the susie solution

It was an interesting juxtaposition of events last October that as my mother was on the final stretch of her torturous journey to Home Plate, Brittany Maynard was preparing to execute her well-publicized plan to kill herself on November 1^st.

Mama and Maynard both had brain tumors. (Mama’s cancer started in her lung, but metastasized to her brain, and it was the brain tumor that had the most impact in her last months.)   The kind of end Mama went through was precisely what Maynard wanted to avoid. Since the cancer was going to kill her, Maynard saw killing herself first as a way to beat it to the punch, ending life on HER terms. Maynard was lauded by many as a hero, a courageous spokesperson for the “right” to choose the time, place and manner of one’s own death. It is odd that many of those debating seem to think this is a new idea.

The practice of killing oneself – or, rather, the cultural acceptance or prohibition of it – is ancient, although the reasons for it have varied greatly. In many indigenous cultures, for example, it is common for the elderly to deliberately leave the village and wander off to die on their own, thus decreasing the drain on communal resources and increasing the odds for survival of the living. In Hindu India for centuries, the practice of suttee – a living wife being immolated along with her deceased husband – was a cultural norm. Although it was not uncommonly carried out with the aid of sedating drugs or brute force on the unwilling or fearful, many a wife went quite willingly, sometimes out of such love for her husband that she did not wish to live without him, perhaps more often because she knew that the life of a widow was a sheer misery, since it was disgraceful that she should live while her lord and master did not.  She would be forced to live out the rest of her life as a drudge to either her husband’s family or her father’s house. In Roman times, some enemies of Caesar were given an order of forced suicide to “open their veins” or to drink hemlock as a more dignified option than the humiliation of public arrest and execution, but other enemies who learned of plans for such orders, or for orders to arrest and execute them, chose to kill themselves before the orders could be given, so as to deprive Caesar the pleasure of triumph.  In Japan, committing seppuku, or hari-kiri, was (and even for many in modern times, IS) considered the only honorable way to recover honor after dishonor. In modern Western civilization, the justification for killing oneself is about the “right” to control the time, place, and manner of one’s own exit from this life. The goal is to ensure that one experiences a “good death.”

That sounds appealing, doesn’t it – “a good death”? A death that is peaceful. A death free from pain or suffering. A death that happens in a place of our choosing, where we are happy and comfortable, surrounded by the people or things that we love. A death that comes while we are in possession of our faculties and before the indignities and frailties of physical decline. Given our druthers, even if we don’t believe it’s right to force the issue as Maynard did, who wouldn’t prefer the “good death” option over Door #2? I would. I know Mama did. Those of us who loved her certainly hoped for that “good death” for her.

She didn’t get it. Her last hours were as difficult as the months preceding it had been. Her pain had proved extremely difficult to manage; she couldn’t take the usual go-to meds, and it took a lot of experimenting with others to find a good combination that worked – and then her pain would change and we’d start fruit-basket-turnover again. She was in pain at the end. She spent her last months in what is known as “paranoid delirium.” One time she passed notes to her hospice nurse about calling the FBI to rescue her because she was in danger – Patti (my sister-in-love) and I were apparently anti-government agents out to harm her. There were repeated issues with getting her to take her meds, either her being convinced that her taking them would cause hundreds of other people to die, or that taking them was what was making her sick (rather than having cancer), or alternately that they were part of a conspiracy to keep her alive when she just wanted to die and go be with the Lord! She was able to be in her own home, as she had always wanted, but once the paranoia started, she felt “trapped.” She died at home, but she was totally unaware of her surroundings. Patti and I were with her in her last hours, but I honestly have no idea if she truly knew who we were or even that we were there (consciously.) Mama’s last hour and actual death itself were horrible, traumatic for both Patti and me to watch. We sang no hymns. Our only prayers were gut-wrenching cries of, “Oh, God, please take her Home and let this be over!!!”   Mama experienced no visions of angels or loved ones already passed on, no glimpses of Glory. Her last words, between great gasping gulps for air, were, “I had no idea it could be so hard!” When she had gone, there was no look of peace and calm on her face. No, it was not a “good death.”

The world looks at a death like Mama’s and sees it as an evil. As far as the world is concerned, suffering is only “good” if it is for some kind of greater purpose that we understand and agree with and will achieve something for us when we’re done. That’s why it makes perfect sense, from a worldly point of view, to do as Maynard did. Going through the suffering and pain of cancer was for no understandable purpose; she certainly didn’t agree to take it on; and it would achieve nothing for her but death, which she could obtain on her own without going through the suffering.   People of Maynard’s convictions look at what my mother experienced and see a textbook example for exactly why they believe in what Maynard did.

But they’ve got it wrong. The world sees only the outside and existence this side of the grave, while God is concerned with the inner man, and what lies beyond death. Everything we undergo has the purpose of conforming us to the likeness of His Son and preparing us for Heaven. Everything. God doesn’t put His children through suffering for kicks and giggles, nor does He take our suffering lightly. It is nothing against us that we would prefer not to suffer; Jesus Himself dreaded the suffering He was to undergo, and said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.” If we are to be like Him, however, we must then also say as He said, “But, hey, it’s what YOU want that matters.” Hebrews 5:8 tells us that Jesus, though He was a son, learned obedience through suffering. Now, since He never sinned, we know that this isn’t referencing obedience as opposed to being disobedient. Since we are being conformed to His image, so, too, there must be ways in which there is obedience we are learning by our suffering that has nothing to do with sin. II Corinthians 4:16-18 says “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” No matter what was going on with Mama on the outside that we could see as she wasted away, we can trust with perfect confidence that her inner self WAS being renewed day by day. No matter how horrible and drawn-out the process seemed here on earth, in the light of eternity, it was but the blink of an eye. Any pain she endured here was the last pain she will ever experience for all the rest of eternity – and even the memory of it was wiped away as she entered her Father’s house!

For those without the Lord, well… I guess they may as well hope for that “good death”, because it will be the last pleasure they will ever know. If they remember its existence on the other side, it can but add to their torment to know that it is eternally lost to them.

For the believer, there is no such thing as a “bad” death; for us, all deaths lead but to Paradise. For the unbeliever, a “good death” is just a nicer entrance to Hell.