I first heard Robert Munsch in second grade. Our teacher read his 1986 classic Love You Forever to our class, and like almost everyone who heard the story as a child and read it to his or her own children years later, the cadences of the mother’s beautiful lullaby stayed with me: “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.”
I had to grow up to grasp the beauty of the book’s ending. The boy, now a man and a father, cradles his frail, ailing mother, and sings the lullaby back to her as her own voice breaks and fades, changing the last line by two words: “As long as you’re living, my mommy you’ll be.” When he was a baby, a boy, and a teen, his mother covered his vulnerabilities with unconditional love. Now, as she’s dying, it’s his turn to gather her into his arms.
That last phrase—“as long as you’re living”—took on a heartbreaking significance with the news that Munsch, who lives in Canada, has been approved for euthanasia (referred to by the Orwellian euphemism “medical aid in dying,” or MAID). According to his daughter Julie, Munsch first mentioned that he was planning to die by euthanasia in a 2021 interview with the CBC after being diagnosed with dementia, but the decision made headlines when Munsch discussed his choice in an interview with the New York Times published on September 14.
The eighty-year-old author told the Times that his memory and creative processes are declining. “I can feel it going further and further away,” he said. This, as well as witnessing his brother’s death from Lou Gehrig’s disease, prompted him to apply for euthanasia. “Hello, Doc—come kill me!” he joked. “How much time do I have? Fifteen seconds!” Munsch added that his death has not yet been scheduled, but that by law he must be able to consent just prior to the lethal injection that will kill him.
“I have to pick the moment when I can still ask for it,” he told the Times. The news coverage of the interview prompted his daughter to post a clarifying statement online: “My father IS NOT DYING!!!” she wrote. “Thanks to everyone and their well wishes, however, my father’s choice to use MAID was in fact made 5 years ago. . . . My dad is doing well but of course with a degenerative disease it can begin to progress quickly at any point.”
The public interest in Munsch’s decision to opt for euthanasia, of course, is because he is one of the most famous children’s authors in the world. Munsch, an American by birth who moved to Canada in 1975, has sold more than 30 million copies of his over seventy books. For countless children, Munsch was—and is—a fixture; he is the most stolen author at the Toronto Public Library. Now, if he decides to go through with his decision, the name “Robert Munsch” will forever be tied to Canada’s euthanasia regime, and he will join the more than 60,000 Canadians who have already been legally killed.
For advocates of euthanasia and assisted suicide, Munsch’s choice is a triumph for autonomy. But it is much more than that. Munsch is making a very public value judgment. A life with dementia, he believes, is a life not worth living. Indeed, he said that he is worried about waiting too long to take the plunge into eternity because, as he told his wife Ann, if he can no longer legally consent, “you’re stuck with me being a lump.”
The description made me almost physically recoil. I love someone who suffers from dementia and treasure every moment I have with her. People suffering from dementia are not “lumps,” as Munsch says—and I hope his loved ones have made that very clear to him. Perhaps they have. But Munsch does not need their permission to die—he only needs permission from the state. In Canada, the government decides who is eligible for a state-funded and facilitated lethal injection, and who is not.
Because euthanasia is not, in fact, a “free choice.” It is a choice granted only to some. By passing legislation determining who qualifies, the government has pre-selected those they believe have lives so valuable they are legally barred from suicide, and those with lives so worthless they can be assisted in their demise. In fact, a “provider” can come to your home and dispatch you in the comfort of familiar surroundings. Many like Robert Munsch, fearful after a devastating diagnosis of what the future might hold, become suicidal. The government does not affirm their worth but affirms their suicidal ideation.
Robert Munsch’s life thus far has been one of both triumph and tragedy. He struggled with addiction. He grappled with the grief of losing two stillborn children, after which he wrote Love You Forever. He and his wife adopted three children. His stories brought joy to millions. What a tragedy it would be for the final chapter of his own story to come to a close at the end of a needle. What a beautiful thing it would be if he instead allowed himself to be cared for, in all his vulnerability and frailty, by those who love him. That, for all the pain, would be a powerful story that our culture desperately needs.
