Studies show that many terminally ill suicidal people who don’t do the deed are later glad to still be alive.
The Washington Post has a heartwarming story about a Nashville cop who dissuaded a suicidal man from jumping off a bridge:
“It was emotional. This was an individual who had reached a level of frustration where he was having the worst day of his life,” Hotz said. “I just wanted to be able to develop trust with him and help him realize that tomorrow is another day and it will get better.”
“It was a combination of life circumstances that happened that brought him to a level of ultimate frustration and desperation,” Hotz said.
Even as they talked, Hotz said he remained afraid of what might happen next. . . .
“He was standing on the bridge and did lean over several times,” he said.
Eventually, the man chose to live:
“He stepped forward from the bridge and he just kept walking toward me while I had my hand extended, and I could tell he was going to go in for a hug,” Hotz said. “He just kind of broke down.”
The man wept in Hotz’s arms. The poignant moment was captured on Hotz’s body camera. As he held him, Hotz told the man he loved him.
“This guy needed to know that people cared about him,” Hotz said. “When I was thinking about how to communicate with this individual, that is what I felt, and it is what I meant.”
Good for the cop!
Every suicidal person deserves this kind of loving intervention and suicide prevention. Right?
Alas, these days many believe that we should prevent only some suicides. Indeed, as I read the story I couldn’t help but think about how assisted suicide advocacy and legalization takes the exact opposite tack.
It is like the cop saying, “Don’t jump, man! Your life is worth living. We love you!”
And the man replies, “But I have cancer.”
“Oh,” says the cop. “That’s different. Let me hold your coat.”
With assisted suicide, there is little to prevent patients from metaphorically jumping, since suicide prevention is not part of the program. In fact, studies show that legalizing assisted suicide increases suicides generally.
Wait just a darn minute, some readers are yelling. The cop said, “‘It will get better.’ For the dying, it won’t.”
But that’s not necessarily true. Some people adjust. Some people diagnosed as dying soon, don’t. Some people find great meaning in their final days. Indeed, studies show that many terminally ill suicidal people who don’t do the deed are later glad to still be alive.
I was a hospice volunteer for one such man, Robert Salamanca, who died of ALS in the late ’90s. He told me that when he was diagnosed and lost the ability to earn a living, he wanted to go to Jack Kevorkian to become dead. But when his family refused to take him, “Eventually, I came out of the fog,” he recalled and was very glad to still be alive.
Bob also deeply resented assisted-suicide advocacy, telling me, “They are trying to drive me from the well-lit boulevards into the dark alley.” He even wrote a column in the San Francisco Chronicle opposing legalizing assisted suicide that states in part:
Euthanasia advocates believe they are doing people like me a favor. They are not. The negative emotions toward the terminally ill and disabled generated by their advocacy is actually at the expense of the “dying” and their families and friends. We often feel disheartened and without self-assurance because of a false picture of what it is like to die created by these enthusiasts who prey on the misinformed.
What we, the terminally ill, need is exactly the opposite — to realize how important our lives are. And our loved ones, friends, and, indeed, society need to help us feel that we are loved and appreciated unconditionally.
You tell ’em, Bob!
Ironically, the Post has also editorialized in favor of legalizing assisted suicide for the terminally ill. I guess the editors who approved publishing this nice story missed the irony.