Self Exit

“Another year,” BJ thought. “Another probing of this organ and that appendage . . . and my brain. Hello. Are you still in there? Yep, still here, but for what purpose it’s hard to say.”

The doctor always asks the same question. “How are you feeling?”

The answer is always the same. “Fine.”

Then the probing and the prodding, followed by a list of questions, most of which were answered on the form filled out during the hour’s wait in the lobby . . . if he would only read it. No new allergies, no unusual heart beats or shallow breathing or blurry vision or aches and pains or trouble urinating or moving bowels or sleeping. Nope, none of those. Feelings of depression? Well . . . maybe sometimes. But the next question caused a pause.

“Have you ever had suicidal thoughts?”

“Suicide? Not really.”

“What do you mean, ‘not really’?”

“Well, I mean, only in the abstract sense.”

The doctor leaned in an inch or two closer. “Abstract in what way?

“Well, I mean, I suppose there is no one alive who hasn’t at one time pondered the concept of suicide. ‘Why is there such a thing? The whole idea of ending your own life goes against human survival instinct. Why would you do it? Maybe in some contemplative moment alone, or perhaps with a group of young friends, you might even discuss how you would prefer to do it—if you ever found yourself in that frame of mind. Jump off a cliff? Slash your wrists? Jump in front of a train? Overdose on drugs? Drink poison? Shoot yourself in the head? Why would you choose one over the other? But then you put those thoughts away, maybe not quite forgotten, but stored in some dark and seldom visited box inside your brain.”

“Have you had any such thoughts recently?”

“No, of course not. Not in the last fifty years or so.”

“Good.” The doctor returned to more physiological questions, then ended the exam and sent BJ to the lab for blood work and EKG.

In his car afterward, BJ was still thinking about that odd conversation.

“Why would someone decide it’s time to check out? He could remember sitting in the grass with his friends when he was twelve, a time when boys would discuss such things as torture devices, weapons of mass destruction and, yes, even self-destruction. The general consensus had been, make your exit fast and certain. A gun would be best in that case, but a case might also be made for the exhilaration you could (briefly) feel between the time your feet leave the bridge and your body smacks the water. Or maybe for regret.

“Would you want people to know you had done it? Perhaps lay some guilt onto them? Make them feel somehow responsible? Or would you disappear entirely and leave everybody wondering what had happened to you?

“What if nobody cared?”

Now that the box had been opened, BJ couldn’t get it quite closed again.

Could there be circumstances that would drive him to suicide? Financial ruin? Health issues? Who knows? But insanity . . . yes, that would make sense. You must be insane if you want to kill yourself, right? But what kind of insanity? He hoped not the kind that would make him so angry that he would take a gun to the mall to be shot by a cop. More likely a slow deterioration of the brain, senility, Alzheimer’s disease.

But if your brain is disintegrating, would you even know it? Would you have enough sense to realize you were turning into a vegetable? You might need someone to do it for you. That would be a huge responsibility, unfair to put on anybody.

BJ had always wanted to avoid hospitals, never ending up like his father, tethered to a bunch of tubes and too drugged to know what was happening. No, that would not be an honorable way to die. No pain, though. He wouldn’t want a slow, painful death. No wrist slashing and bleeding out. What, then? It would probably make sense to have a plan.

BJ went on thinking about other things, such as traffic, what’s for dinner, a TV show he didn’t want to miss. He wanted to get home to cuddle his wife. But the box’s lid was now ajar, and from time to time he would look back into it. A year or so went by and BJ largely forgot about the topic. But an interview on the radio revived that inner conversation.

The interview was with the leader of a group formerly associated with the Hemlock Society. BJ didn’t actually know what hemlock was, but he knew that Socrates had died from ingesting it a couple thousand years ago. This group wanted to avoid the legal implications of “doctor assisted suicide,” so they promoted education about how to safely—and legally—make a clean exit. Their members were mostly elderly or people diagnosed with a terminal disease.

The society’s preferred method for putting one’s self to permanent sleep was by breathing helium. After inhaling helium, the body’s oxygen level can plummet to a hazardous level in a matter of seconds. But your lungs don’t notice. You go to sleep or, more correctly, you pass out. It’s painless. If you continue to breathe it, you die.

BJ filed that information away in his brain box, but the cover was almost removed. He looked inside it more frequently. But life was too much fun right now. Such thoughts were better reserved for old age.

Why live to old age? If you’re retired, if you can no longer do most of the things you used to do when you were younger, if your children are grown, or if you have no children, if you’re no longer productive . . . why are you still hanging around? Who needs you? What is your purpose?

Oh, sure, some people do volunteer work or involve themselves with some do-good charity. But who are you kidding? Unless you’re some philanthropic billionaire, isn’t it too late to make up for the self-centered life you’ve been leading for the past sixty or seventy years? And if you are sick or dying, you really are a burden on somebody. Why not get it over with?

BJ began idlily searching the internet and other sources of information about self-exiting. Then his best friend Dan contracted a deadly nervous system disease for which there is no known cure. Dan gradually lost bodily functions and eventually his speech. BJ watched his friend deteriorate over the course of a year. Dan scrawled a note to BJ, with tears on his face. “Please let me die.” But Dan’s wife would have no part of it. Her church could never condone it. She dedicated herself to keeping Dan alive for as long as possible while he sat there and rotted away, conscious but helpless.

Dan’s memorial service was all about how he had lived. But for BJ it was all about how he had died. There was no dignity in a death like that. BJ stopped being friends with Dan’s widow, polite but not friends. Keeping your spouse alive long past nature’s plan was neither honorable nor moral. It was horrible.

The lid was off the box now.

BJ was making a plan. It involved helium. Another radio report was disconcerting. Helium is disappearing from the earth’s atmosphere. There is only a finite quantity, and when it’s gone it’s . . . gone! What if there were none left by the time it was his time? What if it becomes illegal? Could he buy a tank of it? Where? What if he could only rent a tank? Would there be questions about how he planned to use it? How long can you store it?

More years went by. BJ kept the plan, but he took no steps to implement it. He hadn’t figured out how to do it without help, should he ever decide the time had come.

He could put a plastic bag over his head. But as soon as he went unconscious the bag would probably come off. He might not die, but he might have brain damage or lung damage. That would suck! How could he do it without making somebody else part of his crime?

Such thoughts would pop up from time to time, while waiting for a red light, or drifting off to sleep. There was still plenty of time . . . wasn’t there?

Then the divorce.

Forty years. How can you love someone, live with someone, and someday not love them anymore? What was left to live for? Maybe his time was up.

Alone in his apartment, talking only to himself, BJ began to finalize his plan.

He went to three different party stores and bought six helium-filled balloons at each store.

Nobody would think much about it. Besides, he couldn’t get more than six balloons in his car at one time.

He constructed a pup tent on his bed using a large plastic sheet and duct tape, like a giant sealed baggy, big enough to completely encase his body, his balloons, and a knife. He crawled in and sealed it, practically floating among gaily colored balloons. He had to laugh.

Pop! Pop! One by one he punctured them, until he felt dizzy and couldn’t remember how many more he was supposed to pop. A feeling of bliss came over him. BJ laid back, smiled, and allowed himself drop into darkness and wait for…