I was in Grand Central Terminal last week in New York City, coming back from a voiceover recording for a “director’s track” on an upcoming DVD release from the Criterion Collection, and I stopped into a little toy store to pick up a few figurines for my five-year-old daughter when I interrupted two employees deep in the middle of the following discussion:
“Would you rather know when you were going to die or how you were going to die?”
I was surprised to hear this sort of conversation in what is essentially a store for kids but I was also smiling to myself as I thought: “This subject is everywhere.”
We all have it in common, we all have it to look forward to and it’s at the core of How to Fight Loneliness, my new play currently on at the Park Theatre. Or, more precisely, it’s at the heart of the play because this play, more than a lot of my work in the past, has a strong, beating heart that asks big questions and has big feelings about “death” or, more specifically, do we as individuals have the right to decide both how and when we’ll pass away?
Here in the US, the answer is mostly “no” – only about 10 or 11 states currently have any legislation in place that is supportive of a citizen choosing their manner/time of death and, therefore, it is basically against the law to be a party to this “crime” (and I place “crime” firmly in quotes), which is baffling, worrisome and just plain wrong to me. I’m free to go to the hospital day after day and watch someone who is suffering but God forbid I am allowed to help that same person put an end to their suffering if they and I so choose (nor is that person afforded the dignity of doing it themselves if they see fit and are able to do so on their own).
We control so few things in life when you really think about it; the idea that we should be deprived as well of deciding when that life might end is maddening and frightening and sad in equal measure.
I had to deal with this very thing when my mother passed away a few years ago; she was in ICU and in great pain near the end, so much so and reacting so loudly to said pain that the staff seemed embarrassed by the situation and appeared more worried about how the rest of the patients were feeling about this than about how to ease my mom’s agony. Their primary concern became getting her out of the hospital as quickly as possible. They wanted to pass her along for someone else to deal with, and all but guided my hand across the page while signing her over to a hospice for “end-of-life” care.
And what about me?
She was begging to die in her last days and hours, but was I strong enough to help her, to disregard my hard-earned principles and the rules of the land and defy what is “law” in the name of what is “right”?
What do you think?
I listened to the doctors and the care workers and even the lawyers (even after Shakespeare warned me about them), and I did what I was supposed to do, what a good son and member of society should choose to do. Do I regret it? You bet I do. So instead of really helping someone in their hour of need, I did what most writers do: I wrote about it instead.
It’s a play and it’s being given a top-notch production by Trish Wadley at the Park Theatre (home to a revival of my play The Shape of Things in 2023) with a phenomenal cast and directed by the very talented Lisa Spirling. The title came from a song by Wilco; the rest of the words are mine.
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It isn’t filled with heroes and villains, just three people who are trying to deal with an impossible situation in the best way they each know how. If you get a chance to see it, you should. It’s only pertinent if you’re currently alive, because if you are, that means you (and everyone you know and love) are on a crash course with death and you’ll probably face this wretched thing in some form or another several times over before you yourself are the person in question.
And when that time comes, as it must – (unless some smarty pants researcher hurries up and figures this aging s*** out) – I hope to Heaven that you have some say in the matter or are at least cared for enough by those around you to have someone do the right thing and not just the “right” thing.
I know, I know, “Shut up, I feel fine. I’m young and carefree and in relatively good health. In fact, I feel immortal.” And you are. You absolutely are. Right up until the day you’re not. By the way, as for that conversation overheard in the toy store, I came down on the side of knowing when I’m going to die rather than how I’m going to die. Just give me the day, I’ll deal with the rest when it gets here.
‘How to Fight Loneliness’ is at the Park Theatre until 24 May; tickets here
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