12.33 Dear Miss - Could You Help Me to Die?

Slim Novel 12 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage

33:   Dear Miss, Could You Help Me Die?

Ali and Dan are in bed together. Dan faces Ali. “My dear, darling child! Dear Miss! Do you think, could you, would you, help me to die?”
   “Wha?” Ali is reduced to a Bronx question-mark.

   “I dislike dramatics. But I have to say it directly. You know, don't you, last week I went to the Hospital Clinic several times?"
   Ali shakes head, Yes.

   “I get headaches. Not really bad but these are different. A sort of soreness deep inside when I lie with left side against pillow. It started a month ago, occasionally. Now every night. They took x-rays. I have a brain tumor. They offer to cut it out and I asked ‘Would it cure?’and they say Maybe. But in the hospital library I read No cure. And such surgery may make me a chronic nursing case."
   Ali does not know what to say.

   "You know I am over 80. I've outlived my expectancy at birth. Not merely outlived but you of all know I can do what most 65-year-old men can't. No other person depends on me. All my brothers and sisters are dead. Margaret died and now there is only a far off nephew.
   "My worst worry is that this next-of-kin legal inheritor's face will be the last one I see looming over my death bed and getting my life savings to throw away on stupid desires.

   "Several years ago, I thought of my ending. I am scientific and read and I decided that when I learn I have a deadly disease and know I will soon start to fail, I will arrange to die. Now it has come. I could use help? Could you? Would you?”
   Ali sits up in the bed. “Dan, this is heavy, heavy, heavy. I gotta think - alone.”
   Dan extends right hand to touch Ali's left cheek. “Dear, dear Miss. Whatever you decide, I love you like a daughter, a granddaughter, a beloved companion.  Please go and think. And do not feel bad if you have to say No. I never want to obligate.”

Later, at midnight, lying on the meadow grass after a Morphine, Ali allows her mind to drift over the day. She sees a chance to learn death and dying. Now it is Dan's dying but some day it may be others and then herself. Almost no one is prepared to know how they will act, what they will say, the day they know dying is not just a word, not just a far off future but now - this year, this month, this week, today, the next hour?  She says out loud "Yes."


Sitting on sofa facing Dan who has just come into living room and sat down in rocking chair, Ali says "Now say what you need."
   "Thank you, Dear Miss. How happy you make me! We will do this in a relaxed, way. No stress for you. And I want you to benefit. At the moment, it is not distressing. The symptom made me anxious but now I know the cause and how to respond to it, I am not anxious. I look forward to finishing my life but I do not want to go with sad song, or funny face, or suffering. According to what my doctors say and what I read I have several months before events force me. 
   "So I am lucky to discover my deadly disease in time to arrange affairs. First the anxiety of When. It got me and - in my case - I am most lucky it does not disable me suddenly in a stroke before I can arrange things. Now I can stop worrying over trying some bad habits that might give pleasure. So I would like to try your Morphine. And pizza, delicatessen meats and all the sauces and spices. And my money has just multiplied. At my age I might expect another 5 years of life and with my $100,000 savings it translates into just $20,000 a year. But now I shall have $100,000 I could spend in my remaining months. Well, I am not going to spend. I do not want to act flashily affluent merely because I found out I am going to die this year."
   "Dan, this is like a new world to me."
   "Dear Miss, will you teach me Morphine?"
   "Sure, Dan." 


Ali spends 15 minutes on the Morphine. Then she asks "And when shall we talk about how I help?" 
   "Later, dear. Now I want to know what to eat for lunch."
   "Considering your new swerve, I'll call Luigi's for a good spread of Italian and get Schweller's Deli for Jewish, and go out to get some best Chianti dry wine."
   "Wonderful, my dear."
   Ali heads out the door. "Be back at 1 PM. I need a good bath and rest and then I'll pick up the food.  Can you have the Enrico Caruso opera records out? I like to hear Caruso sing while I eat good stuff."


When Ali returns, rested and cleaned, and bearing brown bags of food and a bottle of the wine, she lets herself in with the key Dan gave her, and finds Dan in bathroom just having stepped out of a hot Bronx bath. Ali notes Dan's 80+ year old body: A long head with sparse white hair, a thin face with untrimmed old eyebrow hair over watery old eyes on each side of a prominent nose. Dan is thin but not gaunt; he has a potbelly and his upper back shows a forward curvature. His skin shows white hairs and small growths - cherry spots, moles, warts. His muscles are wasted by age and his breasts look flabby.
   "Dear Miss!  How good Morphine can make a person feel after a bath!".
   "It increases body pleasures.  And wait till we have sex!" She grabs a big white towel and dries him efficiently ending with buttock cleavage, genitals, back of elbows and underarms - places often left moist after a bath.
   Dan chuckles over her assistance. "Excuse my ancient body, Dear Miss."

They sit down in living room at the bridge table that overlooks the green Parkway. Ali has set the food out - and what a spread!
   Before anything, Dan goes to his old Victrola and puts on Enrico Caruso singing Norma. He sets the volume low so it will be a barely noticeable background.
   "Oh, thanks Dan! I like listening to Caruso on Sunday. My uncle started me and it's almost as good as my Morphine."
   "Well, child, may I say it is also habit among the Jewish in the Bronx, and we choose Sunday too - when the Goyim are in churches."
   "But I'm one of the Goys - an't I?" Ali says."
   "You are my darling Miss, the child I never had, the love partner I do not deserve - and thank you again."
   Ali pours the Chianti wine which she already popped the cork of. It is a dark red  and she pours it up to the half mark on the two Ehrlenmeyer flasks obtained from a chemistry class; then she fills them with the water Dan has purified with charcoal and always has in his refrigerator and is now out in a carafe on the table. Dan already knows her explanation: The 10% alcohol is bad for the liver. Diluting it down to 5% is healthier and the flavor not much worsened by the dilution.
   "OK, lemme say the Hebrew blessing I learned from Moyshe 'Borah pre hagofen'". They take a first sip. Dan exclaims: "Oh! It never tasted so good - ecstatic."
   "That's the Morphine, Dan,"
   "But I did the injection an hour ago."
   "The molecules linger in nerve endings."
   "Why have you not shown me about these Morphine effects before?"
   "For one very practical reason. It's hard to keep my supply going. I got it from my dead uncle but it is not enough for my use and, as you know, I'm always looking to get more by befriending old geezers like you who can persuade local docs to write scrip for their old aches or new cancers."
   "My dear, before I die - which, now that I experience Morphine, I desire to delay many a day - I will get a lot for you."
   "OK. Nuff a that. Lyez eat!"


Ali most prefers to eat alone and read as she eats with her drug and drink. But she also values the social part of eating and now with Dan, she has fellow-feeling, enjoying the food, the drink, the drug and sex. She eats to maximize pleasure. It means with a very low-volume sound of Caruso's singing. And it means an etiquette that you do not talk when in the act of, or about to eat; you reserve the talk for between bites, chews and swallowing or, better, afterwards. So each eater gets in the rhythm of taking a bite, chewing slowly and savoring before swallowing and then using the break between bites - which may last minutes - to enjoy each other.   
   They take 90 minutes or so - on the drinking of wine - small sips -, the eating, each of a slice heaped with fresh salad,  and then biting into the cut-up Jewish fat hotdogs - Specials they are called - with mustard, and also the gefilte fish on Matzo with bracing, eye-tearing powerful white horseradish. And all smallest bites.


Later, after each has taken a turn on the commode while the other showers, they go to bed together for various variations on sexual pleasure.


At 10 PM, Ali leaves the bed with Dan sleeping as he will do on and off all night. It is old age sleep. She, being young, does not need more of it now and she has other plans for her night.  For next, click 12.34. Suicide Should be Painless