Suicide is Painless

This title like many of my other essays deserves an explanation. This piece was prompted by the recent suicide of a former college classmate. His death reminded me of Johnny Mandell’s Suicide is Painless, the theme song for the iconic film M.A.S.H, and its subsequent 11-year TV sitcom.

The differences between the film and the TV show could not have been any more different. The film, starring Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould, was a dark comedy with very few laughs while the TV show, starring Alan Alda and Mike Ferrell went almost strictly for the laughs.   

The 4077 MASH, which is an acronym for ‘Mobile Army Surgical Hospital’, illustrates the lives of three Army doctors during the Korean War. As an aside pundits note that while the Korean War took three years, MASH was on TV from September of 1972 to February of 1983. Its 256th and final episode was a media event.

My main focus is, however, on the film and its very adult content written by Ring Lardner, Jr. and directed by Robert Altman. It was adapted from Richard Hooker’s 1968 book, MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors.

Briefly the film’s varied plot was highlighted by another character, called Painless. It seems that in a film that highlighted illicit romantic encounters, he was the ‘best equipped,’ often called the ‘dental Don Juan of Detroit.’‘ However, he suffers from a bout of impotence and becomes so depressed that he decides to kill himself. 

The film then goes off it humorous course in giving him a final dinner evoking Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper.* The song Suicide is Painless serves as a hymn for his suicide. The main character, Hawkeye had also provided him with a black capsule, actually a sleeping pill, to approximate the taking of his own life.

His fellow doctors had also provided for Father Mulcahy to grant him absolution and communion, which I believe no bona fides priest would ever have done in these circumstances. His doctor friends also provided Painless with one of the very pretty married nurses the night before her discharge. This nurse had been faithful to her husband throughout her whole tour of duty but was willing to commit adultery to help her comrade in arms. 

The following morning, he was his usual cheerful self and the smiling nurse departed for her home and her unsuspecting husband in a helicopter. While this satirical episode, not only breaches but shatters the boundaries of Catholic teachings on many fronts, I am using this film, only to illustrate a genuine attempt to make a point about suicide.

A few weeks ago, reality invaded my life in the aforementioned e-mail from a former college classmate. Though it has been over 60 years since our graduation, I doubt if I had heard from or about him more than a handful of times over these many years. 

Perhaps that is why I was totally surprised by the nature of his correspondence. It was, for want of a better term, a suicide justification, explanation or exit letter from the painful exigencies of disease and advanced age. It seems that this classmate had been stricken with terminal colon cancer. After many months of what I trust was discernment and medical treatments, he felt it best if he took the Roman Way out, minus the sword and blood.

That was the last note I got from him, so I am assuming that his life ended as he had planned. My classmate is or was the same age as I and all our contemporaries. I never did answer his letter because I had gathered that he had dug his heels in and nothing I could have said would have changed his mind.

His note also focused on a handful of young men, none of whom had any sons. He especially made a point of writing: These six are without sons and I wish to emphasize that they deserve sons as helpful as my sons have been to me. He followed with a singular salutation to his wife… I am delighted that I married you!

He closed with his speculations on the afterlife, which are more implied than directly specified. He dismissed any sense of guilt or sin, or any need for forgiveness. His main interest was his anticipation of seeing you, Socrates. If you will discuss with me some of your thinking from before the era of Christ, then I will reciprocate… with some of my thinking about mathematics and physics of more recent times. In what may be construed as his last words, he ends with Perhaps it will be possible for us to discuss details of our deaths.

Socrates’ death was quite different from that of his 21st century soul mate. His was an involuntary suicide, nothing like my classmate’s demise. Despite his spirited defense against the trumped-up charges of impiety and corrupting the local youth, Socrates was forced to drink hemlock or suffer a tortuous death.

Even though our interactions had been few over our respective lifetimes, my late classmate’s last will and testament seems very consistent for the man I briefly knew. Unfortunately, his lack of Christian awareness left me with an emptiness and several questions. They had also left me cold and openly sad as to the consideration of the four last things and the disposition of his immortal soul.  

Catholic Eschatology is the study of the last things, which focus on what happens at the end of human life. The Church teaches four key events: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. They are all rooted in scripture, tradition, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  

Catholic Eschatology also provides us with a framework to understand our ultimate destiny and purpose. It also emphasizes a personal accountability and the hope of eternal life with God. My friend seems to have either ignored or denied them over the course of his long life. I pray posthumously that God was all merciful to his soul and granted him the Beatific Vision we all long for.

What my friend did by enlisting the assistance of his doctors and their hospital in a mercy killing, which used to be anathema to medicine and illegal in many states, should open our eyes to the decline of moral medicine.

Assisted suicides, such as his, could be standard fair in the next generation because we constantly hear that our medical resources are finite while the growth of our elderly population will be so weighty that they (we) could sink the medical ship. 

This could lead to draconian changes down the path where care becomes so limited that it will be rationed only to those under 60 or whatever arbitrary number medicine and government chooses. We should all be aware of these changing realities in doctor/patient relation, as illustrated by my words above. 

*Personally, given its risqué subject matter, I thought this scene bordered on the blasphemous.