The Undertaking (15 page)

When the order is disturbed, it seems unnatural. We are left with an anomaly. Our sense of timing is offended. Thus, when social death precedes somatic death we end up with someone buried alive.
Or its latter day equivalent: stashed in a nursing home, out of the loop, in every way but arterially, out of circulation. We’d rather Nature had taken a course that got them out of life just slightly before we were ready to be quit of them. We often blame medical science, and its new technologies, for separating us from our nature. Let go, we say. Get out of the way. Let Nature take its course,
however imperfect the outcomes might be.

At the other end of life, however, we are less willing to trust in Nature’s Way or God’s Will or whatever we call it when we’re not in charge. We embrace with few questions a technology that allows us to plan, control, subvert, abort, design, and decide on gender, hair color, and sexual preference. A
somatic birth that precedes a social birth, up until
lately the only option, is reckoned an accident, an outrage, a surprise—“oops” we say, to an unplanned pregnancy. Unwilling to let go or get out of the way or let Nature take its course, we lobby for more and more “options.”

Thus, what has always seemed offensive about suicide—that it seemed to subvert Nature’s intentions, or God’s intentions, whomever’s in charge—is rendered acceptable, indeed,
preferable, at the other end of life, by the user-friendly doctrines of Control and Choice (as in birth control and reproductive choice), which seem to suggest that, when we can, we should play God or fool Mother Nature.

Still, what offends us about homicide—even those sanctioned by the Church or the State—is that it too disrupts the order. “Life has Meaning and Value” the signs read that march
against wars and hangings, abortions and euthanasia. But those who uphold the state’s rights to make war and execute criminals often decry the right to “Choice” or “Death with Dignity.” Just as those who uphold abortion rights and the right to die turn out in droves against Vietnam, the Gulf War, the lethal injection of a serial killer.

More subtle and more troubling are the truths that wars
have been waged for greed and glory rather than humanitarian causes, abortion has been used in the service of sexist, racist, and classist agendas, and euthanasia has been, at times, the thin veil over genocide, abuse, neglect, and homicide. All of our “choices” have not been good ones.

Thus, the great divisions of the last half century and the next half century seem based on the contemplation
of Life and Death: when one becomes the other and under whose agency. The advance of our technology is coincidental with the loss of our appetite for ethical questions that ought to attend the implications of these new powers. We have blurred the borders between being and ceasing to be by a technology that can tell us How It Works but not What It Means. Nor do we trust
our instincts anymore. If
we sense something is Wrong, we are embarrassed to say so, just as we are when we sense it is Right. In the name of diversity, any idea is regarded as worthy as any other; any nonsense is entitled to a forum, a full hearing, and equal time. Reality is customized to fit the person or the situation. There is
your
reality and
my
reality, the truth as
they
see it, but what is real and true for us
all eludes us. We frame our personal questions in terms of the legal and illegal, politically correct or incorrect, function or dysfunction, how it impacts our self-esteem, or puts us in touch with our feelings, or bodes for the next election or millage vote or how the markets will respond. And while business of all sorts can be conducted this way to the relative advantage of all concerned, on the
Big Questions, the Existential Concerns, the Life and Death Matters
of who is and who isn’t to be
, what is called for are our best instincts, our finest intuitions, our clearest intellections and an honesty inspired by our participation, not in a party or a gender or a religion or a special interest or ethnicity, but by our participation in the human race.

And here, the dialogue seems oddly hushed.
Is it possible we are just too busy, just don’t care? Are we willing to leave it to the experts?

N
o member of my generation: that demographic aneurysm called the Baby Boom, should miss the hapless irony that the first generation to plan its parenthood, to manage and manipulate its fertility, may well be the first generation to have our deaths planned for us, our morality managed and manipulated
by our own children, those who survived the gauntlet of our choices. Likewise, we can depend upon them to make their choices the way we’ve made ours: by convenience and expedience and five-year plans, efficiency and function and high performance, quality time and available resources.
Less
, we’ve always lied to them, is
more!
Maybe we shouldn’t have fooled
Mother Nature. Maybe we just should have
played whatever numbers came up, instead.

“W
hat do you think about ball caps and windbreakers?”

Uncle Eddie was thinking about uniforms.

“In dark, dark green, you know, it’s all the rage. And three S’s embroidered tastefully in gold? Inside a pyramid design? You know. Classic. Timeless. Very professional. Whaddaya think?”

I cautioned him about expenses and cash-flow. Better to start small.
Get a few jobs under his belt, some money in the bank, and work up to full uniforms. “You’ve got to walk before you run,” I said.

He’d been pushed to the limit by a rash of bad ones. A murder-suicide involving kitchenware and large-caliber handguns in an apartment complex south of town had been, for Triple S, a sad bonanza in terms of on-the-job training and accounts receivable. He’d already
invested in gloves and face masks, protective goggles and disposable footwear for his staff. He’d leased a van, also in deep forest green, and outfitted it with buckets and mops and cleaning solutions. He’d purchased ozone machines for the removal of odors and had contracts and invoices printed up. He’d had training sessions with his staff, instructing them on the discreet discharge of their duties,
the importance of team work, high standards of performance, the disposal of biohazards, the possibility of a Christmas party, bonuses, the avoidance of bloodborne pathogens and other exposures. He’d paid for their hepatitis B vaccinations. He’d given them beepers and name badges.

Like AIDS and alcoholism, suicide has a certain contagion.
Why?
is the question it always poses and when no sufficient
answer is given,
Why not?
is what we ask rhetorically, trying to bring the outrage into the realm of the sensible. To make self killing “understandable,” “forgivable,” one need only see it as the last remarkable and fatal symptom of a life-threatening illness, a fatal disease—depression or melancholia. But to make it
“permissible,” legal, an inalienable right, we must argue against the absolute
value of life. It must become “relative,” “negotiable,” a matter of opinion, open to various interpretations. We proclaim it an option—a matter of “choice.” To be or not to be, becomes, like smoking or non-smoking, window or aisle seat, the choice of salad dressing or type of wine, a matter of individual taste, situation, and circumstance—answerable to public opinion, provincial ordinance, or political
reality, perhaps, but no longer the province of Nature or Divinity.

We have done as much with the matter of birth and parenting, dividing ourselves into different teams—pro-Thisers or pro-Thaters—with no middle ground, as there seldom is in matters of life and death. The debate is controlled by the extremes, each side shouting answers and accusations over the heads of the people in between, who
are kept from formulating questions by the din of the argument all around them. Each paints the other with a broader brush. Each has an arsenal of names and adjectives to deploy against the other side. No one listens. Everyone screams.

W
hy leave a mess? Call TRIPLE S!
is the slogan Uncle Eddie invented. He had it printed in 22-point Mead Bold gold letters on a dark green background along with
his 800-number (1-800-668-4464), made into kitchen-magnet cards and mailed them out in batches by the half-dozen to police and fire stations, funeral homes, and the county morgues here in southeastern lower Michigan. He included a cover letter that made mention of his round-the-clock cellular dispatch, his willingness to work with insurance companies, his highly-trained and professional staff,
his free on-site quotations. Key words like
body fluids, bloodborne pathogens, tissues, putrefaction, maggots
, intermingled with
disinfection, restoration, cleanliness
, and
discretion
to make the case for why they should call Specialized Sanitation Services, Inc.; at the bottom of which letterhead Uncle Eddie signed his name under which he typed out
Founder and President.

Before he knew it the
phone began to ring—once or twice a month at first, then once or twice a week. “They’re dying to see me!” Uncle Eddie said. There was the occasional murder that called for his attention, or the old timers dead but undiscovered—one old man died on the floor of his bungalow in August and wasn’t found for most of a month after which a floor sander and kerosene were added to Uncle Eddie’s supplies.
But for the most part Triple S relied on the grisly and violent homemade suicides, which erred on the side of excess and overkill, to cover the fixed costs of the enterprise.

After six months of bedrooms and bathtubs and basements, car trunks, hotel rooms, and offices, Uncle Eddie was dreaming of franchising and helicopters, to extend the coverage of Triple S, Inc.

It was June of 1990 when one
of our local “characters” here in Oakland County, an unemployed pathologist and failed movie mogul, put Janet Adkins in his rusting minibus, drove her out to Groveland Township, a few miles north of here, then showed her the button on his “Thanatron”—a gizmo he’d rigged from garage-sale parts to give a lethal injection of potassium chloride: a suicide machine. She pushed the button. The machine
worked. Machines do. Janet Adkins was taken to the county morgue where a thoracic and cranial autopsy was done. Jack Kevorkian was taken to the county jail, a floor above her in the same building. Then Janet was taken to the crematory at Evergreen Cemetery and burned into oblivion and Jack got his picture on the cover of
Time.
So everyone got what it was they wanted.

Except Uncle Eddie who was
beside himself. “Who’s this fellow Dr. Death?” he hollered. “And why is he trying to put me out of business?” The small blood vessels in his head were bulging. He was pointing at the story in the daily paper.

I told him it had nothing to do with Triple S. But my younger brother, ever the visionary, said it was a genuine threat. He went on to explain that tidy, bloodless, medically
supervised
and assisted suicides would make his Specialized Sanitation Services redundant, his mop and bucket crews as obsolete as typewriters or telegraphs. “The handwriting’s on the wall,” he sighed. “It’s only a matter of time.”

I told him not to lose hope. Surely Kevorkian would go to jail or to the asylum. Injecting poisons was against the law. Clearly, suicide was not medicinal, though it was powerfully
effective against all pains: physical, spiritual, and psychological; it was more murderous than remedial. “Assisted suicide” like “holy war” is an oxymoronic romance that seeks to make killing sound like kindness or courtesy or a good cause. Folks would soon go back to the old trusted solo ways—pills, gas stoves, bridge abutments, firearms—which made up in raw individual tidings whatever they
lacked in tidiness.

R
ecent history has proven me wrong, dead wrong, wrong again.

B
y the end of 1996 Jack had assisted in nearly fifty “medicides” and was the darling of the deathly set of euthanasists, do-it-yourselfers, and radical empiricists that keep homepages on the Internet you can access by searching under suicide. The DeathNet they call it. You can try this at home.

Uncle Eddie
says it’s not the suicide. We’ve always had that. It’s the
assistance
that there is a market for. Janet Adkins didn’t need the help. Not with the killing part. She had the physical resources to swallow pills, pull a trigger, start a car, turn on the gas stove and thus avail herself of traditional methods. She had the psychological resources to overcome her fear of dying, a fear like the fear of
any unknown. She had the spiritual resources to understand that God or Whatever Is Out There would, by virtue of its job description, understand her. What she lacked was the voice to shout down her own voices that
whispered to her the case for living—part nature part nurture, the voice that says to take life, however painful and imperfect, does damage to the rest of life. Dr. Jack with his half-baked
rationality and his jerry-rigged contraption—his Thanatron—and his ethically neutered lexicon made Janet his
patient
and poison, the
treatment
, and what they were doing,
medicide;
proving yet again the modern axiom that the big lie is easier to sell than the small one. By all the equipment he made it seem that his assistance had to do with
method.
By the mid-afternoon in early June in north Oakland
County, in the back of his van, it all must have seemed normal, natural, a right and entitlement, a matter of choice, protected by the Constitution, maybe someday worthy of public funding. “Have a nice trip,” he had told her, after she had done her part, as if she were off to the Bahamas or the Berkshires.

That great minds think alike is not a certainty. While Jack Kevorkian pursued his immortality—gladdened
by his attorney’s suggestion that his name recognition fell just south of Santa Claus, pleased with the attention of talk show hosts and PBS—Uncle Eddie saw only an eventual failure, a new world order in which suicide was no more messy than dentistry, the end of the line for Triple S.

After three trials here in Oakland County failed to convict or restrain Dr. Kevorkian, after the county prosecutor
was voted out of office for spending tax dollars bringing the doctor to court (Dr. Jack prepared a lethal injection for Elizabeth Mercz, age 59, of Cincinnati, on election day to signal his acceptance of the mandate the voters seemed to be giving him. He delivered her body to the hospital just after the polls had closed), and after two federal district courts had ruled in favor of assisted suicide
and motions were brought to bring it to the Supreme Court, Uncle Eddie pulled the plug on Triple S. He boxed up the kitchen magnets and coffee mugs, the memo pads with his logo and slogan, the ball caps and windbreakers, laid off his staff and answering service and sold the van, and
sent a letter, full of regrets, to the agencies that had formerly called him.