"I Want to Go Naturally"... A Mother Who Passed Away Like a Camellia Flower Without Machine Assistance

"I don't want to live relying on machines. I just want to go naturally."

A person surnamed Lim recalled these casual words spoken by their mother while watching a drama after she began chemotherapy.

Lim's mother reportedly loved the camellia flowers at Seonunsa Temple.

Hearing her casual remark, Lim believed that her mother wished to fall like a camellia flower.

True to her wishes, Lim's mother ended her life without meaningless life-sustaining treatment.

Lim shared, "Camellias fall whole. Therefore, they are whole and beautiful. 'I want to fall like that flower' is the final lesson my mother left me, and the most humane choice I learned from the life-sustaining treatment decision-making system."

Lim won the grand prize in the general category at the 2026 Life-sustaining Treatment Decision-Making System Essay Contest, hosted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the National Agency for Management of Life-Sustaining Treatment, with an essay weaving together the stories of themselves and their mother.

In the practitioner category, which deals with experiences of filling out documents related to the life-sustaining treatment decision-making system, the grand prize was awarded to a psychiatrist surnamed Lee.

In the essay, Lee recalled, "The son of a man in his late 80s with dementia said one day, 'My father always said when he was healthy that he wouldn't want to extend his life meaninglessly by clinging to machines, but now I'm so bothered because I can't confirm my father's wishes due to his dementia.'"

Lee added, "(We) looked back together at the trivial conversations we shared during his lifetime and the aspects of life his father wanted to keep with dignity. I realized that psychiatrically supporting and comforting the minds of families stained with guilt and sorrow, and capturing a patient's warm life trajectory within the cold framework of legal documents, are the most important roles I must play within this system."

This year's contest received a total of 405 entries, more than double the number in 2024.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare explained that this reflects high public interest in self-determination at the end of life and life-sustaining treatment decisions.

The life-sustaining treatment decision-making system is a procedure that helps patients in the dying process bring their lives to a dignified close by allowing them to forgo or stop meaningless life-sustaining treatments such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

To forgo or stop life-sustaining treatment, two conditions are required: ▲ a medical judgment that the patient is in the dying process and ▲ confirmation of the patient's wishes regarding life-sustaining treatment.

The dying process is determined by the attending physician and one specialist in the relevant field, and the patient's wishes are confirmed through a previously written Advance Directive on Life-Sustaining Treatment or a Life-Sustaining Treatment Plan.

If there is no advance directive or plan and the patient is unable to express their wishes, the decision on whether to implement life-sustaining treatment can be made through confirmation by family members.

The National Agency for Management of Life-Sustaining Treatment is newly providing an "Advance Directive Family Sharing Function" on its website to spread a culture of discussing one's wishes regarding life-sustaining treatment with family in advance.

Kwak Soon-heon, Director General for Health Policy at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, stated, "Through this contest, we were able to reaffirm that life-sustaining treatment decisions are important choices connected to the lives of patients and their families. We will continue to improve accessibility to the system and strengthen support for participating medical institutions so that the public's wishes are respected until the very end of life."

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.