George Delury’s suicide note: “Scared to Death”

I have chosen to step out of life because I have been scared to death by the medical profession’s “ethics,” by the dogmatic rigidity of religious conservatives, and by the unthinking sentimentality of the public’s denial of death.

(1) American Society, in deep denial about the inevitability of death, is inclined to use force to maintain that denial. The result is that living bodies, by state order, often become prisoners of the medical-industrial complex, usually in profound violation of their scared persons.

We have a society that insists that persons and bodies be kept alive as long as possible, but that is also unwilling to pay the costs of that insistence. Instead, it is willing to threaten the aged, their children, and the grandchildren -- in other words, everybody -- with impoverishment.

But, given the endemic denial of death, most people believe, quite wrongly, that they will never have to face the problem of long-term care and never have to subject their families to the financial, physical and emotional rigors of providing that care. Deep down, most people believe that if they exercise enough, eat right, take the right pills, and avoid the dangerous, they will never have to die. Many, particularly those in the medical profession, appear to believe that death can and should be postponed indefinitely.

Even when they admit the inevitability of death, most people imagine they will die quick, painless deaths. But very few people die that way anymore. Most die now from the long-term chronic illnesses that characterize old age and after often painful and expensive treatments for cancer, heart disease, and other killers that have been slowed, but not stopped, by modern medical power.

(2) The medical-industrial complex profits, financially and in reputation, by this corrupt denial of death. It gains prestige and high incomes for those leading a phony “war on death,” offering “cures” that are, in their immediate effect, often worse than death.

These offers are usually accompanied by explicit or tacit expressions of unreasonable hope that play to the patients’ fears and wishful thinking. Often such expressions of hope carry a tacit threat of abandonment if the doctor’s aims are not accepted.

Until recently, doctoring was about healing; life-saving might be a by-product of that focus. Today, a great deal of doctoring is a futile life-saving effort, whether healing is possible or not. And the cost of that life-saving is consuming resources that used to go to healing.

(3) The U.S. medical system is profoundly corrupt. The corruption is not financial or any of the other forms of corruption we usually think of. It is a moral corruption at a deep social level that is most evident in society’s apparent readiness to spend lavishly to stave off the death while refusing to provide the reliable care needed to improve and sustain the health of the 45 million uninsured, most of whom are employed U.S. citizens and 10 million of whom are children.

It is obvious to me that we no longer consider human life sacred. On the contrary, this society practices human sacrifice everyday by failing to provide adequate and comprehensive health insurance for those 45 million.

The corruption is caused and enforced by a failure of the medical and legal professions and the general public to adapt their concepts of death to modern medical reality. That reality is that most biological bodies not subject to severe trauma to vital functions can be kept alive indefinitely, whether the persons who inhabited the bodies are present or not.

It is no longer the case that God decides when we die; rather the medical profession, with the full support of people who profess a religious faith, has usurped that role, ignoring the fact that it is not the body that is sacred, but rather the person in command of his or her biological life.

Personal details:
The reason for my death is that I have entered on that path of physical decline that leads to death. Breathing troubles and a severe drop in energy leave me with a style of life that is not much beyond mere existing. My body, a trusted friend all my life, is being invaded by something foreign, bringing strange discomforts, dull pains in my bones, and pressures in my chest. It is no longer a faithful retainer. If I were even ten years younger, I might consider alternatives to death. But at age 74, it seems to me that I have lived long enough.

What I have to look forward to is life for the sake of the medical-industrial complex. At any moment there could come that event -- a stroke, a heart attack, an accident -- that could make me a prisoner, subject to the medical-industrial complex’s “ethics” and trapped in “un-life” by the law and public sentiment. I have an advanced directive and an out-of-hospital DNR order, but there are many circumstances in which these might not be effective in keeping me out of the medical-industrial prison.

I have arrived at my attitudes toward death from wide reading, introspection and meditation, and my religious upbringing and current beliefs. I do not view life as mine, but rather as a stream of light into which my dust mote momentarily strayed.

Life itself is not diminished by my exit from the stream. For those thinking “depression,” I suggest they consider “projection,” their psychological defense against this reminder of our common mortality. Do not insult me by classifying me as mentally ill or morally crippled simply because I acknowledge the inevitable.

I have known the full richness of life, with all its joys and sorrows, and I give thanks to God for granting me this small role in the human tragicomedy. I give thanks for my loving sisters and wives, loving children and grandchildren, and many loving friends. My life has more than fulfilled my expectations, and my freedom to choose death affirms my joy in having lived. To submit to the ravages of old age, the rapacity of the medical-industrial complex, and the sentimentality and dogmas of our culture would reduce my life to a meaningless charade.

“That was life? Very well then. Again! Exactly the same!”

George E. Delury