The Order of Good Death: A Lesson in Closure
When someone says they want to "die well," they are usually imagining the size of the funeral.
Dries van Agt, the former Dutch Prime Minister, made headlines in February 2024 for how he died: by euthanasia, hand-in-hand with his wife. Van Agt served as PM from 1977 to 1982, preceding Mark Rutte, who would later dominate Dutch politics for over a decade.
News reports indicated Van Agt had been in fragile health since a 2019 brain hemorrhage, from which he never fully recovered. His wife's health was also deteriorating, leading them to make the mutual decision to undergo euthanasia. When I discussed it with a Dutch colleague, she noted the widespread respect for their choice, considering it quite remarkable. This respect underscores a core tenet of Dutch society: the belief in a right to choose a good death when suffering becomes unbearable
The Netherlands, known for its liberal legal reforms like same-sex unions, regulated coffee shops, and the famous Red Light District, was also the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia in 2002. I decided to look up the law, the Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act. It states that euthanasia is technically a criminal offense but a physician is exempt from prosecution if they adhere to extremely strict "due care criteria." The core justification for this exception is to alleviate unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement. It is a delicate balancing act between the protection of life with a patient's autonomy and dignity in the face of insurmountable medical hardship.
That word dignity. To be accorded mercy. Those two words are never in association with the deaths of ordinary people.
Legally, the patient's request must be voluntary and well-considered, persistent over time, and they must be fully informed about their condition and alternatives. I wonder, in our context, are prayers considered a viable alternative to such medical solutions in Kenya? The physician must confirm no other reasonable solutions exist, consult at least one independent doctor to verify these criteria, and perform the procedure with due medical care, meticulously reporting every case for scrutiny by a regional review committee. Euthanasia accounted for 5.4% of all deaths in the Netherlands in 2023, making it one of the countries with the highest percentages globally.
The Netherlands’ legal liberalism extends to animal welfare; decrees establish principles for animal care, implicitly covering responsible end-of-life decisions for animals. This 'humane killing' concept essentially casts physicians and veterinarians as compassionate executioners, a class of ethical death guardians. This is rooted in a strong Western societal emphasis on individual autonomy—a focus on the individual's right to self-determination that guides the negotiation with death, manifesting in advance directives (living wills) for medical care, legal wills for property, and personal funeral preferences.
It got me pondering. I had no cultural context for euthanasia. My closest association was suicide but I had never thought to consider a morally defensible justification for ending your own life. The standard justification for euthanasia—unbearable, hopeless suffering—points to the profound choice to end a protracted, undignified dying process.
I am already thinking about that trip back home, sipping gin with the cousins under the shade of a tree in the village on a hot afternoon. Where do I begin with the concept of assisted suicide? I can predict the response, "Why are you talking over our heads?"
It is an unheard-of privilege. The legal mandate to end your own suffering stands in stark contrast to our realities. We, in contrast, know of death by medical neglect or lack of treatment, usually because of lack of access and money. The power to negotiate your own version of a good death is, for many, an alien concept. Contemplating 'a chosen death' is an unimaginable luxury where daily existence is a struggle for dignity and survival.
This stark contrast in perspectives led me to delve deeper into the origins of the Dutch law itself, and I stumbled on the pivotal 1973 'Postma Case'. A doctor was prosecuted for euthanizing her terminally ill mother. The court acknowledged a "necessity defense" for doctors acting to alleviate unbearable suffering. This paved the way for subsequent rulings in the 1980s, which formalized "due care criteria," creating a de facto tolerance policy. The idea that competent adults should have a say in their own end-of-life decisions, especially when facing extreme suffering, gained significant traction and was central to the advocacy for formal legalization.
This concept of legally ending one's life was a culture shock. I had only considered "last wishes" ironically, regarding the condemned. Growing up, my earliest association with 'last wishes' was often the condemned's last supper. It was a bare minimum of human rights, one of the very few acts of control or agency a prisoner has left in an utterly controlled and hopeless environment.
I recall Hezekiah Ochuka, the young warrant officer who led the 1982 coup. Hezekiah Ochuka, then 29, was among the last individuals officially executed in Kenya, alongside Pancras Oteyo Okumu, following the coup attempt. While Kenya maintains the death penalty on its books, it has been an abolitionist in practice since 1987, with no executions carried out. All death sentences are now typically commuted to life imprisonment.
Yet, a different, unofficial death penalty operates with ruthless efficiency, sentencing citizens to unfortunate deaths. The feed of senseless deaths is a running reel. Headlines on the daily news, trending on the socials and invariably goes viral on WhatsApp.
New message notification. "Another one shot in the head by the police service."
Again!
If you go out on the streets to demonstrate against the state, you face the death penalty. It is a recurring script. A voice, perhaps an angry Gen Z, prods:
Do you not see this? Do you not feel?
I want to tell him, I have seen and felt so much pain that I learnt to cope by forgetting the bad deaths that befall us. But how can he understand what he has not experienced? What’s the moral of the story when a young man, desperate for a better life, surrenders to the consequences of police violence on the streets? Is he, in his own way, seeking a "good death” or is it for those of us left behind to decide?
When people succumb to illness, it feels almost taboo to wish them the mercy of death, no matter how prolonged the illness. We call on our prayer warriors to persist unceasingly for a miraculous recovery. Perhaps that is what anchors our spirit. The idea of life as a divinely bestowed gift that can be yanked away at any moment. This sincere belief often prevents us from contemplating the end, even with all the examples around us. It still doesn’t serve as motivation to write down one’s last wishes. We don't discuss such things. We make better provisions for a looming Christmas season than for our own passing.
When someone says they want to "die well," they are usually imagining the size of the funeral. How rarely do we even witness someone dying well? I've heard folklore-like stories of families gathered as someone passes peacefully in their sleep—a good death after a good life. This perspective sees death as a doorway, reinforcing the awareness that from birth to death, we are carried by many hands. The closest I came to this ideal was with my grandmother. She died peacefully, surrounded by three generations, a few months after my father's sudden passing. Their deaths in the same year were communicated as a deeply tragic event, and I registered only pity. I carried this with me for a long time, and that's the nature of the brain—you start to seek confirmation. Even 'natural' death is rarely 'good' in our context, reinforcing the pervasive sense of 'bad deaths'.
I had uncles who died badly, their lives cut short—a road accident, a mugging—and that remains a dominant memory and an inherited trauma. All we know is the order of bad deaths. Geronticide, the practice of killing the elderly. Historically in some migrating societies, the elderly would voluntarily choose to end their lives to avoid burdening their community, or as a ritualistic sacrifice, such as walking away to die alone. It's part of our past and present. The burning of elderly women accused of witchcraft still exists, making grey hair dangerous. The awareness of femicide has grown, but less so androcide—the systematic killing of men or boys, often in war, genocide, or ethnic cleansing. Young men are targeted to eliminate potential combatants, dismantle social structures, or prevent future generations of a perceived enemy.
Some might recall the politicians Martin Shikuku and Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, who had publicly known specific last wishes. Shikuku, famously, dug his own grave and prepared a coffin eight years before his passing. Wangari, for her part, insisted on a simple, biodegradable coffin that was designed to be closed with no glass opening. For many of us, "dying well" ultimately translates to "getting buried well"—avoiding a poorly attended funeral, or the indignity of dying far from kin, perhaps abroad and alone, where the body is managed by bureaucrats.
The good death, is still a choice. It was during a time of sorrow that I had to truly contemplate this question, not as a concept, but as a reality I was facing. I lost a member of our family suddenly in Uganda and amidst planning a funeral, an old friend, Felix Masi, who I had not seen in over a decade, handed me Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." As if to say, it is inevitable you will have to find some meaning in the suffering you are about to endure. The journey of grief through loss. It matters little how you do it, but a healthy approach has its benefits.
It was a small, nondescript book, a paperback. In it, Frankl comes to terms with the unbearable suffering in a concentration camp, and his understanding creates a transformation because it has acquired meaning: "suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."
I can rationalize the Dutch’s admiration for the hand-in-hand death of their PM, seeing in it the undertones of an alchemy of suffering—where suffering, like manure, is both ugly and fertile, and only through it can life be renewed even in a state of hopelessness. My thoughts drift to my cousins, and I can almost hear them retort, 'That is kwer (taboo). It is not a good death that people are interested in, but a good life.'
P.S. This reflection on the order of a good death is drawn from my meditations on death, grief, and healing. It forms part of a series of Reflections on the ones we lost, drawn from my upcoming book, Strength and Sorrow, where I delve deeper into these universal experiences and the pathways to finding healing amidst loss.