I agree with Mr. Snelling's decision...Dr. Jack Kevorkian had a good idea...Another doctor named Peter Goodwin who deviced the Oregon's right-to-die law, killed himself following an incurable brain disease...Have your living wills on hand to uncomplicate matters when the time comes.

I was just visiting in a nursing home yesterday. It can be a terrible way to end your life. As long as you have family and friends, you still have a life. Otherwise you are just existing. Caring for a loved one 24 hours a day is a huge committment that also can damage the caregiver. The Snellings, by all accounts, knew how they wanted to live. No outside force should step in and tell them they had no choices. Now they are both at peace and together.

There should definitely be a Right to Die. The question is whether the individual or the state gets to decide when an individual is allowed to die. It seems obvious to me that the decision should be up to the individual. Unfortunately, if that's what Mr. Snelling also believed, he was an activist for the wrong political party. Remember the Terri Schiavo mess? The reason we don't have a Right to Die in this country is that the political party Mr. Snelling supported is controlled by Southern religious fundamentalists who are anything but libertarians. The reason that we have such a juvenile debate around end of life issues in this country is that this group has a hammerlock on the Republican Party's policy agenda, and they oppose it vigorously.

I just want to say that a man like Snelling would probably have condemned Kevorkian .After all Republicans are by and large prolife and very condemning of anything that bespeaks taking life-death decisions into their own hands. The legacy he left for his family has clouded over because of his well thought out plan to end the life of his beloved wife and his own. My oh my. Once again it has been proven that you should not judge until you walk in someone else's shoes. If he shot his wife, it will make me even more convinced of the evil of guns. There are medications to end life peacefully. Message to my loved ones: Tho I believe in suicide,in certain circumstances, please don't shoot me.

I find this article and all the posts here and on other patch sites to be in the poorest taste. There have been other murder suicide's in the Lehigh Valley over the years. Maybe they were not as noteable as the Snelling's but none the less they happened. There were never week long discussions about the family and the situation. This truely disgusts me. No one has the right to pick apart a family for entertainment. That is what you are doing here. If you want to have a discussion about Right to Die, Eutanasia etc then have one. Please do not use the Snellings as an example. They have a family, have some sensitivity and take this whole thing down. They have suffered enough without all of you thinking you have the right to tear apart their personal lives just to hear yourselves talk. Shameful, and even worse that you are doing it during Holy Week. What are you people thinking?????

I find this situation not to be the time to judge a man's political leanings. We are all complex people who favor components of each party. Just because he was a Republican does not mean he did not have the freedom/right to act in a way that he thought would best serve his wife and himself, both living thru a true nightmare. Judging his politics at this terrible time is just in very poor taste. I think we need to walk a mile in his shoes before we judge him at all. His family has my sympathy.

The question is mute. Under Obama Care the government will be making these decisions and she would have already died for lack of medical care.

I think this tragedy shows why we need Right To Die laws, which may have saved Mr. Snelling's life. The reality is, once he decided to help his wife end her pain and suffering, he would have been subjected to criminal prosecution by our ridiculous laws. In this country we treat our pets more humanely than ourselves.

You're good to ask this question but you're opening yourself up to the hateful weirdos who will take this space to hurl insults at "socialists" and spew their ignorant displaced venom at the government or something else that's off topic.

None of us know if this was Adrienne's wish, Maybe the two of them had planned it out when she did have a mind, if anything happens please take my life, We will never know. I to think there should be a law" a right to die"

Sick and Tired: The word you are looking for is moot.

Missy: The vaunted Death Panels you are railing against have been thoroughly debunked and laughed about for years now.

You two bring to mind Voltaire's prayer to God "Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous".

My mother succumbed at age 86 to Alzheimer's Disease after we first noticed its symptoms 8 or 9 years earlier. Her last year was spent in a netherworld in which she knew no one, not even her husband of 56 years. She suffered from hallucinations and an inexorable decline of all her physical functions. In my view, she was among the living dead. Alzheimer's Disease is a killer, there is no beating it. I am quite sure Mr. Snelling did what he did out of love and commitment to his wife. As far as his taking his own life is concerned, I hope I have the capacity to do so myself should the time come when life just isn't worth it anymore. I think each of us has the right to decide when it's time. To those who would drag politics into this discussion - Grow up!

Margie writes so well about many matters important in life. There was a time in my life when such actions seemed rational. What stopped me was not wanting anyone- family, friends- to feel responsible. I hope the Snellings' family does not.

I think readers will all agree that human life is sacred. That sanctity demands that people live with dignity. Dignity requires a measure of autonomy--the ability to have some control over yourself. (That's why we say that a person without any control is in a "vegetative" state. No one wants to be a "vegetable.") So a discussion about taking one's life should focus on these issues of dignity and autonomy. Ms Peterson proposes that one ought to have the right to end one's life where all dignity is gone. And she gives two reasonable criteria for deciding this: unrelieved pain and no hope for recovery.
The discussion then ought to focus on 1. Do these two criteria represent the total loss of human dignity? 2. Are there other criteria? 3. If one loses one's autonomy, that is, and thus the ability to take one's own life, are there other remedies--so that one's earlier judgement about when to die can be carried out by a caregiver?
A fourth factor--the impact of one's decision on loved ones--makes me sad about Mr. Snelling's decision to use a gun and leave his family to discover and clean up the mess. This strikes me as leaving a particularly violent message for them to interpret.
He must have wanted this column and this public discussion.

My personal feeling is no one has the right to take another's life, no matter what the circumstances. That's up to God! My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and was one of the first to be a patient at the Moravian Home in Nazareth. He was 80 when admitted and 85 when he died. My mother visited him every single day, even when he no longer had sight or even knew someone was in his room. And he was cared for by professionals and was made comfortable and suffered no pain. My first husband died within three weeks of diagnosis of cancer; he had suvived nearly 10 years with a heart transplant. Even though he was suffering, we had Hospice in his last days who eased his pain and he died peacefully on his own with no help from anyone by our Lord and Savior!

Perhaps we as a society caused him to commit suicide. Because in this country you can't bring an end to life when all hope is lost, Mr. Snelling was forced to choose one of the following three scenarios.
1. Break his sacred promise to his wife and most important life partner
2. End her suffering and undignified life, then go to jail for the rest of his life
3. End her suffering and undignified life, then commit suicide.
Why can't we offer the fourth alternative of ending suffering, in a LEGAL and controlled manner. If this option would have been open to him, perhaps he would have taken it.
As to all the bible thumpers who say only God can take a life.... you mean as long as it's not a war. Then it is perfectly acceptable for a religious person to kill... even civilians if they get in the way. Hypocrisy.
I hope his children are proud of their father, who lived up to a sacred comittment he made to his life partner and the woman he loved.... despite the fact that it must have be an incredibly difficult thing to do. We should all summon up a fraction of the courage Mr. Snelling had, and move to help people end life with dignity.

if you allow murder by spouse or loved one, then allow abortion to be legal with no debate every frigging election year

death with dignity is not death by gun at the hands of a spouse, i am guessing their will not be an open casket with the amount of trauma that Mrs Snellings body suffered at the hands of a murderer, hopefully Mr Coward Snelling did a Budd Dwyer style end to it all

My Father

The memory of my father is wrapped up in
white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits
out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,

and the rivers of his hands
overflowed with good deed.

--Yehuda Amichai
translated from the Hebrew by Azila Talit Reissenberger

May they both rest in peace

I've never been pro censorship but I hope that Patch refrains from publishing any more articles about Mr. & Mrs. Snelling.

Some of the comments on this article and others of the same subject are some of the cruelest and heartless things I've ever read in my entire life.

Hiding behind the anonymity of your keyboard and spewing your venom is the ultimate act of cowardice.

Many of you have passed judgement both positive and negative. I highly recomend a book by Nancy L. Race and Peter V. Rabins. Called "The Thirty Six Hour Day" Revised in 2006 for its twenty-fifth anniversary, this best-selling book is the "bible" for families caring for people with Alzheimer disease, offering comfort and support to millions worldwide. In addition to the practical and compassionate guidance that have made The 36-Hour Day invaluable to caregivers, the fourth edition is the only edition currently available that includes new information on medical research and the delivery of care. -new information on diagnostic evaluation-resources for families and adult children who care for people with dementia-updated legal and financial information-the latest information on nursing homes and other communal living arrangements-new information on research, medications, and the biological causes and effects of dementia
Praise for The 36-Hour Day:
This may give you a different perspective on caring for an Alzheimers /dementia of a loved one. I highly recommend it. and Yes, I have been through caring for a loved one with dementia and Alzheimers,

He didnt shoot her

When we are young we think little of death because it is so far away. Yet death is something that can come faster then a bolt of lightninng or as slow as forever. I truly believe that God is in charge of that event and I believe He has a plan for all of us. I feel sad for the Snellings. Alzheimers is a vicious disease and I know about it because my father died from it and its complications. My mom saw him everyday until the last. We all need to be a lot kinder about this situation.

Consider this letter published in Canada:

"If euthanasia were legal, the wife, not wanting to die, would still be a victim"
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Danger+euthanasia/5935217/story.html

Marcel Lavoie implies that legalizing euthanasia would stop violent deaths in the elderly, . . .

In many of these deaths, the perpetrator-husband also kills himself for a murder-suicide.

In Oregon, where assisted-suicide has been legal since 1997, murdersuicide has not been eliminated. Indeed, murder-suicide follows the national pattern.

Moreover, according to Donna Cohen, an expert on murder-suicide, the typical case involves a depressed, controlling husband who shoots his ill wife: "The wife does not want to die and is often shot in her sleep. If she was awake at the time, there are usually signs that she tried to defend herself."

If euthanasia were legal, the wife, not wanting to die, would still be a victim.

Our laws against assisted suicide and euthanasia are in place to protect vulnerable people. Assisted suicide and/or euthanasia should not be legalized in Canada.

For supporting documentation, go here: http://www.epcbc.ca/2012/01/if-euthanasia-were-legal-wife-not.html

I must remind everyone to please have adequate medical insurance because It would be unfair for most of us to subsidize your personal situation of bankruptcy resulting from catastrophic ilnesses.

heartbreaking

Charles Snelling is a murderer, coward and hypocrite, God unrest his soul