After a relatively uneventful week in London, albeit one that is crammed to the gills with fruitless calls to AXA, I spend the first week of November in Wiltshire. One of my oldest friends, Bee, drives down to get me, braving one way systems and the threat of the congestion charge (literally) around every corner so that I am spared the train journey.
The reasons for this are two-fold. Jumping in front of a train was – and is – the most obvious way out. It’s relatively certain (compared to other options) and relatively quick. There’s still significant margin for error; get the angle wrong and you risk bouncing off or, worse, very maimed but very much alive. I also have a significant moral repugnance to killing myself this way. The driver on shift doesn’t deserve to be confronted so viscerally with the results of my existential crisis. Still, I could waver on this at any time, decide that my will to die is greater than my observance of social niceties. I try to avoid trains, for now, as a result.
Additionally, I have spent 2 prior weekends at Bee’s recently. Both of these were around times of uncertainty with The Guy and I can’t face the memories of messaging him on the train on my way down there. I’ve sent him photos of her Aga, of the Aesop collection in my room, of the Douro in their wine fridge. Without ever having been here, even this place is somehow redolent of him, such is the strength of connection I still feel to him, my mind not letting him out of my sight for more than a few seconds at a time.
So, to Wiltshire we drive. Bee’s house is a rural idyll: children, dogs, horses, proper teapots and an always replete biscuit tin. I’m originally due to stay until Friday but, when the invitation is extended to Monday, I accept gratefully. The household is easy to dip in and out of and Bee stresses that I can follow as much or as little of the routine as I want. I don’t sleep until late, then wake up late, missing breakfast with the family, but otherwise largely surrender to the schedule.
My first night, a phone call. One of Bee’s ponies, currently on loan and stabled miles away, has been taken ill. The vet is grave. Bee should come; as owner, she may have to decide to have the pony put down. There is a brief debate as to how the logistics of this can work: Bee either goes alone (unthinkable), her husband goes with her and I stay to babysit the 3 children, or I go with Bee. None of us say it, but all can pretty quickly come to the conclusion that leaving a suicidal, heavily medicated, woman in charge of 3 kids is a sub-optimal solution. So, back in the car Bee and I get.
It’s a long drive in the dark, through winding roads. It reminds me of driving at home. All those endless hedgerows and going a little faster than you probably should, but trusting in your familiarity with the route and the remoteness of the probability of oncoming traffic. After about 45 minutes, we arrive. The GPS has thoughtfully told us that we’re on “The Street”. We’ve never been hipper.
At the stables, we are greeted by an assorted cast:
Bobby, a very glum looking pony
Lucy, weeping, the horse borrower, beside herself with sorrow at the suddenness and apparent seriousness of Bobby’s illness
Laura, the vet
Pip, the stable owner
Laura appraises Bee of the situation: Bobby is obviously in significant pain, but with no obvious cause. It is, ominously, likely to be linked to his gut. I know fuck all about horses, but I’ve read Riders enough times (approx 43) to know that this is Very Bad Indeed. We’ve missed the rectal examination – and the vet has a surprising number of diamonds on her fingers for someone who spends a majority of their days essentially fingering an assortment of animals – but that was inconclusive.
The vet leaves to get a scanner which may enable a more meaningful diagnosis. The four of us stay in the stall with Bobby for nearly 2 hours, awaiting her return. Bobby rallies a couple of times and manages a walk, a wee and a Polo in front of his captive quartet, but – even to my untrained eye – he is clearly not a well horse. The night is very cold, but clear, with thousands of stars. We exchange meaningless chit chat about COVID and combine harvesters. There are various exclamations about how fortuitous it is that I had arrived that day, so I could accompany Bee. Neither Pip nor Lucy are conscious of the grim irony of the situation – having spent several weeks wanting to kill myself, I’m now a bystander in the decision to potentially put a creature out of its misery. There’s never really an opportune moment to introduce this into the conversation, so they remain blissfully unaware.
The vet eventually returns, scanner procured. Progress is slow – the scanner is much smaller that Bobby is and he needs to be shaved at various junctures to allow the scanner to penetrate through his hide. His right hand side is unremarkable and the mood in the stall lifts – maybe this is just a bad case of indigestion? But no. Bobby’s left side reveals a melanoma that means he isn’t destined to see another sunrise. It is large and, given his age, he would be unlikely to recover in the event that he survived the surgery.
Bee, who has been agonising for several hours about how to proceed, effectively has the decision made for her. Laura, the vet, is gentle but resolute: Bobby has likely been ill for some time; today is the day that the melanoma has grown large enough to start pressing on his gut and liver, bringing only pain. He has had a single day’s suffering and he should not be forced to endure any more.
There are tears, there are hugs, there is a final Polo. Bee watches whilst the vet shaves the last patch in Bobby’s coat and inserts the catheter, but she and I walk away just before the vet administers two injections – a sedative, followed by a concoction that will stop Bobby’s heart almost instantaneously. Bee and I hear a fall, very quickly, as the drugs take their effect and Bobby leaves us for the giant haystack in the sky.
The whole thing has taken less than 30 seconds. A life, gone. We walk back to the stable, where Bobby is totally still, his 4 legs already sticking out stiffly. The last bits of the admin of death are finalised, then Bee and I leave, some 3 hours after we arrived. Bee is tearful, but pragmatic. Bobby’s death is The Right Thing.
It’s still so strange to me that animals are afforded the right to a life without unnecessary suffering, but my desire for self-slaughter is seen as evidence of my not being in my right mind. Man is born, he suffers, he dies. The accepted axiom. Heaven forfend you choose to attempt to end that suffering. Laws are passed and provisions are made to prevent suicide. There are volunteers who patrol Beachy Head, coal gas is no longer used in households, barriers are put up at bridges and viaducts and who can forget the bleakness of the suicide nets after the spate of suicides at Apple in China. Again and again, the preservation of human life is paramount. Preventing suicide, the WHO will tell us, is a Global Imperative. Maybe making life a bit less shit for everyone could be the Global Imperative?
I’d be the first to acknowledge that my problems are not substantial. I’m having an existential crisis and I don’t much like it. The upshot of that is that I want to die. Quietly. Without fanfare. Essentially, the opposite of the way in which I have lived my life. I don’t want to be here any longer and it is remarkably inconvenient that all the suicidees who have preceded me have only made it harder. Practise makes perfect does not apply here.
It seems monstrously unfair that Bobby gets to check out mere hours after his suffering starts, with a painless injection and the well-wishes of onlookers, whilst I scour the Internet endlessly, fruitlessly, for The Final Solution. Again, apparently I’m severely depressed, but this constant foiling of my intentions scarcely makes me more fucking cheerful.
I have come across Sodium Pentobarbital, Dignitas’ expiration accelerant of choice, during my travels in the morbid corners of the internet that are now my cyber enclave. This is as close to a silver bullet – in the absence of silver bullets or a natty silver gun to fire them from – as I have found. It’s illegal to buy. There’s always the Dark Net – and I have form for this, a story for another day – but it’s tough to identify a reliable source when your satisfied customers won’t live to leave you a 5* review.
Incidentally, I don’t qualify for Dignitas. Only those afflicted by a physical disease may apply, by law. Those of us with terminally ill minds but intact bodies have nowhere to turn. We’ll just cheer up some day. Mindfulness, turmeric, fresh air and gratitude lists – these are the tickets by which we board the Funbus once more, don’t you know.
Bee is made of stern stuff (a childhood living in a freezing house adding mettle to her considerable innate fortitude) and doesn’t shy from acknowledging the dead horse in the room – that I’ve come to Wiltshire to try to escape my suicidal ideation and am confronted with euthanasia within hours. We laugh about it, but I already know that there will be only slight respite from the endless clawing at my brain. My brain is careering along twin tracks – The Guy and Ending It All are the only attractions on this ride. Endlessly. It’s so boring and I can’t get off or change course.
The abortive meeting with Dr F happens on Thursday. She is very frustrated that I’m not swayed by her entreaties that suicide is very hard on those it leaves behind. I remind her that living is no picnic for those who are suicidal. She bristles and I am so glad when it’s over.
I also have my weekly appointment with Avram. He’s ‘been’ here, virtually, once before and exclaims at the monkey wallpaper again. He’s started referring to my impending death as “snuffing it”, but English isn’t his first language (Hebrew is – he’s an Israeli Jew living in New York – a living archetype of psychoanalysis) and he talks about me “sniffing” it (and why this is – in his view – a fundamentally terrible idea) in a way that makes me laugh. For 12 hours after I speak to him, I always feel that the idea of killing myself is off the table, that it’s ridiculous, even. Between us, he and I are going to figure me out and get Old Me back, somehow. But I’ll be New, Better Me. Within 13 hours though, the clawing will resume its laceration of my psyche and the brief sharpness of intent is replaced by a renewed fug of apathy and despair.
On Saturday, all six of us go for a walk. Bee’s daughters are so excited to get to the rail tracks. If the barrier is down, there’s a train due and we can watch it whizz past. I’ve been very clear with myself and others that I would never, ever attempt suicide whilst here – childhood has more than its fair share of pitfalls without a dead body in your midst – and I would never inflict this on Bee or her family. Still, though, as the tracks start to hum and the train thrums its approach, I think how much easier everything would be if I could just steel myself to jump.
Bee leads me away, “we’re going to look at the water”, and she and I stand on a bridge, contemplating the canal. The train roars past and I am filled with so much regret that it didn’t take me with it, spreading me out on the tracks, once and for all. I am winded by the grief of this missed opportunity. I’m silent as the train chunders on and on; Bee wordlessly puts an arm around me and holds me until it’s gone, out of sight. So, the world turns.
The children come running over, chattering excitedly and we resume the walk. I feel so empty, yet so exposed, flayed alive by an internal anguish that I’m powerless to suppress. It’s so strange, this feeling inside. I’ve been replaced by an unhappy stranger. There are bits of me left inside, but the light’s gone out. There’s a patina of woe covering everything I think and feel and I’m so tired of being in my head.
The week ahead is uncertain. There is a chance that residential care at the Nightingale awaits me and I want a few days on my own in London to just ‘be’, without the ministrations of the carefully orchestrated masses. Bee drives me back on Monday and I wait to find out who I am. Spoiler alert: no-one good.
Be First to Comment