Getting to Room Temperature by Arthur Milner

Author:Arthur Milner [Milner, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781491798683
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2016-06-29T04:00:00+00:00

9. THE SUICIDE KIT

So I started to take it seriously.

First, I asked myself: Am I capable of this?

I reviewed my murderous past.

A long time ago, on a farm, I killed a chicken with an axe.

I’ve caught many fish with hooks and bashed their heads in with sticks.

I came across a kitten, once, that was half run over and flopping on the highway. I backed up, aimed carefully, and crushed its skull.

A few years ago, in the country, a friend asked for my help. She had found a small falcon. It couldn’t stand. You could see it had a broken neck. She said, “I think one of the dogs did it. I think we should kill it, but no one will. Jennifer said you’d kill it. Jennifer says you do that kind of thing.” Thank you, Jennifer.

I’m not suggesting that killing a human being is like killing a non-human animal. But I point out that the chicken, fish, kitten and falcon were not asking to be killed. My mother, however, was.

Well, why ask me? Why ask your son? Why not a stranger ... like the doctor? Why not go march across an ice floe, with that Eskimo?

And wait a second. Is that story even true? Cause if it isn’t — I thought — I’m off the hook.

Well, it turns out that the intentional death of old people is pretty common among nomads, who found it hard to take old people with them, and also in environments with severe food shortages, like the far north. The dying might happen through simple abandonment, or in the old person wandering off, or by actual killing.

Here’s an example. Among the Kaulong people of New Guinea, “the strangling of a widow by her brother or son immediately after her husband’s death was routine until the 1950s.” And it was demanded by the widow. One reluctant son described how his mother humiliated him: “My mother spoke loudly so all could hear: ‘My son won’t kill me because he wants to have sex with me.’”

I did not share this bit of research with my mother.

Here’s another thought. Maybe my mother wasn’t serious.

“Alright, mom. Here I have a syringe filled with something. Do you want to die? Yes or no?”

Filled with what? I searched the Web.

I typed in “suicide kit” and found a story about an 86-year-old woman in California who had been arrested for selling helium suicide kits for $14.95, which struck me as quite a good price, even with the strong U.S. dollar.

The theory is this: If you put a bag over your head to cut off oxygen, you will provoke a choking reflex, which is extremely painful, and you will struggle to rip the bag off your head. But by substituting an inert gas, you ... just ... drift ... away. Apparently it takes about two minutes to lose consciousness and you’re dead in five.

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