I first heard the word suicide in elementary school, after my family moved to Plano, Texas in the early 1980’s. We arrived as a tornado of teen suicides ripped through the community, giving my new home the moniker of the Teen Suicide Capital of the World. I was the new/awkward/fat kid. I was empathetic to the discomfort and tension from the adults I didn’t know. Those first days left marks.

I asked my mom what the word meant. She offered a clinical definition: “It’s when someone takes their own life.” My follow-up question was, “Where are they taking it?”

It made little sense to me. I didn’t know it was a possibility before that conversation, so the concept had no home in my head. “But, why? Why would someone do that?”

“How the hell should I know?” Mom’ face scowled as we sat at the kitchen table while she looked over my homework. This wasn’t something she was comfortable discussing. So we didn’t.

I still had questions, though. Insensitive and detached ones that only kids can get away with asking. So I asked the people around me. My peers. My teachers. It wasn’t out of compulsion or fascination; rather, it was on par with asking for help with my geometry assignment. I just needed guidance to connect the dots.

The questions whittled down to two: Why? and How?

I heard two consistent answers to the former: the person was too sad to know any better; or the person was too stupid to know any better. Neither answer helped me form a picture.

Adults refused to answer the latter question. Kids, though, offered no end of creative responses.

One boy leisurely suggested that jumping out of a building was an adequate “How.”

“But I’ve done that,” I replied. And I had. Back in Virginia, the place that still felt like home to me, my friend and I spent part of a summer afternoon pretending his house was on fire. We climbed out of his second-story window, hung from the sill, and fell to the ground. (Sidebar: as a kid, I wasn’t what you’d call a “thinker.”)

A few linguistic twists by my peers turned the story into something else. My teacher called my parents, and they were mortified. I understand now, as a parent and an adult, but at the time their reaction frustrated me. I only wanted to understand, and no one would explain it to my satisfaction.

The solution everyone pushed was for me to stop talking about it. So I rolled my shoulders and found other things about which to ask questions.

The topic didn’t come up again until my junior year of high school, when Dr. Jack Kevorkian turned the national spotlight to physician-assisted suicide with the case of Janet Adkins. We debated her decision in school. She was young. Sick. Aware of the hardships coming for her and her family. And she made a choice to avoid it.

And there it was – an answer to “Why?” that made sense to me and fit into the jigsaw of my morality and reason: a choice to end suffering.

My peers and teachers disappointed me by not sharing my clarity. This time around, the discussion of the topic was deep. Yet the debate went nowhere, as each side made the same arguments to the other.

“Think about the impact on her family.” Her planned suicide, or her chaotic disease?

“It is an affront to God and his love for us.” Ending her life, or prolonging her suffering?

“You never know what will happen – something could come around tomorrow that will change everything.” A medical miracle, or financial ruin for her family?

Eventually, someone compared Adkins’s choice to euthanizing a dog: “How can someone be comfortable killing their dog to prevent unnecessary suffering, while letting their grandma rot away in a hospital bed with machines extending her agony?”

And here, between those that felt Adkins actions appropriate, and those that felt her actions abhorrent, a definitive line appeared: Janet Adkins was a person. For some, that gave her a special status, that human life was sacred and mandated protection. Others felt that the distinction wasn’t relevant, that avoiding unnecessary suffering was a universal kindness.

No minds changed that day, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to have the discussion. Discover that line we didn’t know was there. See a picture different from the one painted on our personal moral jigsaw puzzle.

My stance on the matter hardened, catalyzed by the certainty that comes with youth and inexperience.

Then the universe tested me.

They diagnosed my mother with pancreatic cancer. Stage four. A survival rate less than 1%. There was no treatment for the disease. We could only manage her pain during the months she had left.

I lost nights worrying that she would ask me to end her suffering. As much as I wanted to help her, my mind and body revolted at the idea. Every time her eyes peaked as she tamped down the breakthrough pain in her abdomen, my adrenaline would spike as I dreaded whether this was when she would say those three words: Help me die.

She never asked. Knowing her as I do now, I doubt she ever considered it. In those last months, my fear and confusion over losing her was like standing helpless and clumsy against the crushing wave of her disease. It bubbled out into random thoughts and eddies, forcing me to confront the genuine possibility that a core belief would crack as soon as I had to live it.

It is easy to believe something at a distance, but we do not know the soundness of that belief until it encroaches within arm’s length.

A Driver of Conflict

In my novel Season of Waiting, the right-to-die serves as a source of conflict between several characters. The polarity of the issue makes it a ready instigator, and the emotional complexities that arise from having to reason through it around someone you love offer opportunities for building and growing my characters.

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