Brittany Maynard: Suicide and Suffering
By Maura Byrne | Founder of Made in His Image
Photo credit: Donna Irene Photography
It was Sunday evening November 1, and while taking an apple pie out of the oven, I glanced at my ringing phone. Having a pie in my hands, I couldn’t answer. A few minutes elapsed, I picked up my phone and skimmed my newsfeed. My heart sank. Brittany Maynard, 29-year-old woman with brain cancer, has committed suicide. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, NOOOOOOO. I opened the article to read it, just to see if it was really true, sadly, it was.
Brittany was diagnosed with incurable brain cancer and committed assisted suicide after moving to Portland, Oregon. She ended her life by swallowing a fatal dose of barbiturates. Oregon is one of the states that legally allows assisted suicide.
Now, I’ve never been diagnosed with an incurable illness and have absolutely no idea what that feels like. I am not writing this to judge Brittany, her family, or anyone. I am writing this because suffering has meaning, suffering is beautiful.
In all candor, I haven’t always thought that though.
In college I was plagued with suicidal thoughts. It’s only through the grace of our Heavenly Father that I am still alive. Suicidal thoughts are scary. People would say, just think happy thoughts. I would silently be thinking, you have no clue what this is like. You have no idea what it’s like to see your own bottle of prescription drugs and want to swallow the whole thing. Or how it feels to want to jump off every bridge you see, drown yourself in the pool, smash your car into the median on the highway, or pray that you just don’t wake up in the morning. Then the morning comes and you can’t get out of bed. Brushing your hair becomes an accomplishment, washing a load of laundry earns you at least a four-hour nap, it was that exhausting and getting out of the house feels like running a marathon.
The darkness feels like it’s going to suffocate you. You can’t think about tomorrow or next week because that’s to overwhelming. You can’t even think five minutes from the present moment, thirty seconds is enough. The pain is relentless. You feel like you’re in a dark hole and you can’t seem to find the light. You want to get out, but you don’t know how. You are always tired, even after sleeping for fourteen hours. It’s a bleak place to be, and you just can’t stop crying, it doesn’t matter where you are.
There is only one thing that keeps a person alive in these situations. And that is hope.
I understand that Brittany’s situation wasn’t like this, but hope is universal.
My heart goes out to Brittany, and I pray that she is now resting in the loving and gentle Arms of our Heavenly Father. Imagine how scared she must have been knowing that she was going to die? That anxiety compounded with excruciating pain, the poor woman must have been terrified. I don’t think most of us have experienced pain and anxiety like she did. She loved her life and didn’t want to die.
Brittany told People Magazine, My glioblastoma is going to kill me and that’s out of my control. I’ve discussed with many experts how I would die from it and it’s a terrible, terrible way to die. So being able to choose to go with dignity is less terrifying.
Five years ago I watched a woman with brain cancer die, and I assure you of this, this woman died with dignity.
During the summer of 2008 I went to Kolkata, India to serve with the Missionaries of Charity in their home for the dying. While in India, I witness some of the most courageous souls I’ve ever seen, men and women who were dying. The poverty, destitution, illness, smells, heat and intense noise were aspects of their lives that they had grown accustom too. Families lived under garbage bag tents, with most just living on the street. Their children were naked and sleeping in filth not knowing where their next morsel of food was going to come from. The poor would hang on us begging for food and money and people went to the bathroom, bathed, slaughtered animals and threw trash right in the street. The filth and stench were enough to make a person pass out, and at times one did.
Kalighat is Mother Teresa’s home for the dying, and it was her desire that all of those who came would die with dignity, knowing that they are loved, cherished and wanted. While at Kalighat, we would be washing the patients clothes with our hands and feet and see dead bodies and amputations being brought in and out. But these were not just bodies or body parts, these were the bodies of precious souls who had suffered until the very last moment of their lives. These were souls who had died with dignity. One woman there, who suffered from brain cancer, particularly captured my heart and showed me what it was like to die with dignity.
Early one morning one of the nurses called me over to the bedside of this dying woman. She asked me to help her cut the skin covering her deteriorating skull, which then fully exposed her worm invested brain. Looking at this woman’s brain was like studying the brain in a biology book. I’ll never forget the look on her face as we proceeded to pull worms out of her brain with a tweezer and the way in which she would squeeze my hand to alleviate the immense pain she was in, as we had no pain medication to give her.
The last day I served at Kalighat was an incredibly hard day, as I didn’t want to leave her. I loved just sitting with her and holding her hand. She never smiled at me or made eye contact, which I attributed to the excruciating amount of pain she was in.
During my last hour at Kalighat, I got some cream and lathered her whole body at least five times as she slept; her skin was so dry that the cream would immediately dry up. Before I left, I wanted her to know that someone loved her a great deal; I wanted her to feel the love she had given to me.
Ten minutes before I left Kalighat for the summer, I placed both my hands on her head and prayed over her as she slept. My last prayer for her was that if God willed it, He would take away her pain for as long as He desired and give it to me so she could die knowing that she was incredibly loved. I wanted to feel what this woman felt. I prayed that if she felt loved, she would make eye contact with me and smile, something she had never done
Nothing happened and she continued to sleep as I traced the sign of the cross on her forehead. As I walked away, I turned to take one more glance at her, she had opened her eyes at this point and I ran back to her side. She reached for my hand and tenderly squeezed it, and for the first time it wasn’t a squeeze of pain. One tear fell from her right eye as she looked directly at me and smiled! I had tears in my eyes and got the chills in the 115 degree heat.
This woman died with dignity.
While watching this woman die I learned from her that suffering has a purpose. She never spoke to me, but she didn’t have to, her example was sufficient. Christ Himself, was a Man of few words, when He stood before Pilot He remained silent, He didn’t need to flaunt His power because He came to serve us. He came as a servant to die for us, so that we could have life. Suffering has meaning because we are called to mirror Christ, we are called to lay down our lives for one another and for each person this will look different.
But we can all share in the same beauty of offering our suffering up for the good of another. Imagine seeing Christ face to face when you die and hear, Well done My good and faithful servant. You suffered well for Me. That gives me goosebumps just typing that and I desire nothing more in my life than to hear those words from Our Father. I literally have tears in my eyes right now because I think that’s so beautiful how we can love one another through our suffering.
Who are we to know what God had planned? Maybe He is sending us a certain trial or illness to test our faith? To draw us closer to Himself? Maybe He has a miraculous healing in store? Maybe He wants us to suffer to lead others to Him? We just don’t know. And we can’t play God, His plan is a mystery.
Someone might argue, well that’s easy for you to say since you don’t have an incurable illness. And they would be correct, I don’t. But I do know that God doesn’t send us anything we can not handle with His grace.
Suffering is a gift – though, like all gifts, it depends on how we receive it. And that is why we need a pure heart, to see the hand of God, to feel the hand of God, to recognize the gift of God in our suffering. – Blessed Mother Teresa
P.S. You are enough.
