All The (Dead) Horses

CNN.com, my source for pressing news of the day, recently ran a video with the headline “Lottery Winner Loses Ticket.” As in the most elegant journalism, the headline conveyed the essence of the story. The only detail missing from the headline was that the lost ticket was worth $500,000. I suppose a headline that read “Lottery Winner Loses $500K Ticket” would have given away too much.
If ever an argument could be made for suicide, assisted or other, this would be the occasion. This would be a public shame from which there can be no recovery. (I refer to losing the lottery ticket, not being featured on CNN.com.) Honor demands hauling out the knives and performing ritual seppuku.
My views on the more assisted sort of suicide have evolved over the years. When I was in my twenties, Karen Quinlan was all the rage. I told anyone who would listen that I didn’t think any measure was extreme if it was keeping me alive. At the time I said “If the vegetable has my social security number, keep the machines humming.”
Time passed. Life experiences mounted. Holding hands. Cleaning up. Sitting by hospital beds. Watching robust and healthy, strong and beautiful men lose every part of their health and strength and seeing the beauty become entirely internal. The man I loved wasted and went blind. I know that I do not have the grace and strength and forbearance of those men. The questions to which I don’t have an answer are does that give me the right to end my own life? And, if so, when?
There are days when I think that if I have to start using the Large Print Reader’s Digest, call Dr. Kevorkian. Most days the answers are: I don’t know and I don’t know if I will ever know. I’m a riot at parties.
What I do know is that this painful and difficult decision should be left entirely to me and to you and to our parents and to all of those who come after us. God knows it should never be forced, but nor should it be forbidden.
Government, at any level, has no place in private choices. Not in our sickrooms, not in our living rooms (weed, porn, stuff I can’t even imagine), not in our bedrooms. Maybe marrying siblings isn’t such a great idea. On the other hand, if there is a right to privacy implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment shouldn’t it be an absolute right? One person may wish to draw the line at miscegenation, another at gay marriage. I may wish to draw the line at polygamy. Where is the line really? And who has the right to say? I would argue that, as uncomfortable as certain choices make me, the only line should be one that protects children.
Oh my god. I’m getting in touch with my inner Libertarian. This is going to be one of the happiest days in my brother-in-law’s life.