Book review: SISU - How my mother’s fight for her death changed the course of my life by Shaana Hamm
2025
Death comes to us all, but how we die is unique to each of us.
My father died of a heart attack, in hospital, in the middle of the night, alone. My mother died with medical assistance, at home, with my sister and me holding her hands. Two deaths, very different one from the other. I was relieved my father had been released from his failing body, but I was honoured to help my mother ease her way from this world in a way she wanted, was able to chose, and was grateful to have.
About 76,000 people in Canada have chosen an assisted death since medical assistance in dying (MAiD) was legalized in this country in 2016.
By reading SISU, a memoir by Shaana Hamm, I learned how very different a MAiD death can be from what I witnessed with my mother’s — and I was reminded how important it is that we share our stories by writing them and sharing them. How else can we learn and expand our understanding?
Shaana (a Finnish name pronounced ‘Shawna’) loved her mum fiercely and wanted her to live forever — or at least into her nineties. But that was not to be. A hemorrhagic stroke led to her medically assisted death at age 72. And it was not an easy path to arrive at this wanted end.
Shaana did not initially embrace the idea that her mother might choose to die, might want to die to escape the metaphorical straightjacket the stroke had put her in. But over time and by witnessing her mum’s struggles, Shaana came to see the situation from her mum’s perspective. The stroke made speech difficult for her mother, which added to the challenges because the person must be able to give verbal consent.
All this and more makes for a gripping story into which Shaana weaves her own journey towards, and then with, sobriety. This makes for a compelling braiding of two emotionally charged health-and-personal-agency stories that enlighten and inspire. Persistence and love play key roles; without plenty of both, Shaana might not have lived to witness her mother’s chosen way of dying, and her mother might not have earned the right to die on her own terms.
While both our mothers died with medical assistance, their journeys that took them to that end are very different. SISU opened my eyes to how fraught some of those journeys can be — and that makes me all the more determined that MAiD is a choice that must be both protected and supported in Canada.
Shaana Hamm is a first-time author already working on her second book.
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Amanda Le Rougetel is a writer and community educator, whose handbook How to be a Writer in Four Steps will be released in October.
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