Rampant Anomie

Those who arrived at a compelling and uncluttered view on this issue aren’t around to record their views. For most of us, arriving at such a view would oblige us to jump some hurdles before we vaulted that rail: religious dogma, physical fear, emotional attachments, every instinct we possess. We should discount mere cries for help; an unsuccessful suicide is generally just a successful gesture. Those who mean it, do it, either without fanfare or having ensured they can’t be interrupted by other people’s instincts or their own.

We all die, most of us alone and afraid no matter how fit or unfit, old or young, loved or loathed we are when the moment falls. There is no consensus on what awaits us when our last breath rattles its way out of our carcass. Whether we anticipate umpteen talented virgins or oblivion without end, one thing is certain: we will all find out very soon.

So is it really so wrong to hasten this process if logic is on your side? Doctors do so every day, whether we choose to admit it or not. For every court case in which a terminally ill patient kowtows to the judiciary for their suffering to be ended without criminalising anyone, scores of less complex and more critical cases are brought to an informal end with a generous shot of morphine or a DNR notice.

Focussing on those so near to death doesn’t necessarily clarify matters, partly because freedom of choice and the medical profession’s commitment to preserving life overlap unavoidably. It is however instructive that the most vocal opposition to the lethal exercise of mercy tends to come from religious quarters. Supposed creeds of love always manage to find some fire and brimstone dogma to prolong suffering in the name of righteousness, while in centuries past those who had died by their own hand were denied hallowed ground in their local cemetery. Can such callousness in extremis really give the desperate the answers they need?

Should we all have an entitlement to suicide, regardless of age or health? Should the degree of freedom we enjoy include the right to end our own life? As participants in a society, we should come to the rescue of those trying to throw themselves from bridges or under tube trains. Typically, the suicide bid will be a result of depressive illness or huge emotional trauma. The act is patently logical to the subject but their problems are seldom insurmountable. Death might be a cure, but it might not be the right or best cure.

Yet some emotional problems are practically insurmountable. Some depressive illnesses are so profound that misery is a constant and unreasoning companion that cannot be fended off by the most inventive psychiatrists. Some physical illnesses promise their hosts a lifetime of escalating pain with none of the joys most of us take for granted.

Some states of depression have deep and rational roots that cannot be plucked. Following the death in 1985 of 520 people aboard a Japan Air Lines 747 due to a botched repair, maintenance manager Yasumoto Takagi took his own life rather than live with the shame. Such a burden would be positively cancerous for anyone to bear, particularly in a society where the act of suicide isn’t necessarily seen as dishonorable or immoral.

It is a matter of finding a healthy tension. A civilized society values and seeks to preserve life. Yet to dismiss suicide as sinful is unhelpful and irrelevant to anyone desperate enough to be contemplating it. The victim shouldn’t be condemned out of hand; life is finite after all. We should accept that it is not sacred enough to make any burden worth carrying; certainly not if it is only being carried to pander to dogma or moral squeamishness.

There I slept through my own thin night. Some operatives could surrender themselves happily to oblivion, trusting their hard-wiring to banish the shadows when the crisis had passed, then returning exhilarated to life and light, grinning secretly or howling like shamen. I am afraid of the dark. Not the mere dimming of light when the sun goes down or screens go opaque, but the utter absence of sensation and energy, the brute silence of the void. I use more oxygen than I should clutching the image of a strand of burning silver. It is the fire seared by a low sun across a horizon choked with sea-ice. Matter is energy and energy matter. Where there is light to be warmed by, there is rock to stand on and a universe to exist in. I can illuminate the infinite absence and define it. A nonsense mantra, of course, but a good comfort blanket.

Then I returned. Two hours had passed in seconds. Something prevented me opening my mouth to yawn and I remembered the fifty feet of salt water above my head. The day was dissolving, the surface of the water blushing with the sun's last efforts, the blackness of the deep rising to embrace the night. Warning signals competed for my attention. My medical suite had all but repaired my skin but, like a good physician, reminded me I needed to eat and drink and get plenty of rest. It wasn't able to suggest a convenient hotel or spa in keeping with my usual style. A new crop of stubble was already replacing the incinerated hair roots on my scalp.

I allowed myself to feel in the raw. My skin throbbed with heat and fitted tightly at the joints. I supposed sunburn felt like that. A body's worth of seared dermis was detaching itself in sheets with no more resistance than shrinkwrap to be fussed over by fish. I tore at my chrysalis with fingers and nails, discovering smooth, healthy skin beneath.

Then another warning signal, a jab of adrenaline, and I chose to feel rather than see the invisible shape approaching. The darting movements of the scavenging shoal felt like a gentle rain. The thing closing on me brought a pressure to bear on my torso, squeezing my lungs, increaing smoothly and relentlessly; it was bigger than me, faster then me and knew exactly where I was.

Monday 24th March

We flew BA from LHR to SFO. My extreme height and my cantankerous spine obliged me to shell out for a premium economy seat, or whatever the BA corporate euphemism is for seats allocated to the lowest rung of the bourgeoisie. The extra outlay entitled us to a modicum of deference from staff, miniature toothbrushes, sleeping masks, hot and cold running movies and a seat pitch you could just about swing a mouse in. When the dullard in front of me fully reclined their seat ten minutes into the flight, I could retain feeling in my legs and had to stretch to read their choice of newspaper. I could also amuse myself by blowing gently onto their hair.

The booze also flowed freely, almost taking the fear out of scudding through the stratosphere at 500 knots in an aluminium tube packed with jetfuel, strangers and complementary copies of the Daily Mail (Note to Flaming Cross: Why would anyone want to read about the wretched and banal minutiae of life at home when they're supposed to be on holiday?)
In a mere eleven hours, we were transported in a soaring arc across the Atlantic Ocean, the Canadian tundra and the Pacific North-West. 40,000 feet feels high over ocean and prairie. When the flat patchwork quilt of Alberta suddenly stops at Calgary and the Rockies leap up to meet you, it feels less so.

Having experienced immigration officials at Chicago, I'd braced myself for more of the same; balls-out aggression with the possibility of water-boarding and invasive searches from paranoid sociopaths in uniform, none of whom could find the UK or Iraqistan on a map. Perhaps something of the Summer of Love remains in SF, however, as the border turnkeys were almost cheerful in their approach. Our papers were processed and our fingerprints scanned in a heartbeat, and nobody wanted to search my bags for RPG's or wish me, 'Gut luck, Tommy.' I was almost disappointed when noone gave me a flower to wear in my hair.

We were met in San Francisco by our Bay Area fixer, Rachel. An expat Brit, her accent is still somewhere over the mid-Atlantic, inching slowly westwards. The glottal stops are still firm, but each sentence ends with an upwards tweek as if a small current has just been applied to a delicate area.

We'd rented a SUV in order to truly savour native culture. We wanted a vehicle as obese, ostentatious and inefficient as possible in which to cover thousands of miles. Naturally, and true to our fixer's prediction, the airport Alamo man tried to mumble and humble us into an unnecessary and pricy upgrade to an SUV big enough to carry an infantry platoon into Basra. I don't quite remember the reasons, but it had something to do with the holiday period, stock rotation, snowdrops on petals, whiskers on kittens and the fact that a guy my height would look out of place in a vehicle weighing less than three tons and incapable of towing a bus.

TBC