Just one more day…
I recently watched the end of the 2001 movie, Artificial Intelligence, which I haven’t seen its release. The time is the 22nd century. Monica and Henry have a child, Martin, who has an incurable disease so he is placed in suspended animation in the hope that a cure will be found. In the meantime, Monica and Henry obtain an android, David, a new type of robot that is programmed to love. Monica is leery but comes to care for him. Then a cure is found for Martin. Sibling rivalry ensues. Except David is not a real sibling. Yet, all he ever wanted was to be real. David is abandoned with his robot Teddy. David eventually ends up under the sea that covers Manhattan.
An ice age spreads over the planet and 2000 years pass. Highly advanced robots find David and to their delight discover that he has memories of humans. From reading his memories they replicate his home. All he wants is time with his mother. The androids can bring her back. But there is a condition. She can stay for only one day. Is David prepared to be with her only one more day? Yes! What a beautiful day, from the moment he walks into her room and awakens her with the offer of a cup of her favourite coffee, to playing hide and seek with Teddy. And then comes bedtime. And David tucks his mother in. She tells him how odd it is; she should tuck him in but she is so tired. As she closes her eyes, she puts her arm around him, pulls him close and says, “I love you David, I have always loved you.” That is all he ever wanted. To hear his mother say those words. And he heard them because he was able to spend just one more day with her. David lies down beside her, holds her hand and closes his eyes.
The story of Gloria Taylor was recently retold on television. The camera took us with her on her fight for the right for assisted-suicide. She spoke of her fear of dying a painful death from ALS, a death over which she would have no control. And she liked and needed to be in control. She said that she was of sound mind when making this decision. That is not true. One is never of sound mind when making decisions predicated on fear. We have known this for thousands of years. Throughout the Bible there are admonitions against fear. “Do not fear” is repeated over and over again because fear is paralysing. Fear clouds judgement. Fear takes away free will. Fear is an instinctual response from the deepest part of our brain, the amygdale, the limbic, reptilian brain that responds with the emotion of fear to the unknown. What greater unknown is there than dying and death?
Whether Gloria fears a painful end to her life or fears the pain of living does not change the underlying, driving emotion-fear. I know from personal experience that fear can colour decision-making to the point that one can justify suicide. I have been there. And there is no difference between suicide at sixteen or assisted suicide at 60. I reached a point where physical, emotional and spiritual pain was so great, I could justify leaving my widowed mother who had already buried a child, my children and my first grandchild. I would have missed the next seven. I did not want to be a burden. I was going to die out of selfless love for them. It all made sense except I was in the middle of a mental health crisis. No one chooses death when the mind is sound. A sound mind keeps us alive. How do I know that? Because of history. Those who have truly suffered, from soldiers in prison camps, to the Holocaust, through the Rwandan genocide, did not end their lives. Pain, all kinds of pain was ever present. But they chose to stay alive.
Gloria and those like her who want the right to choose death, on their own terms-with or without assistance- are teaching those they leave behind that they are not worthy of the personal pain that will have to be born in order to give family and friends “just one more day.” Gloria would be teaching her granddaughter to run from fear rather than face it, to let fear control her decision-making, her life. Gloria is telling her, unconsciously, that the love she has for her granddaughter is not as great as her selfish desire not to suffer as if we have some innate right not to bear pain or sorrow. Gloria and those who want us to legalize their right to kill themselves are turning all of us away from the ideals of love, honour, courage, toward selfishness; grandiose infantile delusions of entitlement. The idea of a good death no longer includes caring enough for loved ones to choose to stay with them, to fight for the opportunity to stay with them “Just one more day.”
There are three pilgrimage festivals in the Hebrew Bible; one of them takes place in the fall; The Feast of the Tabernacles. It is a holiday that is celebrated for seven days. It comes at the end of a month of holy days and it is the last in-gathering of the people until spring. But when it is time for the people to go home, something happens. God cannot bear to let his people leave nor can He bear to leave them. His love for them is so great, as is theirs for Him. And so He says to them, “Stay with me, just one more day.” After all that time together, it isn’t enough. Love always wants more. These are the same feelings we have for those we love who are ill, whose death is in sight, whose time is short and precious; a daughter for a mother, a husband for a wife, a parent for a child. “Please, just stay with me one more day.”
