Michael Farrugia, who speaks for the opposition about health matters, is pressing for legislation that will bar the next-of-kin of the recently dead from over-ruling their instructions that their organs be donated to others.

As matters stand, if you carry a donor card and even if you leave specific instructions that you wish your eyes or internal organs to be taken out and given to somebody in desperate need as soon as you die, your closest relative can prevent doctors from carrying out your wishes.

This, of course, is as wrong as thwarting or failing to follow precisely the instructions contained in written wills on the distribution of property and personal effects, but it does not have the same legal implications. It is yet another example of how our laws have failed to keep up with science, even decades after certain scientific developments first became normalised.

Our laws have failed to keep abreast of DNA-testing for paternity, of the artificial insemination of women to create babies who are not biologically their husband’s, of in vitro fertilisation, and of the advances in organ transplant operations. All of these are happening in a legal wilderness which has created a minefield of real and potential abuse, with future complications that we prefer not to think about.

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It seems to me obvious – morally and in a way that should be backed up by law – that if I leave written instructions for my heart, kidneys or eyes to be given to others should I die suddenly, then my husband, as my next of kin, has no right at all to over-rule my decision the moment I am dead.

This is as obvious as the fact, which in this case is backed up by law, that he has no moral or legal right, as next of kin, to rip up my will and dispose of my assets as he deems fit. But amazingly, the things that should be obvious are so often not.

It took us until the 1940s to realise that it was obvious that women should have a vote, for example, and even then it was only obvious to some people in Malta. Even the women themselves never questioned the fact that they were second-class citizens or “large children” in the eyes of the laws of Malta.

The opposition spokesman on health has suggested that the matter could be debated by parliament’s social affairs committee and then a bill should be drawn up. Why debate something so obvious? What is there to quibble about? A person’s wishes should not be over-ruled just because he or she has died and is no longer in a position to fight back.

While we are talking about it, and I hope parliament takes up these matters with alacrity as they are the much needed finer points of civilised society, we should also prevent by law the over-ruling of a decision, made explicitly by a person in writing, as to where he or she wants to be buried. The law should also be far-seeing, and include within its scope the wish to be cremated rather than buried.

These wishes are seriously considered, though they may seem trivial and pointless to some people, who take the view that the body is just a carcass and no one should care what happens to their remains. These people should be reminded that care and disposal of the body after death has strong cultural, social and personal significance, and respect for the wishes of the dead is a factor of civilisation.

Decisions as to what is to become of their body have meaningful implications for the persons who make them, as well as for those who are left behind. Yet even when expressed in writing, in a document witnessed and filed by a notary or lawyer, they mean nothing in legal terms. The next of kin can rip up the document and bury the body as he or she

pleases.

When people make a declaration as to the grave in which they want to be buried, they are making a statement of love, loyalty, identity and rejection, and it should never be ignored. It is deeply immoral to defy and thwart a person in death, and though I do not believe in ghosts and in angry souls that haunt, I certainly do believe that we should be prevented from discounting or dismissing the wishes of the dead, just as we would not like our own such wishes to be brushed aside.

I know a married woman who, when she made her official will on the disposal assets, also had prepared for her a document declaring that she wishes to be buried in her family grave, with her parents. She wanted to spell this out because wives are by customary default buried in the family grave of their husband. In death, they ‘belong’ to their husband and his family in a way that they no longer belong in life – social change and the law having long done away with all that.

This woman particularly does not want to be buried with her husband’s family. She loves her husband, but his family are not her family and she does not identify with them in any way, nor does she have any sense of belonging to their group. Her primary link is to her own blood-family, and she wants to be buried with them. Yet the document she composed and signed before a lawyer has no legal relevance.

The day she dies, her husband can rip it up and disrespect her wishes, burying her in his family’s grave. So why did she bother preparing that document at all? Again, the reason is obvious. The fact that your wishes in death, apart from your wishes in respect of property and material assets, are not safeguarded by law does not mean that you should not make sure of spelling them out.

Spineless fatalism never achieved anything. At least express your wishes and give your next of kin the opportunity to respect them. Even if they will not, the appropriate law might be enacted before your death, obliging them to do so.

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Many years ago, I went to the funeral of a woman who had died fairly young. One of her relatives was standing next to me as she was buried in her husband’s family’s grave. Almost as an aside, this person said to me: “You know, she left instructions that she was to be buried with her father, in her family’s grave, and not with X’s family” - (X being the husband) – “but ma jistax ikun! Wives are always buried with their husband’s family.”

I remember feeling weak with outrage when I heard this, even as I watched her coffin descend into the very grave in which she did not want to be buried. How could she have been so thwarted in death by her own husband? Why had her adult offspring failed to defend her wishes against their autocratic father?

Or perhaps they had, and he had won, because he was the official next of kin and could over-rule his wife’s burial wishes if he wanted to. The law gave him that right, not by explicit statement, but by omission. And it still does.

The strong sense of the wrong that was done that day hasn’t left me even now, so very many years later. No doubt, it has happened many times since, to others, and will happen again and again, in this country that has no respect for the wishes of the dead, except where material assets are concerned – a clear revelation as to all that we consider important.