Right to Die

by Hazel McHaffie

  He stood up creakily as he said this, smiling broadly at me as he did so. I watched him, uncertain where he was going with this.

  ‘God has your name engraved on the palms of his hands. Did you know that? It says so in the Bible. Did your mother tell you that one? You can’t be forgotten. You can’t be washed away.’

  I stared at him. If he’d offered to pray with me I’d have been less surprised.

  ‘Isaiah 49. Hang onto that.’

  It was my turn to nod mutely.

  I tried to stand up but he pressed me back into my chair.

  ‘Don’t waste that precious energy on me, Adam. I’ll see myself out.’

  ‘Thanks. Thanks for coming.’

  ‘I’d like to come again, if I may?’

  ‘Please do.’ I really meant it.

  ‘We’ll talk some more.’

  The promise lingered long after he’d gone to rap on some other door. It’s people like this guy that I want around me when I slip into whatever is next. If anyone has an umbilical connection to the Almighty, it’s the Ernest Kanes of this world. Surely his compassion is closer to the divine view of human destiny than my mother’s punitive exclusivity? I want to believe it, but all those texts of judgment and punishment are etched into my brain. It would take more than thirty minutes with Ernest Kane to eradicate them.

  How hard it was for him to give himself permission to wipe the slate clean of Mavis’s diktats. The tightness of the cords that tethered him to his past was woven throughout his diary.

  9 JUNE—A sense of failure pervades my days. I’ve always been an achiever; it depresses me that, after all my careful planning, I got things so wrong. Why did I delay? Was I subconsciously less determined to end it all than I thought I was?

  I can’t seem to rise above this infernal watchfulness. They’re all on suicide alert. I hate it! But how do I set this thing up?

  Which reminds me, I read somewhere that the Suicide Act of 1961, which makes it a criminal offence to aid, abet, counsel or procure the suicide of another, doesn’t apply in Scotland. I need to check that out. Maybe all I need is a kindly person who understands my plight and who isn’t too emotionally attached.

  I almost asked Naomi about the pills today, but something stopped me. I must. This thing is eating me up. I just have to choose my moment so I don’t make a bad situation worse.

  Naomi was finding more and more reason for guilt, in spite of Stella’s reassurances. She, who should have understood him best, had denied him most.

  ‘If you’d only known what it cost me!’ she whispered, tears trickling unheeded down her cheeks.

  On Madeira he’d chosen the perfect time, the perfect place, the perfect way – for him. What right had anyone else to force him to suffer more?

  Blinded by tears, she closed down the computer and went out to hack at the brambles which were threatening to strangle the crocosmias and dahlias at the back of the herbaceous border.

  10 JUNE—The physical act of writing is getting increasingly difficult. Every bone and muscle cries out, Stop! But having this release is the only thing that’s keeping me sane. The physical aching I can compartmentalise; the mental anguish threatens to destroy everything I hold dear. I suppose taking a huge chunk of the day to record my thoughts does beat sitting idle, watching my pressure areas breaking down!

  It’s strange how relevant things leap out at you when you’re preoccupied with a specific subject. Throughout my journalistic career I’ve been grateful for that phenomenon, even whilst not quite understanding how it happens.

  I was sorting some old papers yesterday, and came across a story about a man with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome who took a fatal overdose of morphine. His wife found him shortly afterwards but she knew he wanted to end his life so she waited almost two hours after his death before she called the GP. Hmm. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome wouldn’t be on my list of conditions warranting death. People get better from it. Lots of illnesses get to points which seem unbearable. But things improve. Reading the article raised the whole issue of patient autonomy.

  Even though I know there’s no return ticket for me, someone else might challenge my assessment of intolerable. Back in April on Madeira, was it really the right time? I’ve had all these weeks since when I’ve been able to do a, b and c. And even now I can still do x, y and z. I can make some sort of a contribution to society, gain a degree of enjoyment from life.

  And now? This minute? If I hadn’t botched my previous attempt, I think I’d have more confidence in taking Mother’s Coproxamol right now. Well, of course I wouldn’t, I’d be dead!! Okay, I can’t bear the thought of being hauled back from another aborted attempt.

  Later What a night! Sally called with the girls in the late afternoon, on their way back from some concert or other. Naomi seemed to know all about it, instantly asking all the right questions. The story told, Sally stayed talking to me while Naomi took the children out into the garden to play.

  Lest I infect them with my mood?

  Lest they ask awkward questions?

  Who knows?

  I could hear them, I could see them. I witnessed Naomi coming alive in their sunshiny presence. I daren’t analyse my thoughts. They didn’t stay long but when they’d gone Naomi didn’t return to the sitting room.

  Eventually I went to find her. She was in the kitchen, preparing food. She glanced up, her face betraying her before she turned away and gave her undivided attention to selecting onions, peppers, mushrooms.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I slurred out.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like nothing.’

  ‘Acch, I’m just being silly. Must be my hormones.’

  ‘The hormones you’ve been taking?’ It just came out.

  She stopped chopping, the sharp knife poised above the onions.

  ‘Why? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  I should have gone gently. I knew I should – too late.

  She just stood there with the tears trickling down her face, scraping the onion shards together.

  ‘Why?’ I asked again, more softly. I hope.

  She shook her head.

  ‘We have to talk. But I can’t stand here. Come and sit down.’ It sounded more peremptory than I intended.

  Once I was safely seated, I had space to think of her.

  ‘Look, Naomi, I just need to understand. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Tell you… what?’ I couldn’t name the emotion in her expression.

  ‘Why you decided to go on the pill without talking to me about it?’

  The words seemed to be wrenched out of her… her distress watching me deteriorating… her wish to spare me more pain, not to take away hope.

  ‘I’m not a kid!’

  ‘I know. But everybody needs hope.’

  ‘I thought it must be my fault. I was thinking of going for tests.’

  Her eyes dilated. She half reached out to me, then her hand dropped back again.

  ‘I didn’t know… I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t you want children any more?’

  ‘It’s not that…’ A fresh paroxysm of silent sobs shook her.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I… can’t do it… it’s just… too much. I couldn’t…’

  ‘Just not with me, huh?’

  ‘We couldn’t deal with that as well. We couldn’t.’ There was something final in her voice.

  ‘Okay. I can understand that. Heaven knows, I feel badly enough inflicting all this on you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I wish I was stronger about this… but…’

  I held out my hand. She came cautiously. I pulled her down into my arms. Holding her shaking body close, there was no resentment, only an overwhelming sense of sadness – for her loss, for my loss, for our loss.

  When we eventually returned to the subject, it was my turn to apologise. She was right: I had been the one to say we shouldn’t have children – early on in my disease. And she clearly had no memory of my
change of heart. Perhaps it never found shape in words.

  This time we agreed together: there would be no child.

  The dream has died with my neurones.

  Naomi slowly unclenched her hands and wiped the sweat from her palms. Her pulse was hammering. Reading this was like teetering on the brink of that abyss all over again. At the time she’d had no way of knowing just how far he would press her; now she faced finding out just how much he had discovered, how far speculation had taken him.

  ‘Bear one another’s burdens,’ Mavis would have said. No, not on this occasion, she wouldn’t. Had she known what Naomi was keeping from her son, she’d have condemned her without a hearing.

  Her heart still pounding, Naomi let her eyes roam over the room. Adam was everywhere. In the discarded briefcase leaning against the side of his desk; in the Velcroed slippers still lying under the stool in the window; in the books, the papers, the pens his hands had held. Inanimate, but his. Would a baby have given her the solace she sought now? She would never know.

  She flicked back to the April entry that had brought a ray of comfort into her bleak heart. Written just two months before.

  ‘…you hold my world in your hands. You are the centre of my life; the colour, the music, the constant. No words are big enough to capture my love for you.’

  This was the real Adam. Before frustration and disappointment clouded his world.

  11 JUNE—Things are less fraught between Naomi and me (I think, anyway) but I just can’t seem to shake this feeling of depression. Needing a purpose, I sent off four letters to publishers today, with synopses, first three chapters, biographies of the characters, CV, SAE. I felt a real need to do something I’m good at. I can feel my identity slipping away from me.

  Later Curtis came unexpectedly. It didn’t take him long to notice my spirits were low. I dismissed it: part of the illness. But he persisted. Goaded, I didn’t wrap it up.

  ‘Okay. Presumably you knew Naomi was on the pill?’

  ‘I can’t discuss confidential matters.’

  ‘But you could tell people at the hospital about my suicide attempt.’

  ‘On a need-to-know basis. It was relevant to your treatment.’

  ‘To stop me hanging myself with the hospital sheets, you mean?’

  He raised his eyebrows fleetingly.

  ‘Why can’t anyone accept that I’ve had enough? I don’t want to go on like this. For goodness’ sake, why shouldn’t I feel depressed?’

  ‘Nobody’s blaming you for feeling low. We only want to help.’

  ‘But you won’t.’

  He let that pass.

  ‘This thing is changing my personality. I don’t want Naomi to remember me like this.’

  ‘I’m sure she knows it isn’t the real you making you do and say these things.’

  ‘This is just what I wanted to avoid,’ I said through gritted teeth.

  ‘I know.’

  Another long silence. It’s another thing I like about Curtis: he’s comfortable with silence. In the end it was I who broke it.

  ‘What gives suicide bombers their courage?’

  ‘Passion for their cause? All sorts of promises of future bliss and reward?’

  ‘So you just lack the passion, huh?’ I had to smile as I said it.

  ‘Well, can you promise me seventy-two nubile virgins in the afterlife?’ he said lightly.

  ‘You sure won’t get them if you strive officiously to keep me alive!’

  ‘Well, in that case…’

  The tension had eased.

  ‘Can I put something to you?’

  ‘You can always try,’ he ventured cautiously.

  ‘According to the law, we have to stop at red traffic lights, yes?’

  ‘Yeeeeees.’

  ‘If we drive through them we’re liable to be punished, right?’

  ‘Yeees.’

  ‘Indeed. It’s the rule. But the emergency services can jump them.’

  ‘In emergency situations. With due care and attention. Yes. But that’s different.’

  ‘Exactly. Certain people with particular responsibilities may be permitted to do what other ordinary mortals aren’t allowed to do – provided they exercise due care. I rest my case.’

  He grinned at me. ‘You’re persistent, I grant you that!’

  ‘They’re not crashing through the lights just to show how macho they are; they’re doing it to save someone’s life.’

  ‘And that’s where your analogy breaks down, methinks,’ he said, eyes twinkling, though he kept a straight face. ‘To save a life. I rest my case!’

  In spite of the lost battle, I felt less oppressed when he’d gone. We had managed to move seamlessly from saving lives to saving books from oblivion. It seems he’s wont to take books he’s read to charity shops rather than hoard them. I’m the opposite. We were soon exchanging titles of books that had shaped our thinking over the years. I gave him four of my books to take away. He promised to bring me two he’d kept, about which he’d value my opinion.

  Between three innocuous but worthy novels, I had slipped in a slim volume on euthanasia in the Netherlands. There’s a lot of drivel talked about the subject but this booklet seems, to me at least, to be pretty balanced. It comes from a doctor who actually works over there. The dead can’t change their minds.

  Curtis might.

  After he’d gone, I remembered something he said ages ago: since the mid-nineteenth century, the BMA has taken the position that doctors cannot be held to an invariable ethical rule applying to all patients in all circumstances, and that the exceptional case doesn’t invalidate the general rule. At the time I took it to suggest he might, one day, consider my case as the exception. Maybe in a while I’ll try him out on that again.

  Oh dear. Why do people fear death so? Either it’s the end, in which case I won’t know anything about it. Or it’s the start of something new, which is supposed to be idyllic. I see no point in lingering here enduring torment if I can escape to either of these alternatives.

  Is that what my father thought?

  Curiously, I find I can’t bring myself to condone his decision, even though I know he was living in his own kind of hell. He had no business to do that to my mother and leave two fatherless boys behind. Except that… isn’t that just what I was planning to do to my own child if I’d had my way on starting a family?

  ‘Oh why did you have to analyse everything so?’ Naomi wailed.

  But in spite of the grillings, Dr Curtis had been incredibly patient throughout. He’d been both sounding board and friend. He’d encouraged her too.

  ‘Be open with him. Tell him how you’re hurting too. Share your fears with him. Listen to his.’

  But the doctor wasn’t the one who risked sharing one burden too many.

  ‘With him’, yes. Not dragging him into another slough of despond from which there was no exit.

  I was saved from being sucked any lower by Digby Arkwright. That man should be awarded an OBE for services to the down-hearted. As soon as I heard his booming ‘Room in there for a little ’un?’ over the intercom, I felt a surge of excitement. What little strategy has he got up his smart white sleeves today, then? He’d called to talk about my piece on the experiences of a working journalist.

  ‘Brilliant stuff, Adam. Loved it! Only one criticism.’

  ‘Oh? And what’s that?’

  ‘I wanted more!’

  I grinned at him. ‘You did?’

  ‘You’re a born story-teller, lad. How many d’you think you could run to?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘How many more could you rattle off?’

  ‘Stories? Oh, I guess I could dredge up one or two more.’

  ‘No, not stories! How many columns full of stories? You’ve got flair, boy, real talent. We can’t let all that go to waste now, can we?’

  I agreed to see what I could do.

  He was suddenly guarded.

  ‘There’s something else I’d like you to think abou
t.’

  I watched him carefully. The words came out hesitantly, hedged about by qualifications, most unlike my incisive ex-boss. The gist of it was, would I consider writing something about life with a degenerative disease?

  I told him about my book. No problem, he was looking for personal experience, not fiction.

  I still demurred.

  It would be compelling reading. It’d take courage, of course, he could appreciate that. Did I think I could do it? How long would I need?

  I said I’d think about it; he said he’d be back!

  As he left he shot me a laughing look. ‘A couple of mugshots, before and after – that’d send you hotfoot to the barbers!’

  I took a look in the mirror. He was right. What a wreck!

  What is it that revives me from these occasional visits – from the Ernest Kanes, the Joels, the Arkwrights, of this life?

  I guess it’s partly the pleasure of being with people I like and respect, who are good company. They give me a warm feeling about myself as being deemed worthy of their time and energy – despite the hard work it is to communicate with me now, and the difficulty for them of seeing a fellow human being disintegrating before their very eyes. They make me appreciate my own continuing ability to think, to interact, to challenge, to achieve. And they leave me with a sense that I still have a use…well, rather that I am still of value in some way. These special people temporarily halt the inexorable spiral downwards.

  Not for the first time, I wish that I could titrate out these visits to give myself regular boosts of confidence. Curtis and Arkwright in one day give me emotional indigestion. Adrenaline overload. I need a magician to bottle their effects and release a little dose each day. The fall back into despondency is all the harder the more euphoric these visits make me.

  Talk of gentle titrations and controlled doses leads me into the business of the medical assistance I crave – a subject never far from my thoughts these days. And especially relevant now Arkwright has commissioned x thousands of words on the subject of my illness. If I do it – and I am by no means sure I will – I’ll need to record something of the evolution of my opinions about the solution. As Arkwright himself acknowledges, it’ll take courage to deal with the hardest decisions. Can I – can Naomi – cope with seeing those private agonies exposed to public scrutiny? On the other hand, this project could be exactly what I need to focus my arguments and resolve my own dilemma.