The Vandever Death Panel

It was nearing midnight on Friday, June 13th, 2003 when the Vandever Death Panel convened for deliberations.

It was an emergency meeting, unexpectedly held at a hospital in Salisbury, MD. There was no agenda, no rules of conduct, no taker of minutes, and no “action items” to follow up on.

The Vandever Death Panel came together in an odd way. A surprise party had been planned for “Dad” (also a member of the Panel) for Fathers Day. A distant member of the Panel from South Carolina had arrived with her family the night before, total unbeknownst to the intended honoree. There was a cake with a picture of the five children of the honoree at tender ages:


It was going to be a blast. The children of the honoree gathered at Indian River Inlet to await the surprise party the next day. Karaoke was played. Laughs were had. The Panel didn't know they were going to have a job to do in a mere matter of hours. Boy, were they yucking it up:


But then, the call came. The Vandever Death Panel had business to attend to.

The honoree (“Dad”) was vacationing with who would ultimately become the subject of the Death Panel: “Mom”. They were vacationing in Ocean City, when all of a sudden Mom dropped. She was sitting on the bed of the hotel, getting dressed, talking about this and that, when all of a sudden she kind of gurgled and fell back on the bed.

Dad followed the ambulance to the hospital in Salisbury. The rest of the member of the Death Panel somehow got there, not knowing what to think. We had little details. Mom was rushed to the hospital. That is all we knew.

The Vandever Death Panel convened in her room in the hospital. She was hooked up to a thing that made her breathe. An aneurism, we were told, had blown up in her brain.

Now one may have in one’s mind what a Death Panel would look like: a Kafkaesque group of muddling bureaucrats with grey suits and thin ties and wispy mustaches, with smoke swirling around while they look at their reports and pretend to consider what they should be considering so seriously, when in fact they know the decision they will make. It is so written.

But the Vandever Death Panel was nothing like that. The Panel stroked, kissed, and hugged Mom. They covered her feet because they knew she always thought her feet were ugly. They stood on both sides of the bed, watching the breathing machine go up and down, looking at each other with tear-stroked faces, talking rarely but quite nonsensically about weird things like how Mom could never grow anything and how much she loved the ring that Dad got her for their 50th wedding anniversary and how she never was into jewelry but boy did she love to flash that thing and how her wedding band which she had worn all her life had only cost $12.00 and how she and a daughter had gone to Paris on a whim and when the daughter was cavorting and drinking with some of the kitchen staff in the hotel restaurant how Mom had come down in her nightgown and curlers to find out what was going on and how on that cruise that we took she always looked upward and agape at things that fascinated her and how on a trip to London with a friend she swore the Queen waved directly at her and how when she retired and wanted to get on the internet the first question she asked was about how do you find that dirty stuff and how much her friends at her workplace of all ages loved her and how if she got on our nerves we would call her “Mommie Dearest”, LOL.

After all of this blather the Vandever Death Panel had to get down to business. They talked. They knew she was gone. They took a vote. One member started to say……”But maybe…..”, but in the end the Panel knew. Mom was gone and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

So, harsh as it sounds, the plug was pulled. The Vandever Death Panel, with exception of the Senior Member, Dad, left the room. Dad stayed with her in her last moments. She was pronounced. Dad came out of the room, and the Vandever Death Panel huddled close together in tears in the hallway.

The Vandever Death Panel did not discuss the cost effectiveness of continued care. If there was someone somewhere who could have received one of her organs as a transplant recipient, we did not know if we had we would not have considered it. We did not weigh pros and cons of the value to society of her life if she had lived. The significance of her life could not be measured in her future earning potential or contribution to society, only in love for which there is no measurement.

The Vandever Death Panel made their decision because they knew it was the right thing to do. They knew Mom. They knew how she lived and how she would not want to live. So they made the decision to allow her to die.

This is how decisions are made, and always should be made.


Sure do miss you, Mom.