Re-deux: To be or not to be

Once more the age old question of suicide has been on my mind for the past couple of days. Shakespeare raised the dilemma most famously in his play Hamlet with an indecisive protagonist who did not know how to best avenge the death of his father. Even then the question was hardly a new one since the Greeks and Romans believed survival at whatever cost was preferable to taking one's own life. Who can forget the sad character in Homer, Ajax, who roams around Hades unable to ever speak again because of his decision to end his life after a jealous feud with Odysseus? Or who can forget the tragic story of Dido who set fire to herself after she learned her lover Aeneas was planning to leave her? Again, perhaps as part of eternity's punishment for her choice, she had to turn away sadly, without speech, when asked by Aeneas if he was the cause of her death.

Over the past two days the media have bombarded us once again with endless speculation around the sudden death of Anna Nicole Smith, a tragic want-to-be starlet often compared to Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield of the 1960's. Would the autopsy indicate an overdose? If so, would the public ever know if it were intentional or accidental? Anna had a lot to live for: her new five month old daughter, evidently a relatively new relationship with her companion and former lawyer, and the possibility of inheriting a half a billion dollars? She also had a lot to die for: the recent death of her only son, the endless lawsuits filed against her, and a looming paternity suit as to the identity of the biological father of her daughter. We will probably never know her true intention: to be or not to be.

The question of suicide was also raised for me again with the viewing of Clint Eastwood's film Letters from Iwo Jima. As Americans, we realize, of course, that perhaps the Japanese did not have the same restrictions and religious objections to suicide as those in Western Culture. We have grown up hearing about the suicide pilots of Japan during World War II as well as the injunction to commit suicide to even the regularly enlisted men in order to preserve the country's honor. Today it is the jihadists who see themselves immediately transported into Paradise and into the arms of virgins when the cause is perceived as right by them. Eastwood, since his film Unforgiven, has refused to present anything but both sides of an issue in his latest offering. In the Japanese film, two of the characters, however, are torn between the expectations of the culture in warfare and the call of the heart for survival. One lives, and the other, not by his own hand, dies.

In our family the question to my knowledge has arisen with just one person, my mother. While living with my stepfather in Seattle, she took an overdose and went to bed. Three days later she realized she was going to live and got up to live many more years. She said to us that our stepfather was so used to her being in bed so much because of her depression that he was not alarmed. I would like to say that, after this experience, her life was much more meaningful. I am not sure I could say that, however, in all honesty. Like Addie in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, she simply existed until her actual death.

Thankfully, my sister Judy and I seemed to have inherited the more optimistic spirit of our grandmother rather than the pessimism of our mother. Though I cannot speak with certainty of the future, I believe life is always the better choice. The Bible is clear in the command of the Old Testament: choose life, not death. While God gives us the free will to choose death, he commands us to do otherwise.