On suicide

Last night I wrote a post to work through some feelings about a family friend dying.  I was vague out of respect for the family’s privacy and was very upset when I wrote it.  I did not realize until today that it could be misconstrued as a suicide note.  It wasn’t, but I can see how some people thought that.

In any case, it made me think about suicide, and I wasn’t planning on talking about it, but since I am, I have a lot to say.

I don’t know when I first learned that suicide was a thing, but it must have been early, because I had feelings about it in middle school.  I believe I became aware of it by learning about Jack Kevorkian, which I know is not the same thing, but I’m pretty sure I learned about both at the same time.  I read books about it in the library to try to figure out why someone would ever want to end their own life.  They were descriptive but not illuminating. 

I have known several people who killed themselves.  Some had obvious reasons.  Some didn’t.  Some warned they would kill themselves.  Some didn’t.  There is no universal profile of a person who commits suicide beyond the fact that they are all in a lot of pain.  I do not think people who kill themselves are cowardly.  I think they are sad, a kind of sad I have been fortunate enough to never experience. 

My cousin killed himself in the summer of 2011.  He lived for almost two weeks between the day he hanged himself and the day he was taken off life support.  I know what it is to watch someone die.  I know what it is to know that death must be better than this fake life.  I know what the aftermath looks like, how you all learn to live around this hole.  I know the damage suicide causes.

I read an article a few years ago about an organization that helps people with terminal illnesses end their lives.  It made me think a lot about life and illness and suffering.  These were people who knew they would deteriorate, who knew they would become unable to care for themselves, people in a lot of pain.  Because euthanasia is illegal in most places, these people had no mechanism for ending their own lives if they got past the point where they could do it themselves.  They either had to kill themselves while they were relatively able bodied or risk the imprisonment of anyone who helped them. 

I don’t think that’s fair.  I don’t think that you can lament all the time these people lost when they have no safe way to wait until the last moment.  When you live in a sick body, there is no guarantee it will work tomorrow.  And as a sick person, I know the fear that you will be mentally aware but physically incapable of executing even the most basic functions.  The terror and humiliation felt at this prospect is overwhelming. 

I do not want to kill myself, but I think it should be my right.  I think you get to decide how to end your story.  I think that you get to decide when you have had enough.  If you have reason to believe your life will truly never improve, to believe that you will progressively deteriorate, I think you have the right to say that you don’t want your family to watch you die.  I’m not saying terminally ill patients should kill themselves.  I’m saying they should get to decide if it is the best solution for them and their family. 

There recently has been a story going around about a 29 year old woman with a terminal brain cancer who has decided to end her life at a time of her choosing.  People have big feelings about it, because it’s the kind of story that makes you look at your own life really hard, and it makes you wonder what you would do in her place.

Some people think that she is courageous for choosing to end her life.  I’m not sure courageous is the word I would use.  I think these people think it’s courageous because they have never been very sick and they have never had to sit in a hospital room where their doctors gave them stark numbers on average life expectancy.  I don’t think this is courageous.  I think she is scared of the damage she will do to others and she is scared of the pain and of being helpless.  That’s okay.  It is her right to choose when she doesn’t want to do this anymore.  She feels this is the right choice for her and her family.

Other people think that people should be telling her not to kill herself.  They think that if killing yourself when you are sick means that you are a hero, then what does that mean for all of the people who live until their bodies at last completely fail?  Does that mean that those people aren’t heroes?

And that is the point that all the healthy people of the world are missing.  Sick people aren’t heroes.  We are just people, and like everything else in life, looking for worth in one person by comparing them to another is unlikely to yield truth.  Everyone’s life is so individual that you can’t compare them effectively.  So it is the same with sick people.  This woman’s decision means nothing about the sick people who choose not to kill themselves.  It just means that she felt that for herself, suicide was better than suffering.  For some sick people, just having the choice is a comfort.  Just knowing that they can end their pain when they are really ready is enough consolation sometimes. 

I do not want to die.  I do not want to kill myself.  But if I got sick enough that I wanted, I would hope that people wouldn’t talk about me like I was destroying their faith in humanity because of a personal decision that I made for myself and my family.  I would hope that people would respect my right to die.

We are not heroes.  We are just people, trying to make the best choices we can.