"I Have a Message"

Friday night about 8:00 a county constable came to our door.  The dogs were barking wildly and so he asked Susan and me to step outside so that he could talk to us.  Deputy Constable Trevino was very young and seemed very nervous.  That’s a first – usually I’m the one nervous when talking to a cop.

 

He began to tell me that he had a message for me.  Since when are cops messengers?  It felt like a scene from a mob movie but with a suburban twist. I expected to hear something like, “I have a message for you Mr. Green.  You need to keep your dogs on a leash when you walk them around the lake.  If you don’t, I can’t be responsible for what happens.”  And that’s what I really thought he was going to tell me --  that one of my neighbors had filed a complaint about my dog-walking habits.

He continued: “I have a message,” he glanced at a piece of paper, “that Douglas Eugene Green has passed away.” Oh good, I thought, no dog complaints.  Wait, what?  Dad died?  What happened?  I can’t remember his exact works, but he let us know that Dad had shot and killed himself that morning between 8:00 and 8:30 a.m.  He gave us a name and a number to call at the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office.

We called the M.E. and got a case number.  The young woman whom I spoke with was very sympathetic and kind.  She asked me questions about his health and his frame of mind.   I told her what I knew and that he had told me frequently that if he became ill enough that he would kill himself.  I knew that he was in pain and hadn’t been sleeping well for a few months.  I told her that he had been an alcoholic his whole life and used alcohol as a sedative.  He had told me that in recent months that he didn’t drink that much anymore because it made him too sick to function the next day at all. 

All of Dad’s siblings had died of cancer in their 60s and he expected to get it as well.   He said that he’d be damned if he let cancer slowly kill him.  His brother Red (yes, he was called Red Green) died of cancer back in the early 90s and Dad was pissed that Red’s son wouldn’t let Red have his gun so that he could end his pain.  The not-so-implied message to me was that I was not supposed to stop Dad from killing himself if that was what he wanted. 

And there lies one of the aspects of our relationship that had haunted me more and more as he got older and more infirm.  What if he had a stroke or something else that otherwise left him unable to care for himself.  

What would I do when he asked me to help him die?