What's wrong with Assisted Suicide?

There are assisted suicide "bills" pending in several states. Oregon has had this law in effect for several years now and a while ago, a young lady who found out she had brain cancer, made headlines by going to Oregon so she could have a doctor prescribe her a lethal dose of medication.  And we all watched as a judge allowed the estranged husband (who was living with his girlfriend) carry out his wishes of putting his wife, Terry Schiavo, who was sentient but severely brain damaged, out of her "misery" by starving her to death.  It took her several days to die and the judge ignored that her family wanted to take her home and care for her.  (A Jewish neurologist who had studied the case, wrote me that her death was shameful - she could swallow liquids and could have been fed jello etc even if they removed the feeding tube.  What I didn't know at the time was that Fr Pavone who had witnessed this death, said, they stationed several police officers around Terry's bed to prevent anyone from relieving her pain of starving to death by wetting her lips or even feeding her some jello!).  Shame on Americans for letting this happen.

For being a society who wants to avoid death at all costs, we seem to be rather anxious to cause the death of others considered a "burden" or too expensive or ?  For example Planned Parenthood has terminated the lives of 7 million unborn babies and since abortion was legalized in the USA (also a decision from "the bench" rather than the legislature), 53 million unborn babies have lost their lives to abortion.

Part of the problem with "assisted suicide" is wrong thinking - the prevalent idea is that in a suicide, the person takes a large dose of pills, goes to sleep and never wakes up.

WRONG!  When the person starts to go into respiratory failure, he/she DOES wake up but is unable to cry for help and suffers for a while.  The so called death penalty where they give a lethal injection is also not instantaneous - the victim takes a couple of hours to die, and is in pain throughout the process.

I watched a lady die - I actually gave her Viaticum ("food for the journey" or last Communion). She writhed in agony.  I think most of us die painfully just as it was painful to enter this earth (why a new born baby screams after birth).

Also not only was I the victim of a loved one committing suicide (our Mother took her own life) but also have witnessed the effects of a suicide on loved ones.  It took me two years of counseling to get over my mother's suicide.  And young people suffer even worse - a young friend of ours whose mother took her own life - she was perhaps 5 or 6 when that happened, still suffers depression and more, even today as a teenager.

That is, if you don't care about yourself, at least realize that if you choose that way to death, it will really hurt those around you (not withstanding what God might have to say about it all when you stand before the Throne of the Lamb).

St John Paul II showed the world many things (and wrote one of the best encyclicals on the evils of abortion) but most important, he showed us how to die with dignity - he, ill and totally disabled with Parkinson's disease, waited on God to take him.  Let's pray that all will follow his inspiring example and choose life!

Would eternal life work on earth?

The possibility of whether eternal life would work on earth, is an idea which has been pondered, probably for centuries.  It certainly has been tossed back and forth during my lifetime as can be observed in some of the movies, discussing the possibility.

Sickness and pain would have to be somehow deleted from life - an idea extremely attractive to a society which sees no benefit in suffering.

Assuming that, there is the movie, "Tuck Everlasting".  Tuck drinks from a spring in the forest and finds he does not age at all (aging also has to be removed from the equation).  He does retain his youth and strength, but watches all his loved ones live, get old and die.  The movie ends with him standing all alone.

In fact, loneliness is something humans feel would be a given, if we outlive those we love.  That even can be seen in the elderly who have outlived parents and kids - they are extremely lonely and loneliness can be more painful than physical pain.

Which brings in the question, is physical pain the worst thing we can suffer?  According to a Dr Oz show, the consensus of the audience (and it seems, Dr Oz as well) was that if the physical pain gets pronounced enough, it would be a logical solution to seek someone to help us end our lives.  A woman with a type of muscular dystrophy which has taken away her ability to walk and use her arms, was prominent in the show - she did not use a respirator so apparently could eat and breath well and also could move her head fairly well. She was depressed and wanted the right to have a physician help her end her life.   Interestingly enough however, when Dr Oz asked her if she would favor not being treated if she got pneumonia again allowing her to die, she evaded the question. (She has had pneumonia twice and has been treated).

Another man, who looked elderly and was much more disabled than the lady - he required a respirator - told the audience that he appreciates every day of life he has been given.

Interesting, are the movies, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (one made in the 1950's and one made in the 1970's).  Tonight I saw yet, another remake entitled "Invasion" released in 2007.  The story is that some type of invasion from Outer Space takes over humans and recreates them as devoid of emotions.  "There will be no more war or suffering," the protagonists are told.  In all of these movies, there are a couple of humans who fight against the takeover, preferring their flawed emotions to becoming a being who is incapable of human love.  The latest version has a happy ending. A vaccine is found and given as a sort of antidote to the cells taking over humanity and everyone is cured and life goes back to normal.  But the leading lady is shown in the last scene as wondering whether the world with war and sadness is really preferable.

In the second and third movie of this group ("Invasion of the Body Snatchers"), each human who is taken over, is shown going through a type of aging after which s/he wakes up with no emotions, no ability to love.  This seems to be asking the question - if eternal live exists, wouldn't we have to be changed?  Our human concept of the change necessary, is being given - what the psychiatrists calls a blunted affect, i.e. a deadening of the emotions and all we care about.

Utimately, there seems a consensus that an eternal life here on earth would not be nice.  The movie, "Cocoon" depicts elderly folks stumbling across aliens who have somehow achieved eternal life but in order to obtain this, these elderly must go with the aliens to their planet, far away from the earth.

The Christian concept of eternal life is not a lessened awareness but rather a heightened awareness.  Something we humans cannot picture.  And even if we do not understand how this will be achieved, we have the testimony of Jesus, still the only man who ever made such an impression on the earth that He literally stopped time (which we then, divided in "AD or "anno Domini" i.e. "after God" and BC i.e. "before Christ").  If we still have questions, the Bible tells us "eye has not seen, ear has not heard, of the glories which God has planned for those who love Him."

There is a lot of evidence, observational and logical that we should not try to force our premature death but instead should patiently wait for God to call us.  There is also a rather impressive body of evidence that when God calls He will "make all things well" , not by us ceasing to exist but rather by our living in a full beautiful manner, the likes of which we cannot concept here on earth.

And of course, Cardinal Dolan said it much better than I did! :)

Death

Sooner or later in a blog like this, I've got to write about death. Because it's something we all, will have to face.

However, I find I wrote about death last week so this will be my second post about it. Oh well.

I will never forget an email I got early in my web net era. The writer, a young woman, wrote:

"You are correct about starvation killing us. What I want to know is, how long does it take to die of starvation? You see I stopped eating a week ago."

In my usual manner, I was reading email in the early hours of the morning and I stared at that one for several minutes, a feeling of horror creeping over me. Something about it led me to believe she was serious and really wanted to end her own life. I wrote back what might be called a collection of "bromides" (what DO you say to someone who is intent on ending her life?). Like "you have your whole life ahead of you" and "can anything be so bad that death is preferable to living?" and so forth. I never heard back from the woman so don't know if she was reaching out in her final hour or if she aborted the plan. I hope, of course, the latter.

We all have seen death in the movies and TV many times. I'm sure you are familiar with the scene.

Bad guys (and women) die quickly, usually by accident or gunshot but since they have no personality, we don't worry about them.

And good people die lying there, either in their beds or on the street. They have a serene look on their faces - some even seem look wide eyed at the other side of the room suggesting they have seen an angel coming to get them (and in many movies, people are SHOWN on the other side, walking in a beautiful field of flowers toward a golden horizon).

Church tells us we should work and pray for a Holy Death. Which is basically what the movies are showing us. A beautiful death where we smoothly transition from life to eternity. In the "Hail Mary" we ask Jesus' mother to pray for us during the two most important times in our lives.... NOW at the moment -and- at the hour of our death.

Trouble is, being 63 years old, I'm beginning to see some folks around me die and their deaths are anything but the movie variety. They are angry, they often fight with their families and a greater number than we would like to think, commit suicide by stopping consuming liquids and food.

A relative in our family who was dying of cancer, told his wife "Come on let's get on with this" and he stopped drinking fluids. He rallied for a day when some of his siblings came to visit him and he ate some popsicles but then the day after they left, no fluids again.

A priest friend of mine had two personas. One was the kindly elderly priest - what most people who knew him saw. The other was the one I knew, an angry disappointed man who wondered every day whether he had made the wrong life decision. A man who was so angry, he felt he couldn't face his anger and told me he distracted himself when he started thinking about it. "Has that diminished your anger?" I once asked him. "No" he admitted.

I felt it's always better to face one's fears and anger because that's the only way to get rid of it. One of my favorite poems is "the litany of fear" from Herbert's Sci Fi book, DUNE:

"Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it is gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

Of course, men tend to suppress their emotions and he was no exception. On the contrary. He did not take my advice about this, and so, instead of facing his fears, he got increasingly angry and afraid inside. And it began to, I believe, take its toll on him physically.

I guess I hoped he would come to grips with his life situations which really were not bad - he had lived a long full life and I thought a nice retirement and resting for his last years when he really could pray and spend time with God getting ready for the big passage (and interceding for the many people in the world who are needy), would be the ticket.

But that was not to be. Instead he starved himself more and worked feverishly to avoid thinking about how angry and afraid he was inside.

"My greatest fear", he once told me, "is that when I face God in death, I will reject Him!" I thought that was ridiculous - who would say "no" to God. He looked sad and said I didn't understand. And I guess I didn't.

But God in His Mercy, must have thought that a real possibility because as it turned out, he had some kind of stroke and was so confused before he lost consciousness forever, that he undoubtedly didn't even THINK about refusing God's mercy.

And I suppose in a way that tells us just how merciful God IS but geesh, this is NOT how you want to see a priest die!

I am remembering a saying I once heard "most men live a life of quiet desperation!"

I have seen one lady die a Holy Death - she was a patient named Anna whom I visited a few times to give her Communion. And I was not with her when she died but I saw in her face, when I visited her the last couple of times, real beauty, breathtaking beauty. Almost like a luminescence shining out from her face. I bring those I go to visit, treats like candy or small gifts (magazines etc) but to this lady, the greatest gift I could give her was praying the Rosary with her. One time she made it through (and this was difficult because she was very ill). "We made it through," she said, triumphantly in her weakened voice and touched my arm with her frail hand. "yes, true" I said, smiling at her beautiful face.

The last time I visited her, three days before her death, she was too weak to say a Rosary so we said a couple of "Hail Mary's". I gently took her arm and said "Anna, you know I love you!" and she said "Yes I do and I love you too".

A couple of days later, her daughter called to tell me that she had died. I felt great serenity about her death because when I saw her, she was on the threshold of Heaven.

But most I have seen die, do not die Holy Deaths and some die definitely unholy deaths but God in His Mercy will reach out to us all and I guess that's as inspirational as seeing someone die a Holy Death.