My Unconditional Love

As a parent we go through life with our children never expecting that we might lose them. After all aren’t we always lead to believe that parent’s die before their children. But what if we are confronted with a life and death situation of a child whom we have given birth to, loved, nurtured, raised to the best of our ability, while we watched him grow up to be a fine young man.

Life can be so unfair and sometimes we are forced to make decisions that no parent should ever have to make. That decision being to give this child of ours the right; the right to die with pride and dignity. Put in a position to be the responsible person in charge of my son’s care; being I was his legal next of kin, I made a choice for my son that I stand by and hold my head up high today for doing.

A doctor says to you as a parent; your child is in a persistent vegetative state and the only way he is being kept alive is by machines; what do you want to do? These words went over and over in my mind as I sat with my husband and daughter and talked about this. What would James want? The answer was immediate; the young man lying in that bed hooked up to life support and depending on us for his every need was not the young man that we all knew and loved; James would say “Let me go, Mom, please let me go.”

I honored what I knew to be my son’s wishes and told them to remove the life support; to stop the insulin, to stop the feedings and the dialysis and let him die if it were God’s will.

I sat with my son all night long and told him of the great joy he had brought to me over the years, the love I had and have for him and as I held him in my arms, I told him it was alright with me for him to go ahead and die.

Many, many people have been upset with my decision; however, I being his mother knew what was best for him. Let go and let God.

My reasons for adding this short writing is to let other’s know that what ever you as a parent should you ever face this dilema do is your decision and what people might say or think doesn’t matter. I loved my son unconditionally and that unconditional love was what saw me through. May you never have to face this situation.

In Loving Memory of my Son

James Irvin “J.D.” Scroggins

August 31, 1978 to March 26, 2002

I love you always and forever my son,

Love Mom