Jack Kevorkian, Who Understood Life. And Death.

Jack Kevorkian was a doctor. He just died, at the age of 83. Pretty good. Time to go.

Perhaps because he was a doctor, Kevorkian knew that everyone does not live to be 83, but will die for reasons other than old age. Sometimes they cannot bear the god-awful agony of a cancer, or the grief of knowing that they are sliding, inexorably, into dementia. Before Jack Kevorkian decided that he would help people, not only to live better, but to die better-- when staying alive was worse than death--about the only resort we had was to plead for more morphine to ease our pain, and hope that the dosage was large enough to kill us.

Jack Kevorkian was not a monster. He understood.

We are beginning to understand, too. Individual States are beginning to admit, and to allow, sane, rational people, to choose to die rather than to continue what they nearly cannot bear.

Life is, perhaps, the grandest achievement in all the universe, in all the billions of years of its own life. It allows us, by having come to consciousness, and intelligence, to understand and to celebrate what it is we are, and have. We know that life itself, not just the incredible journey of matter and energy, is glorious! And sometimes it is awful, and unbearable.

There is a time for everything, and everyone, to die. But sometimes-- some times--death comes too slowly. We all know that. Jack Kevorkian knew that.

He wasn't much of a hero. Maybe it was because what he knew, and tried to help people do, was itself painful: that is to say, to admit that we sometimes get to the point where staying alive is worse than dying. We got angry at Jack Kevorkian when we should have been angry at cancer, and dementia, and drunk drivers, and strokes, and damaged chromosomes.

He as 83. He was one of the lucky ones for whom life was better than death, even after 83 years. But death came, anyway. He didn't choose it. It chose him. He was one of the lucky ones.

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