According to the law, an adult Oregon resident of sound mind who has been diagnosed (by two separate doctors) with a terminal illness that will result in death within six months may request a prescription for a lethal dose of medicine in order to end his or her life. The request must be made orally as well as in writing, confirmed by two witnesses (at least one of whom is not related to the patient and is not entitled to any portion of the patient’s estate), and then, after a fifteen-day waiting period, the lethal dose may be prescribed. And no physician or pharmacist is forced to participate—they are free to recuse themselves from the process. Since its implementation, hundreds of Oregon residents have taken their own lives with the help and guidance of a doctor.
I am sure that America’s first Death with Dignity law was passed in Oregon because Oregon is one of the nation’s least religious states. For instance, in Oregon about 40 percent of the people seldom or never go to church, about 40 percent of the people consider the Bible merely a book written by humans and not the word of God, about 25 percent claim “none” as their religion, and almost 20 percent of the population could be considered atheist or agnostic in orientation—making Oregon of one of the top ten most irreligious states in America. And according to a recent census study conducted by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, Portland is the least Christian city in America. Thus the fact that our nation’s first successful Death with Dignity Act passed in this relatively secular part of the country makes perfect sense. Part of Peg’s job is helping other states enact legislation similar to what passed in Oregon, and her efforts are bearing the most fruit in other relatively irreligious states like Washington, Massachusetts, and Vermont. “We have a saying in our office here, and that is, ‘Not south of the Mason-Dixon Line.’ Death with dignity is just not feasible in certain parts of the country, and yes, I think religion is a part of that.” As Peg decisively declares, “The primary opponents to what we do have always been—and continue to be to this day—the religious.”
The fact is, where there is strong religion, there is strong opposition to right-to-die initiatives—and where religion is weaker, there is greater acceptance. Indeed, according to the research of sociologists Jenifer Hamil-Luker and Christian Smith, “the odds of the nonreligious approving physician-assisted suicide are three times greater than the religious.”
While both religious and secular Americans definitely agree that life is of eminent value and should be preserved and protected at all costs, it is secular Americans—in contrast to their religious peers—who are more actively concerned about prolonged end-of-life suffering, and are more willing to do what it takes to facilitate peaceful, less agonizing deaths.
That’s certainly where Peg falls. She first got interested in the right-to-die movement when she was working with people suffering from AIDS. She saw many people in a lot of agony. She saw a lot of very sick people begging their partners to kill them—to have mercy and help end their suffering, as an act of love. And she saw a medical profession that wouldn’t or couldn’t deal with such requests appropriately, or legally. Given that Peg’s attitude about death has always been one of comfort and pragmatism, she was motivated to make death-with-dignity legislation a reality. “My mom was a hospice nurse. So when I grew up, death was just a fact of life. It was very real. My mom would talk at the dinner table about people dying. It was her job. And I would go visit her at work, a place where people were dying. So I guess I do view death differently than some people. It’s just more of a reality to me. I have much more of a practical notion of death than perhaps other people.”
That “practical notion of death” guides Peg in her work. And it is a notion that transforms into an ethic, which manifests itself into social and political action of real consequence. Peg’s desire to help empower others at a time when they are most powerless, to afford people the right to die in a way that they want to die, with as little suffering and as much dignity as possible, stems from the best of secular virtue.
Death Dread
Toward the end of our interview, I asked Peg if she was afraid of death. “No, I don’t think I am afraid of it. I wouldn’t be pleased to find out that I am terminally ill. But no, I don’t feel afraid of it at all.” I’ve found that most secular men and women—including the likes of Walter Pines, Mildred Wilcox, Lupita Portillo, and Quincy Risskov—seem to harbor an approach to their own mortality similar to that of Peg Sandeen: we don’t want to die, but we aren’t consumed with fear or dread concerning its eventuality.
But I guess I am one of the few nonbelievers out there—well, perhaps along with Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman—who is actually scared of death. I don’t sit well with it. I am not sure why. I mean, I have no problem with the idea of personally not existing anymore. After all, I didn’t exist one hundred years ago—and that reality causes me no anguish—and so the idea that I won’t exist one hundred years from now doesn’t bother me at all either. And yet still, it must be admitted: I dread death.
Perhaps it started when I was in a car accident at the age of seven. I was driving with my mom and my brother, David. He was sitting in the front passenger seat and I was in the backseat. We were in a blue VW station wagon. None of us were wearing seat belts (it was 1976). A teenager was speeding on Sunset Boulevard, coming in the opposite direction. He lost control and plowed into us. In the immediate moments after impact, my mother and I sat up, looked at each other, and then saw that my brother was hunched over, motionless. My mom lifted him up by his shoulders and his head rolled back. His eyes were closed, he was unconscious, and there was a single streak of red blood running diagonally across his pale face. It was then that my mom let out a harrowing scream, which triggered my own scream. Some people carried David out onto a nearby lawn. Paramedics soon arrived. My brother soon came to. He was okay. We all were, although my mom’s injuries were pretty bad. Later that evening, my mom mentioned the horrible scream I had let out when we first saw David’s unconscious face. I said that I had screamed because she had screamed. But she said that she had never screamed at all—that it had only been me. To this day, I think that what I must have “heard” was some internal scream, some visceral horror at the sight of my unconscious brother. Or maybe my mom did scream before me, but she just doesn’t remember. Either way, it was a traumatic moment for me. A deathly moment. And throughout my life I have now and then been plagued by fears of mortality.
My discomfort with death—its physical as well as existential reality—reared its disquieting head more recently, when Stacy and I happened to be in Berlin, at the home of Peter Pfefferkorn, age eighty-three. Peter is one of my father’s oldest friends. They met in college in the 1950s. When I was eighteen, I went backpacking through Europe, and stayed in Peter’s home in Berlin for a week. I went back to Europe again when I was nineteen, and this time I visited Peter for a week at his four-hundred-year-old peasant villa on a hilltop in Tuscany. At that time, he was there with his girlfriend, Heidi. The three of us went swimming in nearby lakes, we sampled the various tiramisus in numerous small restaurants, we discussed Günter Grass and Luca Signorelli, we took naps, and we enjoyed one another’s company, despite our age difference. When I was in my late twenties, I returned yet again to that old villa in Tuscany, this time with Stacy—my then fiancée. The four of us—Peter, Heidi, Stacy, and I—spent night after pleasant night together, drinking bottles of local red wine, eating good bread and even better plums, talking, laughing, playing bridge, and enjoying the July air. It was so nice to sit around the old wooden table, our faces illuminated only by candlelight. Stacy and I were twenty-eight, Peter and Heidi were sixty-eight.
Then, a month ago, Stacy went with me to attend a conference in Finland (I didn’t want to fly alone). On our way, we stopped in Berlin for three days to visit Peter. He had sold his Italian villa several years before and was now living in Berlin permanently. He was looking much older—he had difficulty walking, and he drooled a bit as he ate his breakfast. But his wit and c
harm and mind were all as intact as ever.
Unfortunately, such was not the case for Heidi. She had developed Alzheimer’s disease, and was now living in an assisted care facility down the road from Peter’s house. On our second day in Berlin, Heidi was found wandering aimlessly around Peter’s backyard. She had somehow gotten out of the assisted care facility and made her way to Peter’s. The maid brought her into the kitchen and sat her down at the table. She had no idea where she was. She had no idea who I was. She had no idea who Stacy was—although, interestingly, she spoke to both of us in English, so on some level, she knew something about us. But not much. When I asked Peter if he thought she knew who we were, he scoffed and said, “She doesn’t even know who I am.” We sat with her at the kitchen table, eating bread and honey, drinking coffee, trying to make pleasant conversation, but Heidi mostly just had a faraway look in her eyes and a sort of feeble smile. There were a few pleasant moments, like when she recognized the wooden table in the kitchen—the same table that used to be at the villa in Tuscany. But the overriding feeling of the gathering was one of acute loss, acute deterioration. Heidi’s mind was nearly gone. She was old, soon to die, and she no longer remembered anything much.
After finishing my coffee, I got up from the table and went out onto the back porch and cried. I just felt such existential grief. How could Heidi not remember the wonderful times we had all spent together during those summers in Tuscany? Yes, yes, yes—I know: she has Alzheimer’s and she is old and soon to die and that’s what happens, that’s how it goes. Peter is also very old and soon to die. Stacy and I will be there as well someday. Maybe I will lose my mind as well, and not remember anything—not remember how Stacy looked in Tuscany some twenty years ago, as she and Peter painted portraits of one another under a large olive tree in the late afternoon. I cried some more on that porch as I contended with mortality: Peter’s, Heidi’s, Stacy’s, my own, everything. What the hell is it all about? What is the point? For some reason, seeing Heidi in that state, seeing Peter so old—it just made me feel a visceral sadness at the fleetingness of it all.
And yet I must say, that moment of existential despair did not last for very long. In fact, it evaporated rather quickly. And instead of ushering in a debilitating state of despair or depression or apathy, it made me feel all that much more alive. It made me feel the urgency of living all the more sharply. My tears were brief, and I left the back porch to return to those within. I held Stacy’s hand a lot that afternoon, I savored my coffee, I made a renewed effort to tell Peter funny stories, I Skyped with the kids that evening, and I fell asleep that night thinking about how lucky I am to be alive, to be sleeping on the floor of an old house in Berlin, to know the people I know, and to have had the experiences that I have.
One day I’ll be dead. And all that does is make me want to appreciate every aspect of life all the more deeply and passionately. And I know that I am not alone in this orientation—many millions of other men and women are out there in the world who also accept their own mortality and the fleetingness of life and they are not depressed by this, nor are they rendered apathetic or despondent. On the contrary. They are living rich, meaningful, and deeply appreciated lives.
Life Is Real
For years my parents kept a small book of poetry in their bathroom. It sat there on a small side table next to the toilet, often buried under copies of the New Yorker, Jewish Currents, and the Jewish Daily Forward. When I was growing up, I’d always open up that book of poetry and read all the various entries from the world’s great poets. For some reason, despite all the poems I read while sitting there, and despite the fact that I read all those poems numerous times, I only retained one line from the entire collection, which has always stuck with me: “Life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal.” The line comes from a poem titled “A Psalm of Life,” written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, first published in 1838. Although the poem does contain a reference to “God O’erhead,” I nonetheless have always considered it to be a fiercely secular poem—one that passionately celebrates this life and this existence. The poem calls us to live our lives as best we can, to strive, achieve, and pursue, despite the fact that, one day, we will die.
The poem affirms an orientation that is shared by nearly every secular person I have ever met: a firm belief in, or rather a serene acceptance of, the fact that this life is all there is, and that we thus must make the best of it. For secular people, the reality of mortality renders life all the more urgent, and all the more precious, and all the more wonderful. As Dan Barker, a onetime Christian preacher turned public atheist, has recently observed, secular people don’t believe in life after death, but rather, they believe in life before death.
Such sentiments have been expressed by atheists, agnostics, and skeptics for centuries, going all the way back to the Greek philosopher Epicurus, born in the fourth century BCE, who argued that there is no life after death—a reality that does not render life meaningless, but rather prods us on to make the most of what short life we have through seeking happiness and tranquillity, peace and freedom, joy and contemplation, and the company of good friends.
Similarly, the ancient Jewish author of the book of Ecclesiastes declared that there is no certain life after death, that “all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again”—and yet we still should make the most of this life, to enjoy the brief time that we have, to eat our bread with enjoyment, drink our wine with a merry heart, find enjoyment in our labor, and love our spouses with gratitude. The medieval Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyám wrote in the early twelfth century that life is nothing but a bird’s brief trill, a song that soon ends, and thus we must focus on the here and now, enjoying what we can, while we can. The bird’s song may be short—but it still is. Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was emphatic on this point: there is no life after death, and thus to live maturely we need to be conscious of this fact, accept it, and in so doing wake ourselves up to what really matters in life and experience it more fully and more authentically. Similar sentiments were expressed by philosopher Martin Heidegger, who reasoned that the finitude of living is what gives it its immediate ultimacy, and it is only through soberly reckoning with our own mortality that we can truly, fully live.
Accepting the Finite
My wife, Stacy, harbors no fear of death—whatsoever. She has never believed in any sort of afterlife; she has always fully embraced her mortality. She was able to deal much better than I was with a mutual friend who was dying of cancer; she continues to mourn the death of her father to lung cancer, missing him and wishing he were still a part of our lives and yet understanding that he is gone forever; and as for any fear of flying—are you kidding? Even the most jolting turbulence doesn’t cause her to stop reading her magazine article. The plane can be bouncing up and down hundreds of feet, careening this way and that, dropping, plunging—she doesn’t even notice.
But while I am a nervous flier who does fear death and Stacy is a calm flier who doesn’t fear death, what we share is an instinctual, immovable acceptance of it. I may worry about it, and she may not, but we both accept it. We are going to die. We are going to cease to exist. And in all honesty, that is not only fine, but simply and serenely natural. Neither of us wants to die anytime soon. Neither of us wants our death to be prolonged or violent. We’d both like to die at a ripe old age, and we’d like everybody else whom we know and love—heck, everyone at large—to have an easy death. But as for death itself, we both understand and accept its inevitability, and honestly can’t imagine anything different.
If the acceptance of death as a natural and inevitable part of life is a visceral secular trait, then the virtue it tends to foster is a greater appreciation for life. For most of us, the lack of belief in immortality and the sober embracing of death’s finality make living all the more urgent, love all the more important, authenticity all the more warranted, and time with friends and family all the more precious.
To the secular sensibil
ity, life is not illusory, nor is it riddled with sin, nor is it the less significant precursor to some other more resplendent, pearly, or fiery realm. Rather, life is here, it is now, it is real, it is hard, it is soft, and it is ever so finite. And life’s finiteness is the very essence of its glow and churning, the glow and churning that we feel coursing through the oxygen of our atria and tingling up the hair follicles on our ears and echoing through the very happiness of our teenage belly laughter, spurred on by little more than the thwap of a steak against a Cyclops’s eye.
Chapter 8
Aweism
Life, this world, existence—it’s all a surreal, pleasantly mind-blowing mystery. The depths of the infinite, the source of all being, the causes of the universe, the beginnings or ends of time and space—when it comes to such matters, we don’t have a shred of a clue. And perhaps we never will.
What a funny and strange situation we find ourselves in: the only animals that exist with the simultaneous awareness that one day we won’t; the only creatures that ponder and argue about the very nature of their essence and purpose; the only carbon-based life form with the ability to produce abstract art and hang it in a large building containing a café that offers free-range turkey burgers and a gift shop that sells cute little books on the philosophy of abstract art. And with all our admirable scientific advances that save lives and ease suffering and improve communication and increase mobility and harness energy and expand knowledge, we still have no real sense of what it all means, why there is anything to begin with, and how it is all actually possible. And we never will. “Humanity’s destiny,” acknowledges philosopher André Comte-Sponville, is “irreducible unknowingness.”
Living the Secular Life_New Answers to Old Questions Page 20
