By Diane Gee
out of sound, out of sight
I’ve met the reaper in the night
to whom belongs that sacred right?
Natural deaths aside? Who have we let become our Gods? To whom does that choice belong?
In fact, if you want to make a case for the fact we have never been a democracy since the Declaration was signed, beyond the obvious fact your vote is merely a “suggestion” to the electoral college; think of the fact that these words are uttered NOWHERE in that writ.
“Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.”
Hence: They have the right to kill you in 32 states. You may not kill others, or them.
Hence: You may not choose the manner or time of your own death with assisted suicide… unless you choose suicide by cop.
Barring an act of violence that would surely scar your loved ones, yes, you do not have the right to choose the manner and time of your own death. They do; save in 5 of the 50 states.
I know death up close and personal. My grandparents first, my 18 year old sister when I was 6, my Mother at 19, my Father a year before my son was born, then my Mother in Law and the man I was with for 27 years in the same year. In the last case I spent a full year never stepping away from it; trying to breathe it away, breath by struggling breath watching it steal his resolve first, then his mass, then his soul before it whispered away with his life. I speak plainly about it, for those who have been through it surely feel less alone… yet not too plainly of how horrific it was, for those who have yet to live through it. No reason to add another layer of fear to their process; we all have to go through it eventually. I have always been the one unafraid, willing to not shrink from terminal people. I have been willing to be the one holding their hand, and giving comfort and energy where I could. It takes a certain pragmatism and the ability to compartmentalize to do it, and a great deal of empathy.All I know for certain, is that I don’t want to do it again. I cannot bury another loved one. I will break. You do get used up, being strong. Used up until there is a weakness in you that likely will never heal. Its very isolating, which is why I write about it… it screams to be out of me.
What of my Dad who had an in-stone DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) on him, and my brother had resuscitated anyway? He looked at me with horror in his eyes, barely able to talk after the surgery, with a vent down his throat, and moaned, “Whyyyy Diny???” (pronounced die-knee – a childhood nickname) He wanted to die. His Parkinson’s had rendered him trapped, and everything was shutting down.
What of my husband, who had the same DNR with the hospital – a copy of which the Hospice nurse was going to bring on her 1st visit scheduled for the day after he died – when the EMS team worked on him for 45 minutes, zapping his poor dead heart over and over? Crack! Crack! Then left his body on the floor, vent now stuck in his parched dead throat that came out with a sickening rasp after sticking so hard I had to use all my weight to free it, tubing and needles covering my living room floor for me to clean up. Where was his choice?
Every day, people with terminal illness want to be able to leave with some dignity and a Doctor’s care – denied this by their loved ones who still look for a sky-Daddy’s wrath, or worse yet, by a State that tells them they do not have that choice.
Oh, but the State has always had the choice. How many citizens have been sent to their death in our endless wars? How many citizens of other countries have we killed? Are still killing? War is different, you say. Perhaps, and without a draft, arguably people have a choice to serve or not. The people we make war upon do not have that choice, though. Under Obama, that war-right has become legal murder of US citizens without trial. That, itself is worthy of its own damning treatise.
That is not the least of it. The State claims it has the right to murder individuals. That is what Capital Punishment is after all, murder. This is not self-defense, no die or be killed moment in which one takes the most extreme measure in order to live. These people are no threat, under lock and key, incarcerated. It is one thing to remove you from society to prevent you from doing harm to yourself or others; another to say, “You have no right to be alive.”
The most recent data on Death Row Inmates shows that 1.6% of those so accused are exonerated before being murdered. A whopping 4.1% were not exonerated in time; paying the ultimate price while completely innocent. Picture how many more prior to DNA evidence were killed. I should note here that the Prison Industrial Complex uses human beings as profiteering fodder, removing people from society that are no risk to anyone – predating on the cross-section of the poor and people of color in the United States. 1 in 100 adults are currently in jail, that number jumps to 3 in 100 when you include probation or other being under other forms of the penal system.
More outrageous, they botched an execution in Oklahoma, and Clayton Lockett died a painful gruesome death. The process is set so that there is secrecy shrouding (by law) those who administer the dose (the murderers) and the pharmaceutical company that provides the drugs (the murder weapon) so no one can ever be held culpable.
Dean Sanderford, Lockett’s attorney, said that he saw his client’s body start “to twitch (and) he mumbled something.” Then “the convulsing got worse, it looked like his whole upper body was trying to lift off the gurney.”
We have not only elevated the State into God’s over life and death, we have allowed their guard dogs to become extrajudicial killers on our very streets. In “Operation Ghetto Storm,” the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) found at least 136 unarmed African Americans were killed by police, security guards and self-appointed vigilantes in 2012. Overall, one black person was killed in an extrajudicial shooting every 28 hours Compare that to the statistic: The U.S. Department of State reports that only 17 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide as a result of terrorism in 2011 – including war zones. Read those numbers again. Think, that they are NOT numbers, they are brothers, fathers, sons. They are mothers, sisters and daughters. They are human beings killed in cold blood by the state in what has become an epidemic of vigilante justice by pigs trained by Homeland Security to see us as “The Enemy.” How is that democracy working out for us? For the families of those left behind when they fall? To those mopping up the blood of a boy playing with a squirt gun, or a man who stopped to help someone change a tire?
We have new Gods, it seems, and legions of untouchable dark angels we allow to preside over our very life and death. Tell me this is progress over beheading people on Aztec pyramids, or throwing virgins in volcanoes? This is fucking PROGRESS? A State that will not allow us to die under a Doctor’s care with dignity, yet kills us with impunity?
The laws says “Murder is a Crime” unequivocally. It says, by omission or by actual lesser legislation, that “Murder is a Crime, unless done by the State, and in that case, shut up – we do what we want.”
Why is it, we allow this? Why is it so many yet believe they live in some sort of Democracy with Real™ Freedom©? Dead men tell no tales, and live ones fear the pale rider. Yet, rather than face our own mortality with the utmost of regard, the most sober of judgment and lucid intent… we still let some petty and vengeful human Gods hold over us the one thing that is our own, and only our own?
Someone, please explain it to me before I have to ever endure the death of loved one, or my son has to endure mine.
wraps your claws a weighted band
Freed to terrorize the land
You beget me, understand?