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By
Grace
Dead Rebel Of The Week
~ Jack Kevorkian ~
OK, I know… the poor guy isn’t dead yet, technically, but I have waited for so long for the old bastard to pass away that I can’t hold my tongue any longer. Especially since I need his very untimely non-demise to illustrate a point I want to make in a brief response to an article Sebastian wrote on life, death and suicide (as a reply to Linda's article on the same subject).
So, I therefore hereby declare Jack Kevorkian dead. Sorry, old pal, but you of all people will understand. Consider it a fitting end. An assisted suicide, long over due.
- - -
Death…
It scares us. It sits there, forever perched on our shoulder like some gloomy gargoyle, as we drift through life, inevitably drawing closer to its final nesting place. Most of us don’t want to die. As crappy as life can be sometimes, it is still to be preferred over the big black nothingness that follows. Better the devil you know, and all that. Speaking of devils… even people who believe in heaven seem to prefer life here on Earth, with us sinners, to jumping head first into the afterlife. Of course, there is a convenient clause in their contract with God that strictly forbids suicide, classifying it as a sin. Cleverly circumnavigating all those hardships of day to day life, and just taking the shortcut into the Kingdom of Heaven is like cutting in line at the theme park. The attendants don’t approve. You gotta suffer through the three hours of scorching sun and crying kids like everybody else.
Jack Kevorkian didn’t think death should be an obstacle to life, but rather a solution to the suffering thereof. Not all life is worth living after all. Choosing between existing in extreme and dire pain and not existing at all, should be an easy choice to most. Of course, there are troubling circumstances, all unique to each individual on his sick bed. The loved ones who crowd around you, wiping the sweat of your forehead as you spasm in agony and despair. Can you just leave them behind? Hey, if they really loved you, they wouldn’t want to see you living like that, right? And if they’re too much of a bunch of wussies to slip that pillow over your face, you could always call good old Jack Kevorkian to bring over the remedy.
Dr. Kevorkian was born in 1928 and then raised somewhere in America by a pack of wolves. Not really, but it doesn’t really matter, This is not about his life up until his controversial stand on deadly matters, but rather the stand itself. Jack didn’t wait for death to turn the sands of time, he drew that line in the sand himself, as an agent for the people who employed him to do so.
For they did… Don’t kid yourself.
It started in 1987 with Kevorkian advertising in papers for his services as a “Death Consultant”. He felt there was no need for people who didn’t want to live to go on suffering, when he could help them out with a gentle push. He felt that we were all masters of our own personal bodies, and if we wanted to give up our last breath here on Earth, at the mercy of whatever hands may be more able than our own to end it for us, then by God, that is our right as free Americans. Shortly thereafter he began exercising these rights as people flocked to employ his services. It seemed that death was a rather unexploited market, and Kevorkian soon had his hands full, and his syringes empty.
He would come to a patient’s (client’s) bed, set up his self-injecting poison syringe apparatus, have the patient (client) sign a release form, waiving all responsibility from Jack himself, fully placing the power of the decision with the patient (client) and then the patient (client) would push a button that would administer the poison into his or her own blood stream, causing the patient (client) to gently pass away. Oh, yeah… they signed a check before that, too.
Debating whether or not Kevorkian made money on the demise of the terminally ill or not, is pointless. They all knew what they were doing in their last hour, and they wanted him to do it. That is what counts; the choice to govern the decisions that pertain to our own persons.
The government tried to shut Kevorkian down for many years, but since he was not, technically, administering the poison himself, but had the client push the button instead, he was legally untouchable.
And then, in 1998, during an episode of 60 minutes, Kevorkian himself pushed the button that killed his client, Thomas Yuok, and thus made himself, in the eyes of the law, a murderer. It didn’t matter that Mr. Yuok had signed a release form, blessing Kevorkian’s actions and expressing his true wish to die – Dr. Kevorkian was arrested and charged with pre-meditated murder in the first degree, later changed to second degree murder. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. While in prison he contracted Hepatitis C, and is now terminally ill. Due to his rapidly declining condition, he was paroled in December 2006, to live out his last few weeks in freedom. Ironically enough, Kevorkian has not requested to end his own life just yet, which prompted me to finish the business for him.
So, what has all this to do with anything?
Well, I happen to agree with Kevorkian that we should all be the masters of our own fates, especially in times of pain and suffering. I would hate to lie in some hospital bed, suspended in eternal agony, but powerless to end it myself. I would hope some loved one would slip that pillow over my face to relieve my torment indefinitely.
But do we stop at encouraging suicide in the case of physical suffering? What about mental and emotional anguish?
Is that any different?
Isn’t it almost harder, in some cases, to be in a state of absolute intellectual torture, with death as the only way out? Some people have minds like black holes, that just suck in the miseries and fuckuppedness of the world, making every waking hour an ordeal to live through.
Shouldn’t they also reserve the right to end their lives, without society judging them, or the people who want to help them?
Of course. In death, if never in life, we’re all equals. We are all entitled to live, and die, the way we choose.
So what is then wrong with the way my good friend Sebastian approached this subject? In his article, “Suicide is Self-Expression”, he made the fashionable statement that suicide is “the ultimate act of rebellion”, that only the very young and naïve can make, and still go on to live another day, penning down dark poems while poutingly blowing the black bangs out of their eyes. Don’t get me wrong, I am Sebastian’s biggest fan when it comes to his writing and his poetry, but in this one case he irked me, ever so slightly. I think suicide should be committed only as a result of an informed decision. I don’t think you’re in a position to make that informed decision until you have more life experience to draw from. Not only because you belittle the suffering of others, who truly suffer – that is after all their personal problem – but because there is so much more to see before you go. Since I happen to know some of the ways my dear German friend thinks in, I know that he believes we all just end when we die. That’s it, folks - Looney Tunes outro and all. That is all she wrote. Nothing more. Forever and ever. So then, what harm is there in making the best of the one and only moment of life you do get here?
Everybody’s got shitty lives and crappy problems. Some people are hooked on bad drugs, some are paralyzed from the neck down, some have cheating spouses, dying children and no money, and some yuppie was just fired from his job at Wall Street today. Some sports star just tore a ligament and some daughter of a minister in Utah just got pregnant. What are you gonna do? Kill yourself every time life rears its ugly head?
Life happens.
I don’t mind people committing suicide, as long as they do it as a last resort, when all other options are tried and tested. Otherwise you are not a fighter, but a lay-me-down-to-dier… literally. There is nothing rebellious about suicide, unless you do it in the face of death, as a mean to stick the middle finger to the Grim Reaper. But suicide as a way to stick the middle finger to life makes no sense.
“Living well is the best revenge”, some wise motherfucker once said, and I subscribe to that rule of thumb. I have had my fair share of black holes, miseries, broken hearts and plunges into despair and darkness, just like every single one of you reading this, but I have yet to let life get the best of me so far. You live to live another day, and another. And you make sure you have some fun and good people around you in the meantime. I have a feeling people expect so fucking much out of life that every day is just a big disappointment. With age comes the realization that I am not the Master of the Universe, and that I will not find that Magic Lamp to rub all my wishes out of. I am just another Joe Schmoe, making the best out of what I’ve got. Life will always throw its shit in my face, and I can either cry about it, or mop it up and laugh about it tomorrow.
Should I, however, ever feel that life does get the best of me, through terminal cancer or incessant pain, then I would call Jack Kevorkian in a heart beat. See, it’s not death that scares us. It’s life. Taking that beast by its horns and wrestle the fucker to the ground, with you coming out on top… that is the ultimate act of rebellion. Deciding to live until you can live no longer, no matter what… that takes balls. After that all bets are off, and you can make the informed decision to end it all. Go ahead, pull the trigger. See if I care. If you want to die that badly, then maybe you should. Good for you. Just don’t do it until you have beaten life back at least a good dozen of times, and reaped the benefits from doing so. It gets more and more rewarding every time. I promise.
Kevorkian stood up for his rights and assisted those who had no other options left. He was a rebel for going against everything society’s norms have drawn up as far as ethical code on life and death goes.
Anybody who sticks it to the Reaper by ending his own life, when all other options have been exhausted, is a rebel as well. But so is the person who fights it off until that day comes.
Crying about it falls in the crack between emo gay and naïve youth. The best remedy for that is time. Plain and simple.
Otherwise we’d all have hung ourselves by now.
Twice.
