#23: Who Wouldn't Want to be Called 'Dr. Death?'

Dr. Jack Kevorkian died yesterday, of complications from pneumonia and kidney disease. He was 83. He died naturally, in a hospital bed.

I know what will happen: it had already begun by the time I read the story this morning, admittedly 24 hours behind the fast-breaking news cycle that swallows us while we swallow it, an ouroboros of observer and observed. (Hm? An ouroboros? It's a snake or dragon eating its own tail. Greek mythology. Great word. Good name for a kid. Ouroboros Jones. Just imagine that.)

Here's what will happen, what has happened. The conservatives will scoff, because he is their enemy (and a powerful foe, at that) and because he did not do it himself. They will say that he was a hypocrite, that he was nothing more than an attention-seeking glory hound who defiled our nation's moral character and the will of Almighty God, but who didn't even have the guts to use his machine himself.

I hope that's not true. The thought that he would have used his machine on himself but he didn't get the chance; I know the hypocrite/moral defiler stuff is codswallop. I hope that he had the same chance he gave other people: the opportunity to choose for themselves, no matter who stood in the way of the path they would take.

Because that matters. It doesn't matter what we choose -- although it matters in the immediate vicinity, to determine what tomorrow will bring for those involved in the choosing -- in the grand scheme, in the cosmic sense, it doesn't matter what we choose, life or death, love or hate, sinner or saint, potato chips or tofu. All that matters is that we are given the genuine chance to make a genuine choice, for ourselves, to determine the course of our own lives, of our own days, whether the sun is rising or setting on those days when we choose. I don't think we get that chance often enough. I think frequently we deny it to ourselves; I think even more frequently it is hidden from us, and we think there is only one path through the yellow wood, when in fact there are two, or a dozen, or a hundred, all hidden beneath the leaves that no step has trodden black.

We need it sometimes. Every time we get it, it makes us stronger, makes us better, makes us purer; it makes us whole. Free will is what we were meant for: this is the one point on which both sides of the great God debate agree. Doesn't that mean something? Doesn't it show us that our liberty is our all? Shouldn't it mean that? And what liberty can there be when the most fundamental choices are taken from us, are made for us?

How can some people (And by some people I mean Christians, I mean evangelical conservative Christians, I mean the right-to-life people, I mean Terry Schiavo's parents, I mean all those bastards who are dancing a happy jig now that Kevorkian is gone) be so clear on this theologically, and so muddled on it in this mundane, tangible world, in this society of people that must learn to stay out of each others' way -- because if God can do it, if God can let us choose to eat the apple, can put the apple in the Garden with us and then turn his back, can let us suffer for every day from that one to this for it but still let us choose for ourselves: how dare we take that power, that sublime essence, away from others? Who are you to decide what and when I am allowed to decide?

That's why I hate being an atheist, you know. Because atheism seems to lead inevitably to mechanistic views of the universe, where there is no free will because there is no will, because life is simply a series of chemical and electrical processes. No purpose, no value, no freedom, no life. I refuse to be eviscerated by science as I refuse to be bound by dogma. That is my choice, and there is power in it.

Perhaps that is my religion: I believe in the power of will, in the quintessential truth of choice as the defining characteristic of the individual, and thus of the universe. I should think of a good word for that. Maybe it should be something like Kevorkian.

All right: I am feeling poetic on this one because I had a dream that related to it, and I realized that it related to it just after I woke up, when I was still dozing in a post-nap euneirophrenia (That's a pleasant state of semi-consciousness following a dream. I love this language. So so much.). This is unusual for me. I have fairly frequent revelations and sudden flashes of insight, because I'm s-m-r-t and I think too much; but I hardly ever remember my dreams. I remember that my dreams are frequently nervous, frequently filled with angst (Remember, as I was reminded recently, that angst is a feeling of directionless dread, and as such is a wonderful word for the general malaise that inflicts our modern alienated society. We shouldn't co-opt it to describe poseurs and teenagers. Call them emo. Or addlepated baboons.), and generally pretty uncomfortable, but usually there is no reason why.

But I realized in trying to capture the elements of this most recent dream that there is a motif running through several of my dreams, of late: it is a table. It is a table in a conference room, a table with a dark gray surface, surrounded by low-backed black-upholstered office chairs, in a dimly lit room; and though it has been in my dreams in several different contexts, it reappears because it is a useful symbol -- and even though my dream had nothing at all to do with the subject of this essay, still it is a useful symbol.

Because that table, and others like it: that's where they meet, you see. The arrogant ones. The real hypocrites, inasmuch as they may call themselves Christians, followers of their Messiah who chose only for himself, lovers of life even as they remove its fundamental purpose from those whom they control. The ones who decide for us. The first image that comes to my mind, because it is the most immediate concern for me, is the school board, and the administrators. The second, because it is a particularly apt example when speaking of life and death, is the cancer board that convenes to decide the fate of a character on HBO's The Sopranos; a dramatization of what I am sure is a common practice in the real world (And damn MTV for making that phrase ironic. How can our times be anything but out of joint when reality is irony?). On the show, several doctors gather to decide how they will proceed with treating the stomach cancer of Corrado "Junior" Soprano, a mobster played by Dominic Chianese (Who played a role in Coppola's Godfather movies, thus closing the circle of Hollywood mafiosi. How would you say "ouroboros" with a Jersey accent? Maybe "Ouro -- whatevadafuck, dat worm ting dat eats hisself."). The doctors decide not based on what is best for Junior, or even what Junior wants; they decide what they want, and impose their will on another man. Just as the school board, the administrators, whoever is making the call on what gets cut and what does not, are making decisions based on what is good for them, on what they want, not what the will is of the people involved, not the will of the people whose livelihood they are stripping away in the name of their own obtuse political ends.

Yes: just as I decide for my students, since often my decisions are informed by my own convenience, my own capabilities. There must be some leeway if we are to function as society. This is not meant primarily as a criticism of how my school board is trying to make the budget numbers line up, though I do think they should be more respectful of those they are affecting.

Here's how I see it: on a sliding scale, with the more essential decisions being left progressively to the protagonist. Perhaps it is reasonable for me to decide what shape the final exam will take for my students; perhaps I leave it up to them what they will do once school is out for the summer. Perhaps it is okay to determine what a child may eat for lunch; perhaps it is not okay to determine whether or not that child, grown into an adult and then shrunken by disease, must continue to live in pain.

I'm sure I have lost my audience. That's okay. This is a pretty simple proposition, which I will now state clearly: we should have the right, the ability, to choose whether we live or die. It is the most basic choice in this temporal world, and therefore the one that should be most keenly vested within the individual will, whatever the feelings are of those who are left behind in the aftermath -- and I am not unsympathetic to them, either. It is a matter of free choice, not a matter of morals or societal ideals. I have deep and profound respect for Dr. Kevorkian for helping other people to make that choice despite a sea of opposition, to bring the topic into the light and open it for debate, to bring about the movement that led to this state where I now live becoming the first and still only one of two that allow people that freedom (And believe me: that is literally the best thing about this state, in my eyes.), for the strength of will it took to go to jail for those people and the sanctity of their right to choose to die. The man was a hero on a scale that I fear I will never have the courage to attain, but will always secretly hope I would be willing to do, given the opportunity to choose it. I mourn his passing, and hope his legacy will live on.