At 87, Lochan Bakshi's sharp mind has decided when to free his failing body.

When he dies - sooner rather than later, he plans - he wants his body to be burned, the ashes mixed with garden soil and used to plant a rose bush. When the flower buds, he imagines his grandsons exclaiming, "'Grandpa has come to life.' That is my reincarnation. What else?"

The retired biology professor has thought hard about death and about the way he wants it to arrive. After all, he's seen men like himself hunched over in chairs in long term-care centres, their minds absent, unaware there hasn't been a visitor for years.

His cousin had a massive stroke that stole his memory and his mind. He would sit in his own mire until the next nursing visit, bathed by his caring wife. "It struck me: 'why should he be like this? Why not just finish it? He's just a vegetable,'" Bakshi said to her. "You mean kill my husband? I can't kill him," she responded.

"Nobody should be in that situation," Bakshi says, his cheeks apple-flushed, his sharp eyes framed with straying silver eyebrows and wire rimmed bifocals.

"I am convinced that I don't want to be like that."

So in about two months, give or take, he'll refuse his thriceweekly dialysis treatments, he says, then wait seven to 10 days for his kidneys and the rest of his body to fail. He'd prefer an injection to put him to sleep peacefully and quickly like his beloved cat Spooky, whose kidneys failed, too, leaving him yowling in pain through the night before Bakshi took him to the vet. One tiny needle in Spooky's paw and two seconds later, he was dead.

"So you see, we removed his pain so quickly," Bakshi said. "How can we not do the same for humans?"

Bakshi wants to open the debate on euthanasia in Alberta following a landmark report released last month in Quebec that suggested the province legalize doctor-assisted euthanasia in "exceptional circumstances" for those who are terminally ill.

The Dying with Dignity Commission, made up of nine members from all political parties, studied the issue for two years before rejecting the idea of legalizing assisted suicide - performed by a family member - but recommending people should be able to seek aid to die in a medical environment.

"Some sufferings can't be relieved satisfactorily and the seriously ill who want to put an end to their sufferings (that) they deem senseless, come up against a refusal that isn't in line with Quebec's values of compassion and solidarity," reads the report, released March 21.

But the provinces can do little when the federal criminal code makes it illegal to counsel, aid or abet someone to commit suicide, says Erin Nelson, a professor in the University of Alberta's law faculty who specializes in health-care ethics.

Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium, and the American states of Oregon and Washington, as long as strict medical protocols are followed. That's not the case in most countries, including Canada.

Nelson agrees with Joe Arvay, a lawyer in Victoria, who says there are discrepancies in Canada's stance on the right to die with dignity.

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