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Hamilton Arts & Letters
– For Jim Johnstone –
Zahar was hot, bright. Accustomed to Canadian summers of limited brilliance, of a country where sunglasses are necessary only in the winter to reduce snow glare, it was hard to look at anyone or anything for very long. Across from me at the garden restaurant, Ema, a Dutch physician, worked hard to reassure me about the integrity of her country’s euthanasia law and protocol. In lugubrious English, she said, “It is very tough, impossible to circumvent. Six precepts must be met. Every death is treated as if the doctor is under suspicion of committing a crime until the prosecutor’s office is satisfied that the procedure was done according to law.”
Oh lord. State lawyers involved as part of a doctor’s regular discharge of duty? My wife squeezed my leg from under the table in what has become our shared sign of conversational distress. She sensed The Orwell Routine coming on. Whenever I mention Orwell, the evening will suddenly end. I turn savage, just like my hero. “Had he lived, I wonder if Orwell would have opted for the thiopental?” I asked. “ ‘Oh no,’ he’d say, ‘too many books are published these days, and too much suffering without end! I face an unfulfilled life. Snuff me. Snuff me doctor, please. Snuff my suffering. But long live the Queen Dowager.’ ”
[Distillate © HA&L + Shane Neilson | {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]
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