Right to Die

by Hazel McHaffie

  Naomi came too, more to support me than because she wanted to, I’m pretty sure. Joel grinned wryly and said he had his limits and would cry off from this level of filial duty, if it was all the same to me.

  It was a strange sensation being amongst these people who had worshipped with my mother, who knew her, but who didn’t know who we were. It was right to go. I shall feel less of a usurper at the funeral now I’ve shared something of her environment beforehand.

  The sermon was based on that famous passage in Ecclesiastes: ‘To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens.’ With my mother hovering too dangerously close for composure, it vexed me that my mind refused to steer clear of the parts that touched me most closely.

  ‘…and a time to die… a time to kill, and a time to heal… a time to weep… a time to mourn… a time to get, and a time to lose…’

  I agree: there is a time to die, and I wish the minister would stay with that topic. He doesn’t. He’s too busy decrying the violence of war and international conflict; calling for peace and understanding at a global level and nationally and in this little community where my mother prayed. What a missed opportunity.

  There, in the coldness of that ancient church, I stopped listening to his exhortation to brotherly love and let my mind wander. This text – straight out of my mother’s Bible – doesn’t seem to prohibit killing. There’s a time for it, it says. And after all, even in our own society, centuries after the author of Ecclesiastes was around, there are lots of people sympathetic to some forms of killing. This very church magnifies and lauds the work of the Armed Forces on Remembrance Day. Now there’s killing! Innocent men, women and children. I don’t condone war in any guise myself but the establishment figures who lead the nation’s remembrance represent mainstream views.

  And there are plenty of people today who support the death penalty for the more heinous crimes. I see their logic but I worry about the miscarriages of justice. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. Posthumous pardons don’t magically breathe life back into executed corpses.

  Against these scenarios the arguments for the kind of killing I have in mind are much more sustainable. The police, judges, juries, MPs; they all tend to be sympathetic to mercy killers. They recognise that Nature can be cruel.

  Can’t she just!

  Look what she did to my mother.

  Look what she has in mind for me!

  I realise Nature also often provides a way out, but medicine has a nasty habit of thwarting her intentions. Pneumonia, infections, loss of appetite: nowadays all enemies to be fought, not friends to be embraced.

  I glanced around at the congregation. Eighty per cent elderly, mostly women. Probably some with a stash of cash involving multiple noughts mouldering in their bank accounts. How many have relatives eager to see them in the cemetery? If doctors could help them on their way, how many would slip away too prematurely?

  An ancient little soul in a fake-fur coat and hat, ramrod straight in the opposite pew, glared as she caught my eye and I turned swiftly to face the front, although my mind continued to wander laterally.

  I guess there are always going to be potential loopholes with any rule or law. Maybe it’s a question of semantics. Maybe by using terms like ‘killing’, we’re fostering the notion that it’s something unwelcome, something horrible being done to an unwilling person. A suggestion of violence. There’s undoubtedly a sense that death is the ultimate evil to be resisted at all costs; most notably in medicine. That’s something we need to change.

  Maybe we’d be better to focus on the helping aspect; helping people to have a good death, something they really want. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the last good thing someone can do for me – the ultimate demonstration of true caring and love.

  So why didn’t I want to do it for my mother? Why could I not do it?

  Hmmm.

  I’ll stick with the semantics!

  Hey, Reverend Minister, up there in your safe pulpit, why can’t the law allow doctors to be good neighbours, helping the needy to die with dignity? Why should they need explicit permission? Will they need to have every special circumstance spelled out in law before they’ll feel able to contravene the centuries-old prohibition? Would they abuse such power? You must know how people tick – tell us what you think of this new proposal to change the law in my favour.

  The announcement of another hymn caught me by surprise but Naomi shared her hymn book and held my arm tightly. Probably thought I was lost in grief.

  On the way out, I thanked Rev. Castlemaine for his words. It would have been more honest to thank him for the peace and sanctity of his church – my mother’s church. But he had no idea of the hidden agenda that had brought me here on this wintry January morning, and I saw no merit in rocking his sense of Sunday security.

  ‘Oh Adam, why didn’t you talk to me instead?’ The words were wrenched from Naomi involuntarily.

  He was right. She had assumed he was grieving for his mother. She hadn’t wanted to trespass on hallowed ground.

  And Joel had a prior claim.

  21 JANUARY—No time to scribble. Too busy being polite to people. Paige arrived this afternoon. Sundry relatives have booked themselves in to local hostelries. A day of courtesy calls.

  Next time these people gather will probably be for my funeral.

  22 JANUARY—Today we buried my mother.

  It was bitterly cold, with a snell east wind, ice making the paths of the cemetery treacherous.

  I decided to dispense with my sticks for the walk up the aisle behind the coffin, not wanting to deflect attention away from Mother on her day. Joel and Naomi were my props and I was glad to have them close beside me. But I regretted the omission afterwards when people came to shake our hands. It was awkward to be so dependent. So I reverted to the sticks in the graveyard.

  There was something rather lonely about the two of us receiving the mourners – the last of the line, two men, no progeny. I wonder if Joel felt the responsibility resting on him. Two green bottles… and one fell off… and then there was one…

  But there was also something rather amusing about people’s reactions to me sitting down for part of the proceedings. Joel felt it too and we exchanged a few grins, which probably seemed disrespectful, but got us through an extended and potentially emotional ordeal. In reality I was so focused on keeping Nemesis in check that there wasn’t space for the reality of what we were doing to impinge at the time.

  I had hoped to cleanse my spirit through this diary but I’m just too drained to write. Another day, another time.

  23 JANUARY—It’s been a weird kind of day – flat somehow, after all the busyness. I felt a strong compulsion to do something. The sooner we wrap things up the better as far as I’m concerned; I shan’t be in any better shape weeks from hence, that’s for sure. But, only the day after the funeral, it still felt too soon to go round to sort out Mother’s house.

  Reactions show today. Joel is subdued, Naomi is tearful, I’m… I don’t know… withdrawn? confused? unavailable? I just want to be on my own. I don’t want to analyse my feelings. I don’t want to listen to how anybody else feels. However, I know that beneath the numbness there’s a ferment of thought going on. Watching Mother die has dragged all sorts of issues out of the closet. Those tedious but precious hours sitting beside her gave me plenty of time to reflect on my own position as well as hers, and now she’s gone, I need to follow that process to its conclusion. Maybe starting that will jerk me out of this catatonic uselessness.

  1. I am resolved to avoid being in a state of being not quite dead.

  2. I want the judgment of when it’s time to go to be on my terms. Not the reference point of the nurse, be she warm-hearted or not, who pops in to change the bed or stroke back the hair or touch a hand and then goes about her other lawful business, forgetting the shell she leaves behind. Nor the reference point of the hospital doctor who lines up his scientific results and states the position and moves on to the ne
xt bed without a backward glance. Nor yet my community allies, for whom each patient is but one in an overwhelming number. None of them can truly identify with my perspective.

  3. Curtis is my best hope. I just need to convince him that the burden of continued existence outweighs any expected benefit. Disproportionate burden, they call it.

  So Hugo Curtis, friend, ally, very personal physician – I recognise your technical expertise, your clinical judgment, your ethical wisdom, and your own moral values. Could you be persuaded to take the risk of moving outside your normal boundaries in order to do what you know to be right and good and noble in my particular case? I’d trust your judgment more if you didn’t just toe the party line, follow the rules laid down as your professional duty of care, shelve the big issues to stay out of trouble. You’d be engaging with the reality of my suffering.

  I need to check. Would he feel obliged to document his actions? Least said. And will an autopsy be demanded? If so ‘unbearable and hopeless suffering’ is a legitimate reason to accede to the patient’s request, and that’s me all right! I rest my case.

  I’m drained to the dregs.

  Naomi closed the file and left his study with a heavy heart.

  24 JANUARY—Joel has to go back tomorrow so we could delay packing up the ancestral home no longer.

  My instability made it logical for me to decant things into the black polythene bags and brown cardboard boxes Naomi had acquired for the purpose, while Joel moved the heavy stuff and ferried Mother’s belongings to the charity shops and the tip.

  Naomi volunteered to deal with the women’s stuff. We told her to take anything she liked but she said she didn’t want anything – until she unearthed a studio portrait from underneath a pile of jumpers. Mother in her twenties; strikingly attractive. Before tragedy and bitterness etched the harder lines.

  Was it taken for my father, in the early days? There’s now no one to ask. It’s a bizarre feeling that – knowing there’s no access to the past, no living link with our ancestry. Even without my disease I would be in the frontline now, next in line for the Grim Reaper.

  Seeing a young happy Mavis, a woman I never knew, I had to turn away, busy myself with packing books, before I could face going back to her bureau and siphoning the rest of her photos into a box marked ‘Adam’ – without looking at them. One day I shall examine them; then parcel them up for Joel. The box is sitting in the corner of the room as I write, sealed with brown tape. A compartmentalisation of life. A stepping stone to the emptiness of my own future.

  Soon I must sort out my own possessions; this is no time to be inheriting anything.

  Joel discovered a load of tablets in my mother’s bedside cabinet. Given the price of drugs, they should go back to the chemist, but that can wait. I’ve just bundled the whole lot into a drawer of my desk and locked it in case Anabelle or Courtney go exploring.

  It takes more than a day to pack away a life. We ended up stashing a lot of the personal stuff into boxes and ferrying it to our spare room.

  I am dreading Joel’s departure tomorrow.

  It was a shock for Naomi to read about the thoughts and emotions these experiences had unleashed. Adam had kept them ruthlessly hidden. Another lonely struggle.

  At the time she’d thought him incredibly unsentimental. She’d only held out for the portrait lest it be consigned to oblivion. There had been no mention of the other photos. Had he in fact passed them on?

  She jotted down, Joel: photos?

  Something made her go through to the dining room to look again at the photograph of the young Mavis. It was strangely comforting. She was nothing like the dreaded harridan of recent nightmares. Maybe if life had not treated her so harshly… Who knew what might have been?

  25 JANUARY—It’s still dark. Far too early for my orphaned brother to surface, but sleep eludes me and emotion threatens to overwhelm me. I must somehow take control. So I’m going to work on revising my novel.But I must jot something down first. It occurred to me in the night that my mother has been a major stumbling block in my plans for my own end. Now she’s gone, that leaves just Naomi and Joel to worry about.

  Joel is leaving this morning and I want to send him away strong. He has just lost his last remaining parent; he doesn’t need to lose his security. Not yet anyway. But what promises can I give him?

  …………………………………..…

  After five minutes I’ve written nothing.

  And contrary to my earlier assumptions, Joel is already moving about upstairs, despite the hour.

  Give me strength. I can do it. For his sake I will do it. I can promise to stay close, talk often, be there for him.

  Later I decided on the spur of the moment to get Naomi to drop me off in town as soon as Joel had gone. No point in moping around here. Searching for information in the library would be an incentive to think of other things. I felt pretty pleased with myself that I was soon assembling a convincing piece about the changing face of the Government on privatisation in the NHS cleaning services.

  The static and unchanging murk under my mother’s bed gave me the idea.

  It’s often a shock to emerge from these absorbing searches into the outside world, into darkness or gales or sub-zero temperatures or noisy crowded streets. Today the surprise of steady drizzle brought me back to the present more rudely than I could have wished.

  Were the roads safe for Joel? Had his visibility been impaired by the filthy wake of lorries on the A1?

  Had he been trying to reach me?

  Just as the tension began to grip my stomach, my attention was arrested by an unlikely couple approaching the library from the north. It was the shuffling gait of the woman that first impinged on my consciousness. (I’m finely tuned to awkward movements nowadays.) Her limp feet in their striped ankle socks and pink, unlaced trainers trailed through the puddles on the pavement without any effort on her part to lift them clear. A watermark crept up the long beaded skirt, faded now from black to tired grey. The buttons of her green cardigan were misaligned with the buttonholes, leaving at least six inches of wool hanging far too close to the wetness. A man’s crumpled beige mackintosh seemed to have been slung haphazardly around her shoulders by some other hand, probably in an effort to counter her resistance. The woman was of indeterminate age, thin elderly hair hanging straight down both sides of her pale cratered face in a caricature of a schoolgirl bob. The total mishmash of colours seemed somehow symbolic of a complete malco-ordination of life. Her vacant (the Scottish word ‘glaikit’ is so much more expressive but feels too pejorative) gaze never left the pavement, as if she would not raise her eyes again in this life until she had found the tiny back of an earring underneath the trampling feet of an uncaring world, but after years of looking, the excitement of the search had faded to hopelessness.

  Leading her silently was a pin-neat man, probably about fifty, with ninety years of desolation etched into his face, submission woven into the ghastly fair-isle pullover showing beneath his nylon anorak. He made no effort to steer her away from periodic drenchings. The inadequate umbrella he held over both of them dripped relentlessly, alternately onto her green cardigan or his synthetic navy trousers, without him seeming even to notice.

  I stood in the doorway of the library, not wanting to lurch forward into the path of such a compromised pair. They stopped suddenly and she turned her head towards her companion, as if unsure whether or not she should allow herself to be propelled along by him.

  ‘What time is it?’

  Querulous voice.

  ‘11 o’clock.’

  Expressionless, no attempt to consult his watch.

  Instinctively I checked. 11.50.

  Three more shuffling steps.

  Another halt.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘11 o’clock.’

  The shuffling resumed.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘11 o’clock.’

  I was aware of a spontaneous surge of gratitude. My beautiful
wife. My active brain. My independence. My continuing opportunities. The sheer stimulation of life. My disease assumed a positive dimension in the face of something so much more grotesque.

  How many times did that woman’s… son?… brother?… husband?… carer?… have to answer that same question? Every three minutes since 11 o’clock? Every three minutes for her whole waking day? Day after day, month after month, year after year. And still he went through the motions of responding.

  I stood there, motionless, transfixed by their trudging progress along the street. Appalled at my own selfishness, I nonetheless sent silent thanks to those beaten strangers for putting my life into perspective.

  I was positively effusive with the taxi driver who took me home, and tipped him handsomely.

  Toni with an ‘i’ has not been seduced by the rich Sultan. In spite of our obvious incompatibility, she actually wants to return. I’m glad she only got the answer-phone; I can delay getting back to her.

  Joel arrived home safely, without incident.

  Naomi understood Adam’s reluctance to see his brother go this time.

  They’d all been tearful. Goodbyes had a new poignancy so close to the final farewell.

  ‘Never fear, I’ll be yo-yoing in and out,’ Joel had assured them as he wound down his window for a last wave. ‘But for goodness’ sake, get Mother’s photo out of that room before I come back next time. It fair gives me the creeps having her watching over me in bed!’

  She chuckled now remembering that moment. Trust Joel!

  28 JANUARY—On Thursday there’s to be a leaving party in my honour. The guys offered to postpone it (because of my mother), but I declined; postponing things is a luxury I can no longer afford.

  Naomi insisted on accompanying me (her words), dragooning me (mine), to buy something new to wear. I HATE shopping for clothes and I was truculent, to put it mildly. So I’m going to use the rest of today to immerse myself in Aidan’s life. Naomi will fare much better alone seeking the right thing for herself.