Hands folded as if in prayer. Who was listening for a no?

On the morning of July 10, Brigitte Stegemann lay in a bed at The Pearl, a care home in Cannifton, Ontario. Her eyes were shut and her hands were clasped the way she held them to pray. She was 83, had stomach cancer, was severely hard of hearing, and spoke English as a second language. Her granddaughter, Brigitte Kranendonk, was in the room for her medically assisted death. "My Oma is not moving," she said later. "She doesn't open her eyes. She doesn't nod. She doesn't say anything, and the doctor just said: 'Okay, well, I'm going to proceed.'" Within ten minutes her grandmother was dead.

That is the family's account, which went public on September 20, and none of it has been independently checked. The clinicians and the care home haven't spoken publicly, and those involved reportedly maintain she legally consented. On September 21, Belleville Police confirmed the case is open with their Criminal Investigations Division. By Kranendonk's telling, her grandmother first turned assisted death down because of her Christian faith, then agreed. Two days before the procedure, asked whether she knew she would die on Friday, her grandmother sobbed for 45 minutes: "I've made a mistake."

Laws like Canada's are written for people like Deb Robertson, 68, whose campaign became Illinois' "Deb's law" in September. "I believe that people have the right to leave this Earth with dignity and on their own terms," she told AP that same week. Their safeguards are meant to protect her yes and someone else's no. Canada ordinarily requires clear consent just before the procedure. A waiver exists for patients who lose capacity, but it stops applying once the patient shows refusal "through words, sounds or gestures." Nobody has reported whether there was one here. Either way, the safeguard comes down to someone at the bedside deciding what a silence means.

Proverbs 31 opens with advice a mother gave her son, King Lemuel, and today's verse is her answer to what his power is for.

She is no scold about suffering. In verses 6 and 7 she tells him to give strong drink to the one who is perishing, so the dying can forget their misery. What she won't allow is a fogged head on the throne, because a king who drinks will forget the law and twist the justice owed to the afflicted (verse 5). So the work of speaking falls on the one who can speak, never on the one who can't.

Folded hands can mean yes. They can also mean I'm afraid, or I didn't hear you, or I'm praying. Kranendonk has since taken her grandmother's case to the coroner, the patient ombudsman and the police, and the investigation will decide what happened in that room. Lemuel's mother would still say whose job it was to read them. It belonged to whoever had the power to proceed, and it meant listening for a no before going ahead.