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EDMONTON — Lochan Bakshi grew up saying many goodbyes, criss-crossing India with his family because his father was regularly transferred for his job on the railway cleaning locomotive boilers.
“It taught me how to say goodbye — and how to say hello every two years,” said Bakshi one week ago, an open, thoughtful man who warmly welcomed the Journal to witness his final decline. “Here was the chance to express my thoughts and so on about the dignity of dying.”
On Tuesday evening, Bakshi said his final goodbye, dying painlessly and peacefully at 87 in his sleep — except for his signature loud snoring, say friends who were by his side — having decided to stop kidney dialysis and quicken death without experiencing more pain in his feet from diabetic sores and the possibility of amputation.
In the end, Bakshi only missed one dialysis treatment on Monday. It’s unlikely the buildup of toxins in Bakshi’s blood caused his death. His body had been weakened by pneumonia, shortness of breath and congestive heart failure, all of which likely played a role.
“When he made the decision to stop dialysis, I believe he also lost his will to live,” said 51-year-old Ravi Bakshi, the youngest of Bakshi’s three sons. “He had resigned himself that this was coming.”
Yet Bakshi was outspoken on the need for the federal and provincial governments to debate euthanasia in Canada. He agreed with a landmark Quebec report released in March that said doctor-assisted euthanasia — rather than family-assisted suicide — be allowed in “exceptional circumstances” for those who are terminally ill.
It is currently illegal for doctors to help someone die, so only patients who can refuse ongoing treatment — dialysis, antibiotics, mechanical ventilation or artificial hydration and nutrition — can feel empowered to choose a different journey’s end.
That discrepancy, said Erin Nelson, a professor in the University of Alberta’s law faculty who specializes in health-care ethics, needs to be addressed through public debate.
Bakshi wanted to spark that debate by allowing the public, through the eyes of the Journal, to witness the results of his choice to refuse dialysis. For the last eight years, he spent four hours three times a week hooked up to a dialysis machine that cleaned his blood.
“I have got to go, but let me get some good out of it. If I can advance the cause of dignified death, then I have done something,” Bakshi said last week. “I want the maximum good that can come out of this.”
Friday was his last treatment in the dialysis clinic.
“It feels strange that this is the last time I’ll be here,” he said, as dirty blood pumped out through an artery and clean blood back in through a vein. “I feel like shaking hands with everybody, but I don’t think that would be appropriate.”
“I think I’m doing the right thing. I’m sure I’m doing the right thing,” Bakshi said. “I will just be sleeping more or less. Numbness, more than anything else. But there are thousands of people who have no option like me. They need a dignified farewell.”
Even nearing the end, Bakshi’s sense of humour, his easy chuckles and his recognition of the beauty of life — from the purple orchid blooming on the ledge of his hospital room to the ordinary dandelion soon to be pushing through Edmonton grass — was clearly evident.
Bakshi, a retired biology professor who worked at Athabasca University from 1973 to 1990, cared for the orchid with a thimble-full of water every day, plus a spritz to its leaves, since he was first admitted to hospital on Jan. 9 after two or three mini-strokes. As for the dandelions, Bakshi can identify each yellow bloom as female or male, neuter or bisexual, and knows they have adapted to lawn-mowing by curling up to hide from the blades.
“Adapt to your new circumstances,” Bakshi said philosophically.
That Friday, a long-awaited bed had became available for him in an assisted living facility, but Bakshi turned it down, determined not to languish there in pain but to instead cease dialysis while his mind was keen and sharp. He did not have a chance to finish last-minute academic work on wild flowers, nor to travel to the one place he wished, laughing at the thought.
“The place I want to go to is Machu Picchu, so you can see the problem, unless we travel all the way by presidential helicopter I won’t reach there,” he said.
Edmonton was his home base for 40 years, following a career of scientific research. Bakshi left India in 1954 for Washington State University as a Fulbright Scholar, to Saskatoon as a post-doctorate fellow, then Sierra Leone and the University of Ghana, on to Nelson, B.C., where he developed a bachelor’s degree program at Notre Dame University and finally to Edmonton, where he helped develop virtual teaching classes at Athabasca University.
“I know it is tough for everybody,” said Bakshi, four days before his death. He was hooked up to oxygen, his speech slowed by a shortness of breath. His feet were wrapped in bandages to protect the sores that grew one after the other, caused by Type 2 diabetes. But he had no time for naps; instead, using all the time in the world to share his life.
“For me to talk about my own funeral is not easy, but we have been managing that,” Bakshi said of his family. “I try not to bring out any tears when they are around, but it is tough.”
He tells the news to a colleague by phone, which he keeps close at hand on the hospital bed. Even until the end, he wore dress pants and a button-up shirt and shaved on a daily basis. A crocheted purple and blue afghan kept him warm.
“In seven to 10 days, I’ll be gone,” he explained to Robert Holmberg, who will be speaking at Bakshi’s funeral on Sunday. “I’ll still be alive for another week or so, but you are my best friend in the university so I thought I should let you know and you let the president’s office know.”
The end came faster than expected.
“(My body) is worsening,” he said. “It is not going to get better, obviously, and if it is not going to get better, than I should make conscious decisions about my future.”
One of the people he may miss the most is his ex-wife, with whom he was estranged for 20 years before becoming friends again. In more recent days, she brought him home-cooked Indian food to eat while in hospital. He loved food so much, he ate every meal as if it were his last, joke his family.
“We have come to understand each other more now than we did before,” Bakshi said. “I think we have fallen in love all over again. It is nothing sexual again. We just have come to realize the goodness in each other, so it is tough.”
Yet as death neared, he had no fear.
“At the age of 87, what are two more weeks worth? You see? They are nothing,” he said. “Here I am trying to show that there is some good in having a dignified death.”
Deepi Mehta, Bakshi’s niece from Houston, Texas, said “Uncle” wanted an interfaith funeral, mixing Catholic hymns, a Muslim cleric and a Sikh ceremony, including the reading of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913.
“We didn’t say goodbye; we say we will meet again,” said 67-year-old Mehta, who, as a Sikh, believes in reincarnation and considered Bakshi her father figure after her own father died when she was 10.
Bakshi remained always the scientist, never quite sure of reincarnation or heaven, waffling, but open-minded, depending on whom he spoke with.
“Maybe there is life after death. No one has come back to tell us,” he said. “David Suzuki says it’s all chemicals physically, but about the soul, my religion says there is a soul. Sometimes, I’m on one side and sometimes I’m on the other.”
Son Ravi said his father’s scientific mind, fuelled by a library of 3,000 books, always challenged the status quo.
“The reason he became passionate about (the right to die) is because he’s a scientist,” Ravi said. “It went beyond religion. It went beyond ethics to ‘what’s humane. Why should someone suffer?’”
Bakshi was a fighter his entire life, having survived a stroke, an aneurysm and a car crash in which his neck was broken.
“He was very proud at the end of life to stir the pot,” Ravi said.
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