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If I’m ever in a situation where I’m permanently unconscious and unable to eat,” says my father, “I’m begging you: Let me go. I don’t want to be kept alive by a feeding tube.” We are sitting at my parents’ table on a pleasant Sunday morning, with advance health care directives sharing space with coffee cups and the newspaper.

I probe my father’s reasoning about such an important decision: “What if I think you’re able to recognize us, but you are unable to speak, communicate or engage us? What about end-stage Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, where you might stop eating on your own? You both know that doctors are rather certain that patients in a persistent vegetative state don’t experience pain or discomfort, right?”

No response.

“What if I want to keep you alive in that condition?” I ask with a smile.

My father responds with a chuckle. “If there were a decent chance that I’d get better and everything else is working well, then I’d trust your judgment,” he tells me. “Otherwise, the answer is no. Let me go!”

“But why,” I ask, “if you’re unaware of your own condition?”

“Because I know now that I don’t want to continue like that. What am I continuing for? With whom could I communicate? Whom could I love? Would I not have somewhere better to be, anyway?” My father’s quip reflects our shared faith in Christ’s salvific death and resurrection. “Let me go.”

Real people bear both the grace and the burden of thinking as the church does about the meaning of living and dying. So it is with my still-living father’s words in mind that I think about a recent statement of the This article appears in January 21 2008.