Jack Kevorkian & The Suicide Squirrels

Michigan is rarely more beautiful than these last few days. A kinder, gentler kind of summer is here. Not the oppressive heat and humidity that is usually August, just warm, middling days and nature in full beauty. I hadn't actually noticed until this week...

... when I ran over a squirrel.

My office is a Ford Fusion, and like the Johnny Cash song, I've been everywhere. This week I was in a more rural part of the state where the towns were not accessible via expressway. Vast swaths of green, sprouting corn ran uninterrupted up to careworn farmhouses and oak-lined yards. The country roads meander like the streams they periodically cross and bright light suddenly meets shade as hardwood groves reach over both sides of the road, obscuring the sky.

There is a lot to take in. Honestly I am usually lost in thought while all this rolls by. I must have noticed at some point there wasn't snow on the ground, that it turned green. Some voice on the radio said Jack Kevorkian was released from prison. I turned off the radio. Too many words. Just when I was trying to think about suicide and what it meant, then they were adding words like 'physician assisted', and then someone asserted that Kevorkian actually euthanized people- a thing more austere in that voice's opinion. My mind was full. I hit the button turn off the radio, and ran over a squirrel.

The black squirrel ran into the road to a place that would have been between the tires, then seeing this misalignment, moved two feet to the left. A moment later it met a tire and knew no more. I couldn't avoid it. There a slew of physics involved in getting that car to cruising speed and I was not going to spin into a ravine, losing my life to save his. But it happened right in the middle of this thought on suicide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia.

Weird.

The similar looking farm houses rolled by with more green swaths of corn- no doubt close kin of the others I'd seen. Trees. Nature. None of them stopped to notice the squirrel. Just me for the 2 seconds it took to flatten it. I drove on and thought more about these deathly words.

I've not really given these ideas much thought. I like living and think I'll probably do until I can do it no longer, so while these are thoughts on suicide, the are not suicidal thoughts. In fact they are thoughts, and the topic is suicide. There is no particular object for it. I'm irritated by thoughts I'm told I should not have. I that's your opinion, great. Then that's your opinion. Keep it that way. I want to sort this out.

When I first heard of this Kevorkian guy the topic was new to me. An advocate for death? Did death need an advocate? It seemed like death was doing pretty well for itself, seemingly having cornered a market for itself. It was unfortunate he looked like Skeletor from the He-Man comic books. I saw him and immediately expected to see all kinds of minion at his command. But Kevorkian's minion seemed nothing like the cartoony demons I knew from TV. They were people who were talking about picking the right to die with dignity. People who knew suffering. Adults who watched their parents die from cancer, or octogenarians ravaged by disease, these were people who just wanted to go gentile into that good night.

That didn't sound like suicide to me. That sounded like dying. People die. This sounded more like mercy killing, you know, the way a vet will put down an animal suffering without end. Was a person choosing the terms upon which they died considered suicide? Suicide sounds like a person with much life to still live deciding they do not want to go on any more. This doesn't seem like suicide. My first thought is a teenager depressed they got dumped by their first great crush and despairs of all life. A tantrum, basically. Depressed and not wanting to live. Those are very different associations to me than those people who are already dying and trying to endure convulsions and bitter throes of death. I can't think of a single person who has a pet and would let it die in such a way.

This topic is confusing to me. Some of it is the ideas themselves, some of it is the wording used to describe those ideas. Suicide: is that actually illegal? It couldn't be, right? I mean what would happen to a person convicted of such a thing? They're dead. I know there are varying theologies regarding this as well, but I am focusing on this life, not the next. If it's not illegal to determine your own death, then how is it illegal to assist someone in doing what they want to do? Aiding and abetting an activity that isn't legal? That's confusing.

I remember hearing someone saying that Kevorkian was a killer, another that he was euthanizing people who still had good living to do. Frankly I can respect those arguments too, except they sound like value judgments made by someone other than the person suffering. These opinions are everywhere, and I'm still trying to comprehend the words they're throwing around. Parties supporting life… parties supporting choice. Apparently calling it death is not appealing. Death is the last active of life. Life's last living moment is death. They are the same damn thing. I want to remember those I love for how they live, but don't want them to suffer if they don't want to.

When you're ready to go, do you want to be able to tell someone one your own terms, or do you want a loved one to have to sort that out for you? My grandmother, whom I've loved and lost to cancer suffered terribly. She was great because she was the intersection of comedy, dignity, and love. A lot going on there. Always a place you wanted to be. I remember her dying, but I wasn't there at the precise moment. I was never told the details. Her suffering was so great and there was nothing they could do. It would have been illegal to medically end her life, so they sedated her and the family decided to stop feeding her. She died shortly after. That's not suicide? No. She didn't do it. Someone assisted not feeding her, just as they had assisted feeding her the day before. That was legal. It's not illegal to not eat.

So if it wasn't suicide, and it couldn't be, since she wasn't conscious, what was it? Murder? Please… This woman was suffering and dying. Not feeding her was legal and she was sedated to not suffer. A physician could not do here what a vet could do for your dog.

If it's legal to not feed those about to die already what exactly is this debate about? Time? Quality of life? Choices? Dignity? I don't see much of any of these things at the end of life. Just a spirit that has grown too big for its own body and it trying break loose from this cocoon to start over. I don't see the debate in any of that.

In the end a life ends and new one begins. The rows of corn are still growing, the treetops are swaying in a light breeze. Cars still roll along. Squirrels peep around trees to see if I'm coming. I don't know this Kevorkian guy. Did he find himself involved in this as I did with a premeditating squirrel? I don't know. In my case, I can't say if the squirrel was depressed, or not taking his meds. It's possible it had been dumped by a lover, or he'd inadvertently busted his nuts. Was it a choice? An accident? I don't know. I just know I assisted in it and felt like the only one on Earth who knew what had happened, or so I thought. Three miles later, on the same road, another squirrel jumped out in front of me and was crushed by the same tire. This time a reddish brown one. Did they communicate? Am I now Skeletor For Squirrels? I don't want that job. I'd rather they picked someone else. Maybe you just don't get to pick some things. Like who's there when its time to decide if you're going to turn off life support. No one calls that murder, or suicide, or assisted suicide. Mostly people don't talk about it. They don't think about it. Bursts of grief interrupted by life's essential distractions.

But it happens. And when it does maybe all I want to know for my own sake, is that someone I care about can mercifully end this life and blossom out into the next. It's not the conversation I hear on the news. I have not interest in new laws. I've got plenty I've not used already, and for that matter I'm surrounded by lives that are not in this quandary. So why have I spent all this time thinking about this? I don't know. Because I can. Because I'm suspicious of every squirrel I now see is a kamikaze. Because I'm not sure if I want to drink the Kool-Aid being served by the media without first checking the label. Because if I'm ever in a position to have to make this decision, maybe I don't want to feel like I dishonored an honorable life. Or maybe I'm just hallucinating these squirrels. That might be better.