Some of our most important ethical decisions are made with the least analysis. At least that was the way it was for me this morning at 10:34, when my sister and I directed that my 89-year-old mom, Eleanor Coulouris Marshall, be taken off of life support.

The last time I had seen my mother was on Thursday, when I visited her in the hospital. She was awfully sick for sure, battling a persistent colon infection that was proving resistant to antibiotics, but she was a fighter, and nobody, especially her, thought that she was in any immediate peril. By Friday night, as I was trying to work my way back home from Winston-Salem in the midst of high winds and flight delays, the doctors were talking about removing her colon as the only way to keep the bacteria from poisoning her system.

They didn’t get the chance. Prepping her for the operation in the early morning hours, Mom’s heart stopped: they resuscitated her, and she was conscious, but there was no hope. Without the surgery, she couldn’t survive the infection, and all were agreed that the infection would kill her. When I finally got to the hospital, my mom was on life-support. She might wake up, I was told; my sister had spoken with her, briefly, an hour before. She wasn’t really aware of what was going on. My mother was terrified at the prospect of death, and always had been. I did not want her to be frightened or panicked, or to awaken only long enough to learn, if she could comprehend it, that the infection was killing her, and that nothing could be done.

The doctor said that while she could survive on life support for quite a while—days, perhaps, and maybe longer—stopping life support would end her life in a matter of seconds. My sister and I, who had written authority to make such a decision, didn’t hesitate.

“Do it,” we said.

And that was that.

What ethical considerations went into the decision? I can only speculate after the fact. I wasn’t thinking as an ethicist, but as a son who knew my mother very well, loved her, and who had her complete trust. She had a wonderful life for 88 of her 89 years; only the last was unhappy, primarily because her whole sense of identity and purpose was lost when my father, and her husband of 63 years, died in December of 2009. She was in a bad place now; she hated living alone, and she hated living with anyone other than family even more. I invited her to live with me, but she refused, for my father had always insisted that they should never be “a burden.” She was so depressed without Dad that she had trouble getting through the day, but she was always expressing hope that she would eventually get over her grief, eventually walk without pain, and drive again, and be able to travel—essentially be 40 again. Her fighting spirit kept her hopeful, but it also kept her from dealing with reality. She had been falling since November of last year because she refused–refused—to use a walker consistently. A serious injury was just a matter of time.

Had she lost her colon to emergency surgery, Mom would have been horribly depressed, but she would have preferred that to the alternative. She would prefer being an invalid to the alternative too, but would have been miserable beyond imagining. I couldn’t apply the Golden Rule, because my Mom was very different from me in this respect. I’d want to be taken off of life-support; give me a useful life, or no life at all.  My Mom? She would be terrified, she would be in despair, she would be in denial, but I know that she would never be able to voluntarily go into a dark unknown that always frightened her. And she was going. Mom would often ask me if she would meet up with Dad after death, like the recent finale of “Medium,” where Allison dies of old age and is suddenly young and united with Joe in the Great Beyond. “I don’t know,” was the bravest answer I could give her, rather than the more honest and direct, “No.” “I think so,” she would say. That was the only way she could keep her fear of death at bay. “I hope so,” was my reply.

She didn’t believe it any more than I do.

Ultimately, I decided that “pulling the plug” was the kindest act, keeping my Mom safe from fright and worry, leaving her as much dignity as possible, for dignity was very important to her. I wanted so much to be able to look into her eyes one last time and tell her how grateful I was to her, how much her unequivocal, complete and unwavering love and affection had meant to me. But that was what I needed, not her.

It felt wrong to decide when a woman who never could accept the inevitability of death had to die. But I believe, I hope, that it was the right and loving thing to do.

I am indebted to my mom for everything; not least of which was a daily, 60 year course on the meaning of love.

I just wish there was some way to know if I passed her final exam.