A few memories came together to mean something today. There was the one where Cliona and I walked from a 9/11 memorial in the park on Sunday (twin towers of rock inscribed with the names of deceased firemen) past a pet cemetery as we made our way back to her car. At the cemetery there was a wooden cross with something like Our Beloved Bonnie, Rest in Peace. On Friday, there was that scene from 'Amelie' which went something like - Amelie to the blind man as she walked around being his eyes: 'there is a couple looking at the baby laughing, who's looking at the dog, which is looking at the chickens on the rotisserie in the shop window ...' And then there was the repeat of the Late Late show, that I watched last night which was therefore thrice Late, which featured a man who had cystic fibrosis and had also suffered a heart attack, and was now therefore awaiting a transplant to be able to add a further eight to ten years to life. If he was to get the transplant, his dream was to get up in the morning and be able to go for a walk. And then on the news someone else had just won the right to be assured of the provision of food and water whatever turn his own disability took. I think he had been inspired to seek such an assurances from the court after the experience of the Terry Schiavo case.
Connection? Well, maybe not so much, but there is a reflection. There was a film with Jane Fonda which was called 'They shoot horses, don't they?' The upshot - not to intend a pun - being that if it is sympathetic to put an animal out of its misery, why not so a human being? Perhaps, it is due to the fact that it is too close to home being within the same species, reminding ourselves of our own mortality, and our resistance to such a position is therefore expressive of our 'denial' about such morbid realities. Indeed, the morally certain conservatives may tend to be the less sensitive to the actual suffering of the individual and more attached to the 'principle' of life in the abstract. However, we are too diverse for such a position to cover everyone who doesn't endorse euthanasia. There are those who care for humans as much as principles, and try to care for others through these principles too.
And I am far from being about to make a definitive statement on the subject, other than to say - as a sort of irrelevant, but someway connected sidetrack - after the Late Late show last night, I now wish to leave my organs to others after my death. The man on the show said that some of his friends didn't want to leave their eyes in case they couldn't see in heaven. I certainly don't go along with anything like this, but I do hesitate about leaving them, for no other reason than if I did die soon I would want my loved ones to see me semi intact - and be able to say a proper goodbye without having too much additional trauma about it. I would like an open coffin. But maybe this squeamishness of mine for the sake of others will give way also in time. But for now I'll limit myself to the other major organs - the interior ones. Save for the brain, of course. I'll leave that to the institute of comic oddities! But then the example of 'Amelie' comes back to haunt me and I think that I could really be the eyes for that old man walking through the Parisian street picking up on all the exuberant life that is around, and I begin to feel guilty in my squeamishness. I've still not converted, but the image is working on me and who's to say ...
To leave this morbid but necessary subject, I'll interject a linguistic quandary. What is it that we feel as human beings when instead of saying 'who's looking' for the dog in the 'Amelie' example above, we say 'which is looking'. There is something which stops us from equating the dog with the child even though they aren't functioning on a quantumly different level at the age of a baby. And yet there is something unsatisfying about using the inanimate 'which' for the very animate salivating and much-loved pet. Our language doesn't allow for this distinction, though maybe in the future we'll remedy this. There is a parallel problem with our individual conception of God where the Catholic has the Lord's prayer as 'Our Father, who art in heaven' and the Protestant translation has the somewhat impersonal 'which'. Everything really worth anything is some kind of 'who'. And here I am just about refraining from making the rather obvious Doctor Who joke! Mostly because it's not quite coming to my mind quickly enough ... doh! 'They shoot horse, don't they?'. Well, we eat chickens, don't we? We all want loved ones to live forever. In the circumstances, we do what we can.
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