Pray that Alfie Evans has a good death

Most Christians have a prayer list already, so I'm not really into prayer requests--unless for Benedict Ambrose, as history shows. However, I do have one today: it's that Alfie Evans is allowed to die in God's time and not sooner than that. I worry he's in danger of a most unnatural death.

I have seen what is apparently a court order detailing how Alfie is supposed to be "treated" while his ventilator is removed. He is going to be injected, via cannula, with midazolam and fentanyl. I looked up fentanyl on Google, and sure enough, one of its more dangerous side-effects is respiratory depression. This article confirms that.  

One argument of Alder Hey hospital's supporters is that Alfie's life support is not "natural". Their assumption is that Alfie will die "naturally" once he is removed from the ventilator. But Alfie's father has long maintained that Alfie would be able breathe for himself were he not on drugs that were preventing him from breathing on his own.   

My hope was that, once the ventilator was removed, Alfie would breathe on his own, and keep on breathing until the part of the brain that controls breathing stopped. In short, I hoped the child would die a natural death. However, it seems as if he is not going to be allowed a natural death. If his father is correct, and if these drugs do repress his ability to breathe, Alfie might die sooner than God and nature intends. *

On the one hand, Alfie Evans is an innocent baptised infant. A moment after he dies, he will be eternally better off than any of us are now. On the other hand, intentionally speeding up the death of an innocent child is a crime against God, the Author of the child's life, and against the child himself. It also puts in danger every other living person in Britain whom the courts decide does not have a life worth living. Right now that means particularly severely disabled children. Perhaps eventually that will mean people with intransigently conservative views.  

I have a few thoughts about very mentally disabled people I have known. 

People from a local L'Arche community used to visit my theology school, and once I went to visit them. The L'Arche person I knew best, as it were, was a woman named Rosie. Rosie was severely brain-damaged--from birth, I believe. She had been found in a state institution, tied to the bars of her crib, when L'Arche rescued her.  She couldn't walk, and she needed 24 hour care. She was pre-verbal, but she laughed and shrieked and seemed to enjoy being spoken to. She was not at all pretty, but people loved her devotedly. 

She was at a mid-week Mass-in-the-round at our college, she escaped from her wheelchair and crawled along the floor to the centre of the "round", flopping on her back to look at the ceiling. She gazed at the ceiling so contentedly,  I wondered what on earth she saw to interest her there. 

I wondered so much that after Mass, when everyone was gone, I lay down on my back to look myself. And now I don't remember what was there--a dusty skylight? I just remember that Rosie's eccentric action and how she inspired me to look at something I had never considered before. 

She died naturally one or two years later, at the age of 43. Her obituary says " Rosie had a stubborn, independent and lively spirit that transformed the hearts of many people." It's absolutely true. 

Long before I went to theology school, I knew a few kids with developmental disorders. They were sent to "normal" school with everyone else. They were often bullied despite teachers keeping an eye on them and their tormentors. I am thankful to say that I was never one of the bullies although I do wish now I could have thought of them more as fellow children and not merely as "Special Ed." The ones who were best off had brothers and cousins among the rest of the student body. 

Anyway, one of the most intellectually disadvantaged was named Frankie. Frankie was pre-verbal and his greatest joy in life was tearing up bits of toilet paper and watching them drift away on the breeze. As long as Frankie and I were in the same playground, which may have been as long as eight years, I noticed him and his eternal relationship with paper and the wind. The only thing I have seen like that since is the plastic bag blowing around in American Beauty.  The blowing bag was beautiful, and so, in hindsight, was Frankie. 

*I changed part of this article because I don't want to be unjust to the medical staff. I know almost nothing about palliative care. The thing is, the justices I listened to were just so keen on Alfie dying ASAP.  They really believe it is in his "best interests" to "no longer remain alive."