At least that’s according to her eldest son, who is set to face off against his brother in Nassau County court Monday, arguing he wants to keep their mother on a ventilator and feeding tube, while his sibling hopes to pull the plug.
“The bottom line is, my brother wants to kill her, and I want her alive,” Edward Lester, 62, told The Post last week from mom Arline Lester’s room at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan.
As part of the heartbreaking legal tug of war, Edward submitted video he says was taken in November showing their mother even mouthing the words, “I want to live.’’
Arline, who taught math for 25 years at PS 125 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, has been physically incapacitated since suffering a string of circulation and breathing problems over the past 11 months, Edward said.
His brother, Kyle, 58, a lawyer and CPA from Dix Hills, has asked a judge in Nassau County Supreme Court to declare him her sole guardian, acknowledging that he hopes to take her off life support — but maintaining this is what their mother would want.
In court papers, Kyle accuses Edward of keeping their mom alive against her will so he can stay in her Long Beach home and “plunder” her assets, including the total $5,400 she collects every month from Social Security and her public-school pension.
“Sadly, it appears that Edward Lester is keeping [the mother] alive so that he can continue to wrongfully take her Social Security, Pension and monies she has in the bank,” the younger brother alleges in a Dec. 3 filing.
Kyle has requested that the hospital take his mother off life support in accordance with a 1999 living will, in which she’d asked not to be kept alive by machines if she ever became seriously ill, documents show.
“It is respectfully requested that the hospital abide by Ms. Lester’s wishes and cease all treatments which only serve to prolong her dying,” Kyle’s lawyers said in a Nov. 12 letter to Mount Sinai, which is part of the court case.
But Edward’s lawyer, Jonathan Rosenberg, told The Post, “They want her dead, regardless of what her own wishes are.”
Edward contends in court papers that his mother has clearly changed her mind since 1999. He also denies he has a financial stake in keeping his mother alive.
In fact, should her health improve enough that she can be moved from the hospital into a nursing home, as he hopes, her income and estate — and therefore both sons’ inheritance, worth approximately a quarter million dollars to each of them — will soon be gobbled up by nursing-home costs, Edward argues.
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| Arline Lester |
In his mother’s “I want to live” video, filmed Nov. 7 from her hospital bed, Edward asks Arline, “You have no leg, right?” referring to a recent amputation of her left leg due to circulatory problems. She nods yes.
“You understand that?” he asks.
Again, she nods yes.
“You have a feeding tube in you, you understand that, right? You have a tracheotomy, you have the thing breathing for you?” Edward asks his mom.
His mother nods yes each time.
Edward then urges her to mouth the words, “I want to stay alive,’’ just to be absolutely clear. She does.
“With everything wrong with you, do you still want to stay alive?” he asks again, gently.
Yes, she nods.
Six days after the video was taped, on Nov. 13, Lester executed a living will, in the presence of an elder-law lawyer, that states, “I wish to be treated aggressively for all conditions” and directs doctors “to continue to prolong my life as long as possible within the limits of generally acceptable health care standards.”
On Nov. 15, “The hospital staff conducted a competency hearing” administered by a psychiatrist, and “she was determined to be competent,” Edward’s court papers assert.
Kyle Lester declined comment to The Post on Sunday.
Edward insists that there’s still a chance their mother’s health will improve.
Two weeks ago, a resident doctor at Mount Sinai, Dr. Varun Devaraj, told Edward that his mother “will squeeze his fingers when told, and shake her head yes or no to respond to questions,” his court papers say.
Devaraj “states that her actual prognosis is good and he is not discounting her ‘eventual improvement,” the papers say, including the possibility she could be weaned off the breathing machine, as she has been twice before.
“I’m not giving up,” Edward said.
“I know there’s no happy ending to this story, I know what time it is,” the son said. “But I think as a matter of fairness, this woman is a tough woman from Brooklyn, and everybody deserves to live their life out.”
Full Article & Source:
91-year-old LI woman mouths ‘I want to live’ on video amid legal battle
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