The Light Of Earindel's Star
An Essay
I suppose he was a likeable enough guy. I met him for the first time that evening, sitting across from me at one of those socially uncomfortable benefit events that populate the holiday season. As I sat down, he extended a hand. We exchanged introductions. Pleasantries followed, the inevitable resume swap. He was a sociology professor at a local university; I was an attorney at a nearby boutique firm. As the evening dragged on, he steered the conversation towards topics of a legal nature, probably thinking he was doing me a favor. Initially, his topics were innocuous enough – changes in the sales tax laws, a recent Supreme Court decision limiting discrimination claims, the latest celebrity trial.
Having navigated the safe harbors, he ventured into open sea.
I can see him, in my mind's eye, sitting across from me, talking to me but glancing around the table, the pundit's sly smile gracing his face.
"Take suicide," he said. "You know in most states it's a crime?"
"In all states, I believe," was my reply.
"Okay, in all states. But why? Who are you punishing? If the suicide is successful, do you prosecute the corpse?"
That, of course, was for the benefit of the others around the table, who granted him an encouraging chuckle. I didn't answer.
"And if the suicide is unsuccessful, how does a criminal charge—on top of whatever drove them to suicide in the first place—help matters? I mean, seriously, where's the social benefit in that?"
I took a drink of my water, tasting a bit of floating lemon.
He put down his silverware and leaned forward, his fingers pointed at me like knives. "Forget for a moment that laws like these violate our individual rights. Let's try to identify the social benefit. What's the benefit in making a personal choice—even the choice to take one's own life—illegal? I mean, sure it's a tragedy when someone commits suicide, even a horrible tragedy, but the person they're hurting is themselves. Why make it a crime?" His smile was genuine and friendly. “Explain this to me.”
I didn't explain it to him. Others around the table offered reasons, rationalizations, glancing at me as they did so, while I remained silent. After a moment, my water glass found it's way back to the table with an ease and grace I found remarkable under the circumstances and I stood up quickly, making some benign but socially acceptable comment before excusing myself. The conversation hung for a moment, like a stuck motor, but resumed soon enough as I walked away. I could feel his eyes on my back, watching me and wondering if in some way he had offended me.
Of course, he would wonder that. He was, as I said, a likeable guy.
But at that moment, I disliked him immensely.
For as long as I've thought about such things, I've been a personal choice kind of guy. I believe in the inherent right of every individual to make their own choices and, come hell or high water, live with the choices they make. I believe in good choices and evil choices, and in everyone's right to choose the white or the black or any of the thousand of shades of gray in between. This right to choose and, at times, to choose in error, is what makes us human beings and is necessary—even essential—for the development of our characters and our souls.
In the midst of all this choosing, there is a catch. It's best illustrated by the following story:
While in law school, I signed up to provide student representation to criminals in various state courts. Of course, I learned a lot from the experience, not the least of which is how little I actually knew about criminal law. As I navigated through the criminal justice system in ignorance, I learned to rely heavily upon my clients who, quite frankly, knew more about the system than I did.
One afternoon, while I was in a Minnesota state court waiting for my case to be called, I watched as a father—his two wild-eyed young children were raging in hallway outside the courtroom—was sentenced for breaking into a house at night with the intent to steal (a crime otherwise known as burglary). It was a third offense and carried a recommended prison sentence of fifteen years. A classmate of mine was arguing, unsuccessfully, for a shorter prison sentence on the basis that his client had a job, ties to the community, and two small children. Despite what the man had done, a sudden and deep pang of sympathy rang through me, as I considered that those two wild-eyed children could be teenagers the next time their father took them out for pizza.
Sitting next to me was my client, who neither required or expected fancy legal representation; he was guilty as sin and he knew it. As the father broke down in tears at the pronouncement of the full fifteen year sentence, my client uttered a harsh and vulgar criticism of the man's weakness.
"Why don't you give the guy a break?" I snapped.
My client looked at me, eyes sly and smiling, sharpened by years of hard-earned, street wisdom. "You don't do the crime if you can't do the time."
He was right, of course.
Amid the supermarket of choices we face every day of our lives, it's important to remember that with each choice comes a real and natural consequence and sometimes that consequence is bad. What separates us from the animals—apart from styling gel and designer clothing—is our ability to imagine these consequences before they happen and to avoid those that are uncomfortable or even painful.
But even guided by the best of imaginations and the wisest of judgments, all of us occasionally make decisions that hurt us or, even worse, hurt others. Naturally and logically, pain follows from these choices like night follows day and the only balm for that pain is the hope that somehow and someday we will be given an opportunity to fix the mistake, the opportunity to make a wrong decision right. Even in cases where our actions result in the death of another human being, we can commit our lives to making sure that person did not die in vain.
In this supermarket of choices, there is only one real exception to this rule.
And that is when we choose suicide.
On a beautiful May day some fifty years ago, my grandmother was doing the dishes in the small Illinois farmhouse that was her and my grandfather's home. She was feeling better than she'd felt in a long time, partly because of the arrival of spring and partly because my grandfather, who had been gone for days on a business trip that they hoped would result in a steady income, was returning that afternoon. For my grandfather, who had survived the war only to be unable to find or keep any work, this was the first real opportunity to come his way in well over a year. They had three small children. They needed a break.
My grandmother was putting away the dishes when she heard a loud pounding coming from the attic upstairs. Later she would say she knew—even without knowing—that something was horribly wrong. She desperately wanted to grab her children and run from the house, to run for the gravel road that ran, dirty and dusty, into the horizon, to run for that road and just keep on running. Instead, she screamed for my father and his brother, both children, and ran upstairs.
They found my grandfather in the attic, a bottle of spilled strychnine stinking up the floor beside him. The farm was forty-five miles from a hospital. It took him over thirty minutes to die. He did not regain consciousness. He did not leave a note.
In the dark aftermath of his choice, my grandmother discovered that his "opportunity" had been nothing more than traveling to a major Midwestern city to look for work. No one knows what happened while he was there. Maybe he couldn't find work. Maybe he found work but couldn't face the thought of abandoning a farm that had been his family for generations. Maybe he decided he was a failure. Maybe he was just tired and wanted a rest from it all.
For my grandmother, there was no rest. She was left to raise three small children by herself. She worked the farm for five years and then, when work was too hard and the dollars too few, she moved her family to the city and took a job in a factory. She now lives in a nursing home, blessed with Altziemers and waiting to die. She never remarried.
One night, I asked her about it all. I was in college at the time and spending my summer vacation with her. We were sitting on the porch, watching the headlights pass along the highway in front of her house and relishing the sweet scent of cut clover and alfalfa, the glow of fireflies over the fields. In this serene setting, she spoke of pain, loneliness, and the inevitable inability to trust. She told me things I'd rather she hadn't. I'm ashamed to say that before she was finished sharing her pain with me, I was sorry I'd brought it up. Sorry for me and sorry for her.
Then she told me about the nightmares.
Even forty years after my grandfather's death, my grandmother still had the nightmares. She would dream she was back on the farm, working in the small kitchen on a darkly sunny day—the kind of Illinois day when the sky glows a deep azure blue but a shadow haunts the horizon, a storm lurking just beyond the edge of the trees. In the dream, she is cutting up chicken, using a butcher knife my grandfather made from an old steel file, when she hears the bumpy rattle of his truck rolling down the gravel road, hard and fast, and then she drops the knife—she can see it falling towards the unfinished hardwood floor – and runs, running across the yard towards the barn because she hears his voice and it’s a roar inside her head.
"I'm coming to get you, Bertha. I'm coming to get you."
Suicide is the one completely permanent choice from which there is no apology. Once done, the act cannot be repaired or corrected. The damage to ourselves and our loved ones goes on and on until the mind breaks or death silences the memories.
An apology must be offered for what I'm about to say. In our politically correct and mechanically kind society, my words will be about as welcome as fingernails on a blackboard.
I have no patience for people who choose suicide.
Believe it or not, everyone on this planet has problems, even terrible problems, heart-rendering problems, the kind of problems that won't go away with a mountain of faith and good wishes. But somehow we, as human beings, go on, sometimes motivated by nothing more than the belief that no matter how bad things are now, something better may be waiting on the horizon.
I know a man, he goes to my church. His daughter has Down's Syndrome. I see them walking sometimes, him steering her with his hand on her elbow. Her face is an irreparable mess and she will never say a single coherent word, yet there is no language of sufficient magnitude to express his love for her or the pain he has felt on her behalf during her lifetime.
An acquaintance of mine has suffered through six different miscarriages with his wife and still they long for the birth of a single healthy child. Following the last miscarriage, which occurred in a hospital (they were told by doctors their baby would be born premature and, instead, she was born dead), a young priest approached them and asked if he could share some words of comfort with them, or simply sit quietly with them, to grow in his own experience from the death of their daughter. They thanked him for his kindness, but declined the invitation.
Life is awash with pain and misery and affliction, and yet in the face of all this suffering, suicide still remains the greater lie.
I am no Tolkienite; while I've read and enjoyed The Lord of the Rings, I do not search the pages for the shadows of my own personal philosophy. Yet one of Tolkien's metaphors lingers with me: when the Fellowship takes leave of the forests of Lothlorien, Frodo is given a phial containing the light of Eärendil's Star, a light to guide him in dark places, a light to comfort him when all other lights go out.(1) I think Tolkien's imagery is clear: the light of Eärendil's Star is the light of hope and no matter what happens to us, no matter how difficult life becomes, no matter how alone we feel at any moment, that light is always with us.
And that is why suicide is a crime.
THE END
(1) Tolkein, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002 (p. 379).