Giving thought to my own personal life and passing of family members, I can, without a doubt say that it is the wonderful, kind consideration of a person to family and friends who might be called upon to make the choice to "pull the plug" and stop that person's life from being sustained by artificial means. It is a person's written instructions with respect to how their "body" is to be handled, should they become incapacitated to the point where they are only kept alive at the "hand of man," and not the "hand of G-d." It is a gift from a person who is alive only in body, to his/her relatives and friends and a commitment by that person, to let death take its natural course and answer the call of the Creator to leave the face of the earth.

Unable to think or reason, sustained by man-made contraptions, a person made a conscious decision, before this happened,that when the time arrived for their passing, they were not to be kept alive by unnatural means. It really is a gift to those of us who will be remaining.

One of my own brothers had a massive coronary and was in a comma for a week. We were all there at his bedside day and night. A week-end was rolling in and we had already been told that he was a vegetable; that there was very little of his brain left that was functioning. He was breathing by machinery. His wife was going to have to make the decision; do we go on or do we turn off the machine supplying the oxygen to his body. We all talked silently, made a decision to let it be over the week-end, and then come Monday ask for some retesting for brain activity, etc. Thankfully, his wife did not have to make that decision. My brother passed away on Sunday. I can only imagine what his wife would have gone through if she had to actually make that decision to "terminate a life;" the guilt, the second-guessing.

Just as a Will read after one has passed on leaves gifts, so too, this living will gives a very real gift to family and friends. It takes the responsibility out of the hands of those of us who will live to remember him or her.

That, my friends, is what a living will is and does. It is the expressed desire of a man or woman of sound mind that should they reach such a state, they are to be allowed to die a natural death.

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