Tom Morgan (right) talks with his friend Tracy Ross (left) about Tom’s father, James Blaine Morgan, and Tom’s decision to help end his father’s life.
Originally aired November 2, 2007, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Transcript
Tracy Ross (TR) and Tom Morgan (TM)
TM: My father was James Blaine Morgan, everybody called him PG, I don’t know where the nickname came from. Everybody in town knows a story about my daddy and if I went to lunch, I went to coffee, I got a PG story. And my father was probably the finest man I ever met in my life. He was the kind of father I wish I could’ve been to my son. Saddest day of my life was the day my father died. My father was in intensive care. He was on machines and the doctor came along and says we can keep him alive, we may get him back out of this, we may not. But my dad was a logger and there was an old statement, if the lead team can’t pull the wagon, don’t hitch it up. And I looked at him and I said, ”That’s his statement, that’s my statement. Unplug the man, let him die with dignity. If he makes it, fine, if he doesn’t, at least let him die with dignity.” That haunted me for five years. I woke up in the middle of the night, many a night, in just a cold sweat; my ex-wife would just reach over and just touch me and say, PGs dead, go back to sleep.
TR: You wear an oxygen mask now.
TM: I do.
TR: Its all been very, very lately that’s happened. Are you afraid of death?
TM: I look forward to death.
TR: Why?
TM: Matter of curiosity. I just think they’ll be a better life.
TR: Do you have any regrets at all?
TM: I could pick out a dozen and pop’em to you. But I always had the theory that if you don’t try it when you go to the grave you’ll say I could have. When I die I’m going to go to the grave and say I did. I might not have done it well, but did it.