Tough Call

Looking back on some of the really difficult decisions I've had to make in my life, I can think of two very recent ones that shake my core.

Futility often plays a part in making up your mind for you. In some ways those most painful of all decisions are easily made.

As medical staff took turns trying to keep my son from dying when he had already"shuffled off this mortal coil," the attending doctor took me and my wife aside and told me a hard truth that I wasn't even remotely prepared to hear. He said I needed to make a decision, perhaps the most difficult right / wrong decision I could ever make. Strange when I heard him say that, I knew. Yes, I told him to stop attempting to resuscitate Noah. It had become utterly futile. We had to face reality and let him go in peace. The tears streamed down our faces almost without our knowing. It was like some kind of reflex of emotion. I was numb. I couldn't make sense out of anything. So, this was death? Very quiet, sterile. No bombs, no hysterics, no noise whatsoever. I just sat there, stood there, hardly able to move. And I let my Noah go. Life in him was spent. And I don't even remember crying. I looked to heaven for answers to questions I didn't know how to ask.

Now, death is a strange and foreboding presence in our day to day. It's there. We just turn a blind eye until it stares us down. A few weeks ago I had to make another tough call. Our 13-year-old beagle Todes had grown utterly senile. I suppose I'd been putting off the inevitable. Instead of making the call months ago, I had put it off at the expense of his quality of life, which had significantly diminished over the last year or so. All the signs were there: the howling for no reason, the incontinence, staring at the wall for long periods, eating pebbles and getting sick, perhaps mistaking dirt and rocks for food. (I even learned later that he had early stages of cataracts.) But denial is a powerful thing. Even his inability to maintain any kind of genuine social interaction didn't seem to bother me much. Besides, Todes appeared to be physically fit. Yet, we all should know that appearances don't mean a whole lot.

And while I was trying to recover from major surgery, I had family members try to take care of old Todes. When I got home from the hospital, I knew, however, that I had to take action. His howling was stressing me out. Even a neighbor came over to ask if our dog was okay. Despite everything, I called up (even emailed) a few places to see what our options were. The news I got was varied. None of the options struck me as ideal in any way. Most of the so-called gentle methods might have cleared our conscience of guilt, maybe. But again they only prolonged the inevitable. Quality of life would still be greatly diminished. No, the most humane method at our disposal was euthanasia at the County animal control center. It was time. Of course, my daughter Hannah was totally distraught. Todes was her first real pet. To put him down was utter anathema for her. But it was my decision after weighing every possibility. It was the best right / wrong decision. Right for Todes. Wrong for us to hear it. But the best, most humane option. We brought his body back to bury. Actually, my brave young Hannah did most of the work! Burial detail. Remarkable young lady. I sure can't think of most American teenagers who are capable of doing what she did on that cold and windy day. And on that day when the weather nearly knocked me over, Hannah dug a grave for our dearly departed dog Todes. All I could do was oversee the work, making sure the pit was deep enough and helping to cover him up adequately.

I'm torn about what we consider to be "mercy" killing. The greater philosophy doesn't hold much light here. We can debate it all we like. But the plain fact is, we have to decide on the spot sometimes. We don't always have the luxury to debate life and death as if it were an academic exercise. Sure, we can be heroic and commit selfless acts that can get us killed, like a soldier who throws his body on a grenade to shield and save his brothers in arms. In some ways that's easy. We really don't know what the hell we're doing. It's just an automatic, impulsive act-- something in the moment that our gut tells us is necessary and right.

The hard truth (about life and death) is making a choice for someone else that doesn't involve your safety or your life. Sure, what you decide may very well impact you in ways you can't imagine at the time. It's like the end of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, when George shoots Lennie in the back of the head, and Slim comes up to George and says, "You hadda, George. I swear you hadda." There's a painful acknowledgment there. There's a choice that must be made in an instant, without much thought. Very often the gut informs us.