Suicide is a right

It's Thursday. That's the day after the two long days, and it's a long day itself. I feel a bit creaky. Last night, I introduced a film (PBS, Independent Lens: A Fishing Story) and suggested to my young students that they were the foundation of my future, that they - in this class - needed to learn to recognize ethnocentrism and the human tendency to make "groups," and to distinguish between pluralism, assimilation, and tolerance, because they - future policy-makers and citizens - had to figure out to reduce/avoid/resolve conflicts between the myriad groups that exist, locally/nationally/globally. I frequently refer to my elderly-ness, and I (increasingly) sound more querulous as I demand they step up to the plate and learn enough to take care of me in my tarnished years.

So it's Thursday, which is also a day with chunks of time to prepare for future lectures. I will be teaching 'AGING' in two classes this fall. Gotta find some interesting, shake-them-in-their-flipflops kind of videos and articles. I found this in today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/world/europe/24britain.html?ref=todayspaper.

From the age of 16, I have pondered the What-If's and the paradoxes I encounter. What's worse: to be smart and ugly, or dumb and beautiful? (That took up a lot of thought time a few decades ago!). Now, I wonder what's worse: to lose motor coordination and other physical abilities (like my sight) or to lose my awareness of the moment and memories? One of the things that my mother and I discussed in the year before her death, was the right to die. She seemed to feel that taking her own life would cause undeserved stress and angst among her family and loved ones. So dying had to be a natural occurrence. But she did have admiration for the strength of character that led the elderly Eskimos to the iceberg. My thinking (at this distance in time from the dying) is that I have the right to hold as much control as I am able to hold over the dying, and the death. (Cynicism alert: That may be more control than I will have over the distribution of my stuff and the way I am celebrated in ceremony.) If my life isn't worth living -- and surely, I am the one who gets to decide that! -- then I have the right to end it. Right?