Sitting at the Threshold: Reflections on MAID

Medical Assistance in Dying is often discussed in extremes.

As policy. As principle. As debate.

What receives less attention are the quieter spaces where these decisions are lived.

To accompany someone considering MAID is to encounter complexity without resolution. Relief and grief often arrive together. Certainty can coexist with hesitation. These are not contradictions. They are part of being human at the edge of life.

In these moments, presence matters more than answers.

Being present means listening without rushing. Allowing decisions to be revisited. Ensuring consent is ongoing, not assumed. Attending not only to the individual, but to the relationships surrounding them.

MAID does not occur in isolation. Even when chosen autonomously, it reverberates outward. Partners, friends, clinicians, and witnesses all carry something forward. The emotional work does not end when the paperwork is complete.

What I have learned through accompanying others is that MAID does not lessen the need for ritual or community. If anything, it heightens it. When death arrives by choice, there is often a deep desire for witnessing. For acknowledgement. For care that extends beyond the medical act itself.

There is grief that does not always fit familiar forms. Some feel relief and guilt at the same time. Others struggle with the absence of a gradual decline. Many carry questions long after the death has occurred.

Holding space around MAID requires humility. It asks us to resist simplification. To honour autonomy without denying interdependence. To speak honestly about sorrow without undermining choice.

Ultimately, MAID is not only a medical intervention. It is a human passage. And like all endings, it deserves to be met with care that is relational, ethical, and deeply attentive.