Colours on your checkerboard life; Dancing with Van Dyke; MAiD numbers released for '23 (brace yourselves).

3 Things this week and a poem about Advent

Thanks for spending some of your weekend with Things I Wrote Down. Here are three things and a poem about Advent.

1. Colours on your checkerboard life

The colours of war that blend and bleed into memory, even after fighting stops, is the focus of the latest article by

Ella Grace

, whose Substack The Honeyeater Press I beseech you to follow.

The Perth-based writer explores the black and white way we look at the world, as if it's a checkerboard where our views and assumptions must win. She shares observations from time spent in the Philippines, with a family in poverty who lived between gravestones in a graveyard.

I won’t forget Princess and her family, Wilson’s neighbours, who had nailed a small jar of toothbrushes to their bare cement wall. In a small alcove, too low for an adult to stand, next to a neat row of kitchen utensils hanging neatly on small nails, the container was attached to the wall. Inside were eight well-used toothbrushes, one for each member of the family. Here was strength in a cup – a daily routine of resilience on display in the fraying strands.

I don’t know why I was surprised that a family who lived in a graveyard brushed their teeth. Surprise often shows me that my prejudices are without proof. Had I really come to believe that people living in poverty would be dirty? Had I assumed that a family living between graves would not take pride in something so basic as teeth-brushing?

I'm never not moved when I read her work. There's always something deep and affecting in the pieces she writes. Each word consequential.

What Colour is a Ceasefire?

2. Dancing with Van Dyke

Coldplay made a short film in which Dick van Dyke dances and Chris Martin tickles the ivories. It’s a lovely escape that looks over the entertainer’s incredible career, and suggests a secret to longevity is love.

This was a wholesome reflection on a life that has brought so much joy. It provides such a critical counterpoint to what I’m highlighting next:

3. MAiD numbers released for 2023

Who knew statistics could break your heart? The MAiD numbers were released by the Canadian government this week for the previous year.

(An aside: Is it just me or does the fact that it takes an entire calendar year to share the numbers of deaths by doctor in Canada do nothing to assuage the feeling that there’s funny business going on?)

It’s bad news, friends. I know we’re getting used to it and that euthanasia is becoming a key part of our medical system, but I’m just not used to it. May our hearts not get cold or numbed to this reality.

Here are s a few snapshots:

• 15,343 people received MAID, which represents an increase of 15.8% in death by doctor since 2022.

• In 2023, 4.7% of Canadians who died received MAID. The majority of MAiD deaths were in Quebec (36.5%), Ontario (30.3%) and British Columbia (18.0%).

• 19,660 requests were reported, but 2,906 individuals who requested MAiD died before they got to their appointment.

• Approximately half of those who died via Track 2 (where death is not imminent) were disabled, and they cited loneliness and that they feel like a burden in their reasons given for requesting to die, leading one expert conclude this isn’t dying with dignity, but “social murder.”

This is something the people living with disabilities we interviewed for our series MAiD in Canada warned about and were afraid of. You can watch those profound and important voices here.

• Conditions such as diabetes, frailty, autoimmune conditions, and chronic pain were the most commonly cited underlying medical conditions for those whose deaths weren’t deemed imminent.

• A group of 89 people (doctors and nurse practitioners) were responsible for 35.1% of all Track 1 (14,721) deaths and 28.6% of all Track 2 (622) cases respectively.

• I did the math. (5,167 + 177 = 5,344). These 89 doctors ended the lives of 1/3 of all Canadians who were euthanized.

I’m gonna go watch that Dick van Dyke video again.

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A poem about Advent

If you’ve followed me for very long, you’ve probably picked up that I’m into Advent. This month my weekly article is taken from the new series I wrote called Songs of Advent. Catch up if you need a little hope and wonder on weeks one, two, and three.

Each year I also write a poem at Christmas. How it falls into me is always interesting. Sometimes joyful, sometimes nerve-wracking. (My approach to writing is a combination of just doing it and also waiting). This week words started falling and I crafted my poem for 2024, which I’ll release soon.

Here’s my poem from 2016, entitled Adventing.

Adventing

John would tell us that
even from these stones
God could raise up
children for Abraham,
shattering, in one phrase,
the Pharisees’ pedigree
the same stones they would
scoop from the ground, hurl through
the air to shatter the bones
of Stephen.

It was an ancient trick
this creating life out of the dust
this gathering up rock and clay
into a heap.
From a rock, from a rib.
Off the ground, in the garden.

One exhalation, the
beginning of life for man. One word
from God, the plan of the world
unfolding.

Perhaps in the same way
he searched cities and empires
to find the most treasured grain of sand
in Mary’s womb
hovered over the particle
to bring forward not a son
for Abraham, but a
Saviour.

When tested
the Son of Man
did not turn stones to bread
or men to stone but
produced instead a
more startling miracle: through
the Word we would become
children of God.

© 2016 Andrew Kooman