Sir Terry Pratchett has made an emotional plea for the right to take his own life, saying: ‘I live in hope I can jump before I am pushed.’,bed
The fantasy novelist gave his views following last week’s landmark House of Lords controversial judgment in the case of Debbie Purdy.
‘I believe that if the burden gets too great, those who wish should be allowed to be shown the door,’ he said. ‘In my case, in the fullness of time, I hope it will be in the garden under an English sky. Or, if wet, the library.’
Sir Terry, 61, author of the hugely successful Discworld books, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2007.
He said that no one has a duty to suffer the extremes of terminal illness and set down his admiration for the sick and dying who have travelled to Switzerland to die in legal suicide clinics. They have displayed ‘ furious sanity’, he said.[reference]
Considering how much I have loved the Discworld series and his other books, it saddens me to find him a supporter of assisted suicide. The character of Death is in all but one of the Discworld novels as a guide to the next world. He has written brilliant satire in his novels and this advocacy just seems so out of step of his normal common sense.
The diagnosis of Alzheimer’s must be terrifying to anybody and maybe more so for a writer. As Catholics we are blessed to have a deeper understanding of the mystery of suffering that we so need to share with the modern world. This understanding doesn’t make suffering go away. Offering it up seems like just another platitude until we look upon Jesus on the cross and then try to mouth the words “Why me?” I will be praying for Sir Pratchett and I hope that you join me in this. That he may once again show his furious sanity which in this case has gone astray.
19 comments
“Take his own life…” it just means he wants someone to put him to sleep and hold his hand during it. If you’re going to kill yourself why not do it in style, like Yukio Mishima, who tore himself open in the proper hara-kiri style after an abortive coup?
My mother’s friend walked head-on into a speeding freight train, a 200 ton locomotive leaves NO room for error.
I know I’m going to get into trouble for saying this.
My gut says it’s a knee-jerk thing.
Not sure if my gut is an idiot or not…..
I can’t imagine receiving a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. The idea of knowing that your body could keep living for years, but your mind will slowly deteriorate. I have worked with a lot of Alzheimer’s patients when I was a CNA, and it is not a pretty disease. My heart goes out to him and his family.
Still, I believe every breath is a gift of God and has a purpose… I pray that someday we’ll better understand that suffering is not the worst thing in the world and can actually lead to good.
The thought of losing my mind strikes me as more terrifying than the actual losing of it; if the madman knew that he was in fact mad, he wouldn’t be a madman.
Definitely praying for Pratchett.
Indeed, it’s not death people fear, but dying.
I actually wrote a thesis on this a while back which is posted on my blog:
http://praisedivinemercy.blogspot.com/2007/02/cult-of-death.html
I don’t know. It’s been pointed out, over at John C. Wright’s that before Alzheimer’s Disease had a name, people weren’t afraid of it. It was just “that way some old people get.” Now that it has a name, everyone’s terrified of it and they start talking this way. “I’ll blow my brains out if I ever come down with that, etc.”
To tell you the truth: I refuse to worry about it. Nothing lasts forever, except the next life.
My father-in-law in the last stages of ALS (“Lou Gehrig’s disease”) begged each of us just to put the pillow over his face and kill him. He was not Catholic.
I am a cancer survivor and chemotherapy patient (kidney, ureter removed; bladder lesions). In the Middle Ages people prayed for long, lingering deaths for time to begin their expiation. Now we pray we’ll be taken in our sleep.
I am probably consigned to the former by my diagnosis, and while I’m not glad about it, I trust that my personal suffering can become redemptive suffering: “offering it up.”
Boomers especially are desperately avoiding awareness of their own mortality, and drawn to it in a near-pornographic fascination since pop culture does its very best to distract us from such awareness.
I am glad that the Catholic faith gives great hope and faith to persons facing suffering and mortality.
Bridegroom Press published A Little Guide for Your Last Days. I hope it can help a few persons dealing with issues of their own mortality:
http://alittleguide.blogspot.com/
“Take his own life…” it just means he wants someone to put him to sleep and hold his hand during it. If you’re going to kill yourself why not do it in style, like Yukio Mishima, who tore himself open in the proper hara-kiri style after an abortive coup?
My mother’s friend walked head-on into a speeding freight train, a 200 ton locomotive leaves NO room for error.
I know I’m going to get into trouble for saying this.
No trouble at all because it is a reductio ad absurdum and you hit on the main point: this isn’t about merely killing himself. He wants an accomplice because that would ratify his decision. In a sense there is hope because it betrays a tweaked conscience.
Indeed, it’s not death people fear, but dying.
I agree, but that’s stupid. With faith, we need not fear death nor dying (least of all death itself).
Now, to those without faith, death is truly frightful.
Also a long-time fan.
Terry Pratchett makes the following claim: “But neither do I believe in a duty to suffer the worst ravages of terminal illness.”
I care for two Alzheimer patients and one terminal Hospice patient as a CNA.
To willingly embrace suffering may either be a duty, or it may be an act of heroic virtue. I don’t see how it can be both, maybe I’m wrong? Sir P makes the claim that it’s not a duty. I would assume that those things to which we are not duty bound are therefore matters of personal discretion? Apart from the claim that it is “self-murder” (easily dispensed with by those conscious enough to realize there is no intended malice), is there a concrete reason to believe we are bound by duty to submit to such an end?
Doug
The question of, “Why me?” often needs the answer, “Why not you?”. Remembering our equality before the eyes of God helps us to better connect with our fellow man and realize our lot in life is no worse than that of many others.
I pray for a quick end many years in the future. But if I get nothing like that then I pray for the strength to face the end as an example of my Catholic faith. In all cases, God’s will be done.
Just my thoughts on the topic.
Having known two people that are quite dear to me that have endured this diagnosis, I know despair is a demon that loves the furious furtive thoughts that come with such knowledge. I remember my grandmother in the middle years of this disease.
“I will not know my children. I will not know myself. I will not know that I like to smoke Marlboro cigarettes or watch soap operas, that I liked Johnny Carson but not Jay Leno.”
My grandmother went through these little deaths for the better part of ten years. Yet even in the silence of her world, when speech was lost and even eating was something that had to be prompted and presented, if someone brought her the Eucharist, she sat up, she opened her mouth and mumbled “Amen.”
Those called to endure great suffering, to participate in the cross, get to allow others to be called to great love. Those who suffer being or becoming mentally retarded, remind the rest of us of the gift of intellect, how fragile and how underrecognized, and that even this great gift, if it comes with degrees from Harvard, is nothing compared with depth of feeling, with God’s love.
As a Pratchett fan as well, this whole situation bring sadness to my heart. He brought much laughter to my life, and our Church has so much to offer him at this difficult time, but he will have none of it.
I must say that I’m not surprised at his support for euthanasia. He said as much through Granny Weatherwax while she was dealing with a pregnant woman who was kicked by an animal. Not sure if it was in Equal Rites.
His contempt for the Christian religion in particular (pre-reformation Small Gods, hermeneutical crisis Carpe Jugulum) has probably kept him far from the beauty our faith has to offer. I pray that he will be able to meet Our Lord on good terms even while he is still a long way off.
Pratchett has given me, easily, several hundred hours of pleasure with his novels, and I would agree that they often show a lot of common sense. But I’m another one who is not surprised he supports legal assisted suicide.
The Discworld witches don’t seem to have a problem with it. Apparently when a girl is being trained, her mentor will have a quiet word with her about hard cases, where someone lingers between life and death, unable to heal yet unable to pass over, and all the attending witch can do is help them to “find the door”. (I think that’s the phrase.) “But we never talk about it, not even among ourselves.”
And in Night Watch Sam Vimes, liberating a building full of torture victims before the building burns down around them, helps those he can out of the building and some, whose minds seem utterly broken, he euthanised. I think his action was described as done “without a trace of guilt”.
So I’ve tended to assume Pratchett would support either legal euthansia/assisted suicide or the more old-fashioned, “we know it sometimes happens privately, but we don’t want to go there, so we ignore it, even though it is technically illegal” stance.
I do think it is great that people who have enjoyed his work are praying for him; I’ve said a couple of prayers myself that he would be able to embrace Jesus before his mind deteriorates too far to make a rational choice. (Not that we can’t hold out hope even after that point.) I saw an interview once, in which he said that he read a lot of Chesterton when he was young, and I like to think that maybe a seed planted way back then could sprout and grow like Jack’s beanstalk within him.
I worked on a dementia unit in a nursing home.
There was a woman there who could still read although she could not remember that her husband had died many years ago, and when told went through fresh shock and grief, sometimes twice a day. Eventually we stopped telling her, and agreed that “tomorrow” she would go home to see him, but she was staying with us ” for tonight.”
Anyway, one day she slowly read outloud an article from the newspaper, saying that Dr. Kevorkian had assisted an Alzheimer’s patient to commit suicide. (Of course, she did not know that *she* was an Alzheimer’s patient, as she could not remember this even if told of it.) She said “Let him assist himself to commit suicide!”
The nursing home taught me that people suffering all kinds of deterioration, mental and physical, had the power to inspire love in their caretakers. Not in all their caretakers, sadly, but in those open to the inspiration, anyway. Somehow I think this gave meaning to their suffering. It was directly redemptive in its love inspiring power, in a way which gave some glimpse of how it might be redemptive in the divine economy.
Susan Peterson
I’ve met Terry Pratchett; he’s a really nice guy.
But honestly, there are so many writers that have a suicide thing, it’s boring. Tons of sf and fantasy writers have killed themselves, Alice Sheldon (who wrote as James Tiptree, Jr.) offed herself and her Alzheimer husband, and tons more brood about it.
So of course they love to propose assisted suicide for the terminally ill, because gosh, that makes it all justified.
I call BS. There’s nothing that torques people off worse than some writer offing himself, since it usually happens at the stupidest possible moment, when the check is in the mail and visitors and success on the way. I suspect that they know good things are coming, and don’t want to face being happy. Or it’s drama, and they want to Make People Sorry they didn’t appreciate them enough. Or it’s control, because if they can pick their own moment of death, they don’t have to admit they face the same troubles as every other human being ever.
I’ve contemplated suicide and been scared of death and losing my mind as much as anybody else. And I’ve got no patience with this kind of whinery, especially from someone who is verifiably stronger than that. If you didn’t kill yourself already at any other sad or depressing or scary time, Terry Pratchett, there’s no reason to kill yourself now.
Writers. Fans. All drama. Got no patience with them.
This is going to sound harsh but have ever noticed that these right to die people never just do it? People commit suicide everyday and most don’t ask for a state approved assistant.
Dymphna, I don’t wonder about that in relation to right-to-die proponents; I wonder about that in relation to extreme environmentalists and population control people. After all, the right-to-die person may just support the right of terminally ill people to die, but the extreme environmentalist or population control supporter believes that his very existence is harmful to the earth and all its components. Surely if you believe that every human being burdens the earth, making life worse for the other people who have to live here (not to mention the wildlife and the plants that might have grown where your stinking house sits, car/bike moves, etc), then you have a duty to do the decent thing and off yourself for the good of the world. Your ceasing to use resources at all could make up for quite a few people who refuse to switch to reusable shopping bags. Why not be a mensch and take one for the team?
There are a bunch of us here in Rome who read his books like we are eating popcorn at the movies. And they are great. But it is clear througout the books that he is, in religious matters, just another tiresome kneejerk British secularist in the Dawkins “Imtoosmarttobotherlookinganythingup” vein.
So, while disappointing, it is certainly in keeping with his millieu.