When I Am Brain Dead...
... my dearest, do not weep for me! Instead:
Hang my witless body in a cage in the town square for birds to peck and gnaw.
Coat it with honey, and bury the technically alive cadaver that was the palace of my soul in a red ants' nest, and let the ants do the rest.
Warehouse my empty body in nursing homes and worse for fifteen years. Start me starving to death, then stop the process, the start it again. Let my awful parents and my slightly creepy spouse fight publicly over me. Let my empty husk of a body become a poster for the worst impulses in pseudo-moral American politics, the embodiment of hypocrisy. Finally, let me die slowly.
Hey, instead of the Terri Schiavo affair, why can't we have - after a decent interval and with due safeguards - a quiet journey to sleep, with drugs to help: death in peace and dignity? It would be the civilized thing.
Posted by Harold Davis at March 27, 2005 1:08 PM
