Secret Suicide or Medically Assisted?
A diagnosis of any gradually debilitating disease is like being sentenced to Death Row without knowing when or how your end will come. It could be weeks,months or years away but in the meanwhile you will lose control of your body and possibly of your mind so that death becomes more desirable than life. No one knows how she/he will react to a diagnosis like Parkinson's or MS or ALS. It is the idea of the unavoidable gradual loss of control that frightens most of us who've been brought up on a steady diet of self-reliance and independence as the essentials of self-respect. The prospect of being a burden on those closest to us is completely unthinkable for many of us. Especially when we have watched someone we love die in that way.
Robin Williams found himself in exactly that position when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease several years after the death of his best friend, Christopher Reeve from organ failure after years of confinement to a wheel chair and complete dependence on others. I'm sure the irony of Reeve's identity in the media as Superman, a being of superhuman strength and abilities, was not lost on Williams any more than on Reeve himself.
Robin Williams witnessed the devastation of his best friend's life and must have felt Reeve's helplessness with the full sensitivity of an alter-ego. Reeve survived for a few years and there were moments of great joy when research, partly funded by Reeve's foundation, made progress in the restoration of some small measure of neurone function in research volunteers. There were happy times with his family and friends but Reeve steadily lost ground until his organs failed and that gradual demise was evident as the years went by. Death is inevitable for all of us but a long slow death is what most of us fear above all else. To lose the ability to move in a single moment must be absolutely horrifying. But is it any less horrifying to know ahead of time that one is gradually going to lose that ability? For those of us who live private lives, such a diagnosis would be devastating but imagine what it would be like for someone whose livelihood is based largely on physical expression and whose life is lived in the public eye?
When Is Life The Same As Death?
Robin Williams' comedic art depended to a great extent on impulsive physical movement. Robin was a visceral performer with characteristic body language that was his signature style. I, for one, cannot imagine him being still during a comedic performance. His unique comedic style inhabited his whole being, not just his mind. The manic energy of his deliveries seemed to rise upward from his feet to the top of his head and outward, erupting into the space around him as though his skin could not contain the energy that drove him. I'm sure that many of us wondered about those manic outbursts of comedic genius. When the manic energy was spent, what then?
As one who has struggled with hypo-manic-depression in my own life, part of me is always "monitoring" manic energy in myself and others. Robin Williams, like many entertainers, was transformed by manic energy when he walked onstage. A huge surge of adrenaline made his performances possible. Add to that the dis-inhibitory effects of certain drugs, and the manic energy takes on a life of its own. Williams' comedic art depended on that manic energy and his ability to direct it effectively. The diagnosis of Parkinson's disease meant the loss of a big chunk of Robin Williams' identity. That combined loss of capacity and the chemical changes wrought in the body's chemistry by Parkinson's would be sufficient to trigger the depression that is always lurking under the manic high. And apparently that is what happened to the world's favourite "class clown". Depression of such an appalling depth that death seems preferable to life is difficult for most of us to understand. But not for those who have lived in a state of depression for years at a time using what precious energy we can muster just to get through each day. Depression communicates itself in many ways but expecially through the eyes when we try to act as though all is well when it isn't. Depression saps life from our eyes and eventually, under the right circumstances leading to despair, saps the life out of the body, too. What we need to ask ourselves is whether suicides might have chosen to continue to live if the option of Medically Assisted Suicide existed in our society. How many would still be alive if they knew that when they could no longer function in the ways that were most important to them, they could rely on a compassionate end to their suffering? When you can control nothing else, controlling how and when you will end your suffering becomes crucial to your decision to continue living for a while longer.
I believe it is time to legalize Medically Assisted Suicide for both the chronically ill (MS, ALS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, etc.) and the terminally ill under the circumstances and timing of their choice. It should be a human right to end one's suffering when it is no longer tolerable. That is not cowardice or "sin"; it is the act of a fully responsible human exercising the right to control her/his exit from an intolerable existence. That is what we do in a compassionate society.
© Delia O' Riordan 2014
