retirement apartment, asking me to take him away, I was literally too tired to get off the couch where I had been trying to sleep. Seeing him suffer in great pain was one of the worst experiences of my life – and much more so, of his. He lived another two months with only two other nights in such open displays of great pain. He became well enough to arrange the sale of his apartment (the agent visited him) and fly home to die near where he had lived.

It takes a certain type of person – and a certain type of relationship – to actually "pull the plug" on a parent. Maybe it is easier do that on a grandma, as Newsweek's cover suggests – yet their cover article is specifically about Evan Thomas's mother. Personally, I doubt the feelings and moral self-judgements are any easier with grandparents. I can't speak directly to that because my grandparents died before I was born.

I have been told by an experienced outpatient hospice care nurse that adult children who had fought with adult parents came to change their attitude 180 degrees when they knew the end was near and they would soon never again see the parent who caused such strong feelings to arise in them. To a certain extent, that was my situation.

My dad's regular physician also told me that his younger brother had cared for their father day in and day out the last months before he died and never regretted the time or the effort.

Let us say that there are situations highly similar to the one in the Newsweek article by Evan Thomas, where his long suffering smoker mother wanted to die quickly rather than suffer any longer. But Mr. Thomas doesn't inform us of (possible) siblings or a husband who might not have agreed with a Final Exit painkiller for his mother. Then again, Mr. Thomas, like all good liberals, expects us to forget everything that happened the fortnight before, in this case, the last part of Senator Edward Kennedy's life. The Kennedy family, the Senator included, fought to keep him from going "gentle into the good night," raging on to the last.

Evan Thomas would have us believe that everyone who would be considered sophisticated by Newsweek should have his or his mother's attitude – with the exception of the Kennedys, of course. Perhaps Mr. Thomas thinks his family would have the money to fight to keep him or a wife/lover alive in their later days, with funds for a private clinic in either the US or a foreign country. Perhaps that will be true – perhaps not. But even Howard Hughes, flown out of the country in a Medivac plane, could not find cures or peace in the Caribbean, his body reported to be full of open sores and missing teeth when he died, as reported by the History Channel's The Real Las Vegas.

Mr. Thomas would also have us believe that end of life care is the only possible factor in costs. Not the stifling effect of the lack of tort reform requiring numerous extra tests. Not the stifling effect of the inability to buy insurance across state lines or a high deductible policy or anything else. Not the lack of connection between paying and receiving services, as was the case before 1965. In short, Mr. Thomas blames granny, i.e., seniors, for our runaway costs. It is their living so long that is our problem. They should be like Peter Pan and never grow old, if they cared for the State.

There will come a time when someone grows old – or is young and dieing —  and their loved ones will want to say a long goodbye, even though they know it is a futile labor, a lost cause fought for their aging family member. The ones not dying, in many cases, will not want the government to decide how long that goodbye will be. And if that time is all too short because of limited End of Life government care budgets and policies, for most people, blaming George Bush or Capitalism or the current faction of one's own political party in office will not soothe or repair the rent in their feelings (or soul, if one believes in souls, as I do).

In this piece, I have barely touched upon the effect of siblings in these situations. Cries of "How can you let them just die?" could fill the air as every past feeling and conflict is brought up afresh.

White liberals who never owned slaves or had a "whites only" drinking fountain in their Northern towns feel guilty that they prospered while blacks had limited opportunities, and liberals have voted for affirmative action and other measures. Will the same liberals feel any less guilty – either before or after the fact – when they "have to" shorten the last part of their family members' lives because of government health care policies?

Will a glossy Newsweek cover and rationalizing article assuage their guilt? I don't think so.