Do I kill my father?
Moore, Kathleen Dean
n DO I KILL MY FATHER? Kathleen Dean Moore ~ was standing with the doctor in the kitchen of my father's house, leaning against the stove, staring at the big moths and butterflies framed...
...he breathed in loud whispers, and sometimes seemed to sob...
...We wouldn't talk about how he died...
...On wintry evenings, they stayed up late, two scientists, and talked about right and wrong, about life, about death...
...his lips moved sometimes, but we couldn't make out any words...
...If I say yes, what will my father think...
...Kathleen Dean Moore ~ was standing with the doctor in the kitchen of my father's house, leaning against the stove, staring at the big moths and butterflies framed and mounted on the kitchen wall...
...So the doctor and I were both pretty sure we knew what my father wanted...
...I imagine there are neighbors who are not coming over to mow the grass because they don't want to disturb my father...
...Nothing requires it...
...But if I say no, maybe he'll say, she could have stopped the pain, and she didn't...
...Will he protest...
...It is beyond ethical categories...
...Nothing justifies it...
...In the end, the sound of the lawn mower is the only thing I know for sure...
...I remember one night when my sister was working late to finish up an insect collection for her science assignment...
...I've got to think harder and better now than I've ever thought in my life...
...Not today...
...Is it time...
...It is beyond laws and two signatures and review panels...
...But I could...
...But I was still alive...
...we are good organizers...
...My own daughter...
...And it clearly was time...
...I was a thousand miles from home, and I missed my children...
...Will he think, I knew I could trust her to figure out what is right and do it without flinching...
...In the end, when she was lonely, she killed me to get this over with, so her family would come...
...The last betrayal: my own daughter did not stop the pain...
...This should have been an easy decision...
...If I said yes, my sisters would land at the airport and I would be there to meet them and we would hug and cry and say how good it was that the pain was over, that this is what Dad would have wanted...
...I could follow the leafy paths of my thoughts...
...Then she shook them out and mounted them on long, black pins...
...I could hear the children coming home from school...
...Will he be proud of me...
...It was a sweet July morning, the kind when my father would have been sitting in a lawn chair outside, reading the paper, greeting his neighbors...
...She poked and missed, poked again...
...Mercy-killing is an enormous act...
...I have never been so lonely in my life...
...It's a wrong that cannot be forgiven, a sharp-eyed, hard-beaked eagle tearing at Prometheus' immortal liver...
...She always was my problem-solver, and she came through in the end...
...his eyes never opened...
...Greater than justice, it is an act of mercy, of stupendous, titanic love...
...No," I said...
...Would you like me to do something...
...If they were dying in pain, they wanted the dying to be quick, and then everyone could get on to other things...
...All our lives, when my sisters and I have had a problem we couldn't solve, we have taken it to my father...
...She had collected at least fifty insects and put them in glass jars with carbon tetrachloride...
...If I say yes, will his feelings be hurt...
...These were Depression-raised problem solvers...
...That's all she cared about--someone to comfort her...
...If I say no, maybe he'll say, she loved me, but in the end, she was afraid...
...Kathleen Dean Moore is chair of the philosophy department at Oregon State University, Corvallis...
...My children and husband would come and I would get to go home...
...It quivered in place, the eyes on its wings wide in astonishment...
...There was no question that he was in pain, a pain the doctor could not end...
...One big Prometheus moth would not be killed...
...I won't hold it against her...
...And then we would organize things in the house...
...I was remembering a picnic spread along a fallen log, and my daughter killed me...
...The silence in the kitchen is starting to congeal, taking on substance that seems to glisten...
...There are robins on the lawn, up to their hips in thick grass that needs to be mowed...
...Commonweal 3 I June 19,1998...
...It's a Promethean act, dangerous and p r o u d - - f o r better or for worse, stealing fire from the gods...
...My father's body was dying faster than he was...
...It must have been a hard decision...
...Through the window I can see a neighbor walking by, wondering if this is a good time to stop and deciding not...
...I could say one word, yes, and my father's best friend would kill him...
...We couldn't roll him over in bed without leaving appalling dents in his thighs...
...I can absorb the pain she can't bear--what else are fathers for...
...He saw the situation at once, put the moth back into the jar, gave it a walloping dose of carbon tet, hugged my sister, pulled out the moth, and stuck it to the board...
...His friends would bring casserole dishes, and my aunt would bring a ham, and we would say good-by to them with hugs and some little memento...
...When I try to weigh the consequences, the huge fact of it knocks over the careful balance of advantage and disadvantage, scattering every other consideration across the floor...
...But if he can hear, he will love the sound of the lawn mower moving back and forth, louder and quieter, coming and going...
...the doctor asked me...
...While she held it by the abdomen, it fluttered and flinched...
...Sobbing, she tried to stick it through without tearing the brown eyes on its soft wings...
...My father and his doctor were longtime friends and companions...
...I ran to get my father...
...His pride has motivated me all my life...
...Will he understand...
Vol. 125 • June 1998 • No. 12
