Church of Euthanasia

The One Commandment:
"Thou shalt not procreate"

The Four Pillars:
suicide · abortion
cannibalism · sodomy

Human Population:
SAVE THE PLANET
KILL YOURSELF




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A NEAR-PERFECT DEATH

I have no idea how I'm going to die, but I know how I'd like to die: hopefully of old age and painlessly, like my mother who died on Thanksgiving in the apartment I grew up in. She had a massive cerebral hemorrhage in her kitchen, was probably unconscious by the time she hit the floor, and never regained consciousness. Sounds good to me.

She almost burned the apartment building down, but luckily someone five floors up smelled smoke and called the fire department. My mother had disabled her smoke detectors, because she was a chain smoker. Whatever she was cooking was reduced to a thick deposit of charcoal in a saucepan. It's truly bizarre that she died while cooking. I have vivid memories from my teenage years of our refrigerator containing nothing but cigarettes, white wine, and yogurt. Could she have instinctively avoided cooking for all those years because she knew it would lead to her demise? My mother also proved (as if it needed further proof) that life is unjust. She chain-smoked for over half a century, was a raging alcoholic, ate whatever she wanted and didn't exercise, and died at eighty-four. I've known health fanatics who didn't make it half that far. I arrived at the neurology ICU a day later, and was escorted to a private room in which my mother's body lay, ghastly pale and breathing in forced synchronization with machines. The staff were grimly certain that she would never awaken, and in case I had any lingering doubts, one of the doctors took it upon himself to relieve me of them. He pulled up my mother's hospital gown, pinched her chest hard, and assured me that her involuntary response-a spasmodic inward contraction of the shoulders-was a sure sign of devastating brain damage. He then lifted up her eyelids and demonstrated that her eyes were pointing in completely different directions, another fatal sign. The entity I had known as my mother was gone, irretrievably lost, and all that remained was biological rubble. The doctors could keep her rubble alive indefinitely if I so wished, or they could disconnect it from life support and let nature take its course. I chose the latter in accordance with the ironclad terms of my mother's living will. My mother was a firm Church of Euthanasia supporter and doubtless would have appreciated that the Reverend got to make the final call. I was given the option to attend the proceedings, but after careful deliberation, I declined. I figured that ICU workers see death routinely and are largely inured to it, and moreover it wasn't their mother who was going to be gurgling and rattling. I couldn't see the sense in further traumatizing myself. There wouldn't be any last words. There was literally no one left to say goodbye to. In this instance, I don't like to watch.

I spent much of the following year cleaning up after my mother's life, for example selling or donating her possessions, emptying her apartment, and so forth. Nothing puts things in perspective like stuffing your mother's underwear down a trash chute in the middle of the night. In such a situation, it's hard to avoid grasping the ephemerality of existence.

Yes, existence is a curse for many people, but just based on the fact that you're able to read this, I doubt that you're one of them. Life can be hellish, but it can also be sweet. Above all it is short. You will understand this better as time passes. Think of a time-lapse movie that lets you observe the stately passage of the sun overhead, and the shadows moving, getting longer. This is your life. If you're one of the lucky ones, you will seek and find wisdom, and then your life will be over.

For those who win the sperm and egg lottery, and consequently possess some freedom to determine their fate, there's an inconceivably vast universe to be experienced and studied. It contains treasures and horrors and everything in between. Even the simplest pursuits can be worthwhile. Knowledge, skill, friendship, love, trust; are all worth gaining. Communal goals such as peace, justice, egalitarianism, solidarity, the future, these are all worth struggling for. Contemplation can be rewarding and empowering. Sex can be intensely pleasurable and life-changing if the chemistry's right. And all this is barely scratching the surface of what's achievable, if you have lust for life.

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