Safe Suicide

My Dog Story

102 safe suicide My Dog Story why should a dog, a cat, a horse have life, and she have none at all? —Lear My son at ten had had his share of grief. His best friend, Gabe Farren, had been diagnosed with liver cancer. David never doubted that the powers of the adult world would cure Gabe. The sickness was curable, a passing ordeal. No one told Dave, or told Gabe, for that matter, differently. A liver transplant. Then remission, then more cancer. Then chemo, hair loss. Gabe was Gabe, boyish and plucky, Dave’s pal triumphant. The fall of 1993, The Make-a-Wish Foundation sponsored Gabe’s wish, an all expenses paid vacation at Disney World in Florida. Gabe asked that David as his pal could go with the family. They were driven to and met at the airport with a stretch limo. Two of every wished-for toy, primarily Power Rangers (the craze of the time), were shared, one for Gabe, one for Dave. On return, again in remission, Gabe visited our house once or twice, and then was bedridden, unable to get out. One last outing, Gabe’s Mom and Connie took him and David to Boston’s Chinatown where they got matching karate outfits, Chinese masks, and Nun Chucks, following on the Ninja Turtles’ and Power Rangers’ prowess in martial arts. I remember taking Dave to Jurassic Park at that time, Dad and Son, and being troubled by a pre-film feature on cancer research for children. Troubled that the shadow of Gabe’s fate would trouble Dave, and squeamish myself about the impending tragedy and its impact on him. By the fall of 1993, the doctors thought that they had eliminated all the cancer, but in the summer Gabe had several strokes and went back to the doctors. They told his family that the liver cancer had traveled to his brain, and that that was causing his strokes. Gabe then fought the cancer with radiation treatment for several weeks. The radiation made the tumors worse, so treatment was suspended and Gabe entered Home Hospice Care. Two months later, he died in his Watertown home at the age of eight, one month before his ninth birthday. David was cheerful at Gabe’s bedside in the Farren living room almost to the last, in trust and in denial. They watched television together. They watched violent R-rated films otherwise forbidden. All the rules of gunplay 102 and movies and extravagant toys had been suspended and waived for Gabe, and David experienced and enjoyed the contact license. Dave went with Gabe to the hospital for radiation treatments and returned with his own gauze radiation mask, shaped to his features, like a life mask. Gabe’s parents, Glenda and Pat, and Gabe’s older sisters, Jesse (who was David’s older sister’s best friend) and Caitlin, treated David as family; and I confess I was sometimes jealous of the time and warmth they offered Dave, which I was at some lengths to equal. My wife, Connie, whose friendship with Pat and Glenda encouraged the bond between Dave and Gabe, finally had to tell David that Gabe was dying. That he only had a few more days. She wanted Dave to go say goodbye to him. Dave broke down in grief and wailing and sobbing tears. No. No. No. No. I shudder inside now to remember. He was thrashing in Connie’s arms. The two of them on his bed, and I was standing in the doorway, feeling helpless. “Oh Dave, I know!” Connie wailed with Dave. “I’m sorry!” And Dave: “Why didn’t you tell me! I thought he’d be okay!” When Gabe died, Dave and Connie took off school and work, while I could not, and went to the cremation ceremony. Connie later told me that everyone had sat around in a circle in front of the open coffin (which a woodworking friend of the family had made). That Gabe had been dressed in his karate outfit. That my son had never looked, but that he had asked Connie to put two of his favorite Power Ranger figures into the coffin. That different people had said things, read poems, whatever. That each person then had tightened one screw and then Pat and Glenda had pushed the coffin into the fire. I tried some nights to lie with Dave and to talk about losing my mother. He would insist on company on his way to...