A couple of weeks ago, one of my oldest friends called from Oregon.  After talking about a new vacation home he was buying, he suddenly switched gears: "Since you live in one of those f-ing backwards red states that don't have physician-assisted dying, I hope you've been planning your suicide."  That got me thinking.

Some stories.  It seems to me that I've known more suicides than is statistically probable.  Mr. VanEshen, my eighth-grade homeroom teacher, committed suicide.  He and his friendly rival, Mr. Shroeder, were coaches as well as social studies teachers.  They were both big, powerful, and sometimes violent, and all of us were frightened of them.  Once in p.e. class, Mr. Schroeder pulled one of my classmates upright by his hair and slapped him hard twice--all because of a misunderstanding about double dribbling, which the student was discussing in terms of the two-dribble limitation for the six-girl, half-court basketball then played in Iowa, not the violation.  At rehearsal for our eighth-grade graduation, Mr. VanEshen threw a student into a metal folding chair so hard that the chair was bent out of shape.  (So much for nostalgia about 1950s small-town schools.)  It didn't seem as if either had trouble externalizing their anger.  As eighth graders, we stayed in one room, and the teachers rotated classrooms.  One day, Mr. Schroeder decided to play a practical joke on Mr. VanEshen, who came to the classroom next, by putting a thumb tack on his chair.  We all sat in class petrified, knowing we'd want to laugh but scared to death of the consequences if  we did.  As in a movie, Mr. VanEshen kept almost sitting down, but not quite doing so until finally he plopped himself into the chair.  His face turned red.  We were absolutely silent, not so much as a giggle.  Fortunately, Mr. Schroeder couldn't contain his pleasure and came rushing into the room.  Mr. VanEshen didn't seem like a probable suicide, but he later killed himself for reasons unknown to thirteeen-year olds.

In graduate school, one of my professors was supposedly a hotshot standout from Yale.  He taught contemporary poetry and didn't seem to understand a single poem during the semester.  At first, the class helped him out, but that didn't last long, and the class turned on him in what became the most unpleasant class I ever had.  Meanwhile, his marriage was falling apart.  He killed himself.  One of my brightest students in the first class I ever taught, the son of a rich and prominent Oklahoma family, called me after the semester was over.  He was in jail in Montana and wanted me to send him bail money.  While I was making the arrangements, he hanged himself.  One day early in my career at Washburn, I went to the library to check out a couple of books on T. S. Eliot.  Browsing through one of them as I walked back to the English building, I found a note that Bob G., a very bright student, had written to me about some point of interpretation of an Eliot poem.  He had never given it to me.  When I got back to the building, there was a phone call from Bob's girlfriend, telling us that he had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.  And in talking about gun control and background checks, I told the story in this blog about the colleague I found, positioned in her bathtub, who had shot herself in the head.  I could go on.  There are more.  And more recent ones, but they are too immediate and painful to recount here.

I have no religious (obviously) or moral qualms about suicide.  I don't think it's necessarily--or even often--cowardly.  I don't want any "heroic" end-of-life measures taken.  My instructions read DNR and "No Code."  I trust that at the end, the doctors will give me enough morphine to ease the pain and ease my way out of here.  I don't want to place the burden for decisions on Mohamed, so medical decisions will be made by my lawyer, whom I've known for a long time--well enough that I trust him, not well enough so that there's any emotional involvement.  Death is natural and inevitable.  And while I'm not a romantic follower of nature, which is, after all, "red in tooth and claw" and which is as responsible for my cancer as for the roses I should stop and smell, still, I've never understood the obsession with prolonging life by artificial means.

If Kansas were a state that had physician-assisted dying, I can imagine a point at which I might decide with doctors and with Mohamed to have a quiet, sober discussion of whether the time was right.  But it's not such a state.  One reason suicide isn't on my bucket list is the effect it would have on those I would leave behind, especially Mohamed.  I couldn't devastate him by doing it without his knowing ahead of time.  That would be selfish and cruel.  On the other hand, I couldn't discuss it with him first and ask him to leave the house for several hours because I'd be too afraid that he'd be implicated for aiding and abetting. 

And then, too, even contemplating committing suicide just isn't in my nature.  Maybe it's cowardice: I'd be too afraid I'd screw it up with all sorts of disastrous consequences.  Maybe it's curiosity: I'd be too afraid I'd miss an interesting visit.  Even if I thought about it, I'd put it off until I was no longer capable of carrying it out.  I realize this is easy to say now when I'm not really in any pain.  I know, and have recently been reminded, that the end may be difficult.  I'm afraid of how it may play out, and the fear seems quite reasonable and realistic.  But whatever my rational thoughts and fears, I know myself too well to think that suicide is an act that would even seriously cross my mind.  Nature, indifferent as it is, will just have to take its course.