Well, now that National Suicide Prevention Week is over, I guess the field is wide-open when it comes to romanticizing the suicides of people with disabilities in the popular press. Scary thought.
Just when I get to the point where I think I’ve seen everything in terms of sensationalized coverage that condones and sympathizes with the suicides of people with disabilities, something new comes along that shows me we haven’t hit bottom yet. That “yet” is a scary thought, too.
Just today, the Arizona Daily Star published “Helping others lightened the darkness in nurse/counselor’s life,” part of a series titled “Life Stories.” The series “chronicles the lives of recently deceased Tusconans.” Here are the first few paragraphs about Shari Hope Kelly:
There’s no telling how many souls Shari Hope Kelly escorted into the world during her decades as a labor and delivery nurse.Nor can one quantify the innumerable psyches she soothed as a rape crisis counselor and an instructor in social science at Pima Community College.And Kelly treated herself as compassionately as she did all others. She spent years thoughtfully formulating a plan. She long suspected the day would come when the physical pain of her disability and the emotional anguish over the abuses she suffered in childhood would outweigh her enjoyment of life.Kelly wrote long letters to family and friends. She called people she knew to tell them how much they meant to her. She got the minutiae of her life in order. And she found a loving home for her service dog, John Denver, and her eight rescue cats. Only then did she release her spirit from her damaged body and troubled mind in an act she considered euthanasia. Kelly died at her own hand Aug. 11. She was 59.
In other words, Shari Kelly’s life, unlike most, was a second-by-second act of heroism. When she could no longer be the hero, she did the understandable and “compassionate” thing.
But here’s a little more info:
Kelly spent the first nine months of her life in a children’s hospital ward in Brooklyn, N.Y. An orthopedic deformity required multiple surgeries that left her with clubbed feet, fused ankle bones and the need for leg braces when she learned to walk.Kelly’s parents divorced when she was 7 and her mother remarried. It was around then that a relative began physically abusing Kelly, said her brother, Ron Reddock of Tombstone, who was three years younger than his sister. He was the only person who knew the depths of torment she suffered.
I ask that, because I have to wonder if anyone – anyone at all – asked why Kelly was giving away her cats. Or why she gave away her service dog. That is really really rare – I personally don’t know anyone who has done that. It takes something extraordinary for it to happen.
I also went to her online memorial and the guest book. For all the lives she touched, people she helped, people she reached out to — there are only four entries in the guest book.
The article mentions that Kelly’s mobility issues had increased over the past couple years and she used a scooter. Did that make friends less ready to make time for her, worrying about the accessibility of whatever meeting place they chose for a social gathering? Other people who use mobility devices have written of having limited social circles and one wonders what happened to Kelly’s social supports as her mobility impairments increased.
But, in the framework of this story, no one is encouraged to think along those lines. Kelly’s death is seen as almost inevitable and as a deserved act of compassion toward herself. Kind of like a hot bubble bath at the end of the day. (yes, that’s sarcasm)
In retrospect, it’s not surprising that the Arizona Daily Star would treat Kelly’s death this way. The paper has a lousy track record. It ignored the the 2007 story of the investigation into the death of Janet Van Voorhis (allegedly facilitated by the Final Exit Network) and published a factually inaccurate and self-serving op-ed by Final Exit Network member Earl Wettstein earlier this year. Given this, I won’t predict that the the paper can’t sink any lower – I’m betting it can and very well may in the future, although I hope not.
Interestingly, groups such as the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) have published guidelines for covering suicide deaths, which this article departs from in important ways. But I won’t bother linking to it, since it’s clear that the AFSP doesn’t mean for the media advisory to apply to media coverage of women with disabilities.
Bizarre, isn’t it?
I often turn to Mr. Lincoln in situations such as this. He remarked (paraphrasing) about those who believe so fervently in slavery that they should try it for themselves.
In this instance, I wonder what the writer/editors would think about this “release of spirit” if it had been their mother, sister, daughter, or other beloved relative.
This is just so freaking horrible.
I’m at a loss for words.
-K
Steve —
Something really bothers me. This gets into the culture wars again. Journalists tend mostly — not all, but mostly — to skew liberal. (Somehow in this country writing about facts has become liberal.) Liberals have always been great champions of human and civil rights.
So why is it that they can’t see past this so-called freedom of choice issue, as they say they view it, to the real heart of the matter, which is the right to be alive and to live well? How is it that death has become acceptable, but only if it’s a clean death administered by somebody in a position of perceived intellectual authority, and especially if the person requesting death is perceived as some sort of martyr?
Full disclosure: I am as liberal as they come, lest anyone think I’m some right wing nut job. Yet it horrifies me that the overwhelming majority of my fellow liberals fail to make this intellectual leap.
Is it simply that they see typical conservatives toeing the line of the religious right and right-to-lifers and choose to take the exact opposite viewpoint, and cling to the freedom-of-choice argument because that’s the only one that sounds valid? That’s actually ironic, because conservatives like autonomy and liberals embrace interconnectedness.
How do we get other liberals to see their faulty logic?
What I wrote to the Arizona star. This is beyond twisted.
==========
Let’s see… I’m only a few years younger than Shari Hope Kelly. I’m in severe pain on a daily basis. I was severely abused as a child, and, yes, it still hurts sometimes. And, you know what? MY LIFE IS WORTH LIVING.
Suicide is always MURDER and always a TRAGEDY. I’ve little doubt God will cut Kelly some slack because she, obviously, was surrounded by people who did not love and respect her enough to fight for her life, or, to help her get appropriate pain therapy and medication, or to provide her the emotional support she needed to SURVIVE the abuse she suffered.
In case anyone’s making plans to take over my parking space in life because my existence is “obviously” just too horrible to sustain, DON’T GET ANY BRIGHT IDEAS. If you want to “euthanize” me, you’ll have to shoot me. I’d much rather go out fighting and have my murderers think of me as a selfish pain in the ass, i.e. someone who had the unmitigated gall to remain alive even though her life wasn’t as “perfect” as some sit com star’s, than cooperate with my own murder and get remembered as an “inspiring” corpse.
Ugly and terrifying spin…
Things like this make me scramble for cover. Ok so here I am way under my bed and getting to the root of it.
1) Powerful interests in medical industry bent on effiency, profit and glamor
2) Media is owned by them: media is advertizing, brainwashing, and not information
3) Hospitals are all the same: owned by powerful interests with no choice for the consumer
4) Ethicists are trained not taught
5) People do commit suicide and they always have. This is usually not advertized. Why allowed here?
6) The combination of all the above result in this article
7) What do I decide to do so I can come out from under the bed?
8) Thank Stephen Drake for writing this blog, and resolving to keep getting to the root myself.
9) Doing my small part and hoping people go on the internet (!)
10) Hoping someone starts an alternative hospital as a precedent
11) Being patient as opposed to being “A” patient…
12) Count to 10 and get used to daylight
My thought: reminded me of the nurse in MA who was Kevorkian’s #35. The
news reports at the time were “she
didn’t want to become a burden to her
family”. I wish I had the skills to
underline “become”! She had CFS,now
called CFS/ME, as do I. I wonder if
each woman had been propagandized by
their involvement with the medical
profession? If we can’t “fix” it,
well, it’s broken and like the
4 year old who won’t touch a broken cookie, …adios.
The giving away of the assist dog was a flaming arrow. Friends: a
whole question there, eh?
This woman was once married to my brother, and there was more to her than that which is outlined in your blog.