Unless death wants to fight.

Käthe Kollwitz 

Death has been in the news lately. The pope of euthanasia, Jack Kevorkian, took the natural way out yesterday, leaving this mortal coil in a hospital bed, accompanied by his favorite Bach concerto.

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Last week, we were treated to the story of 91 year old Sharlotte Hydorn, a La Mesa woman who sells mail order suicide kits. The kit contains a hood, hose and a copy of the book Final Exit. The method is simple. You breathe a bagful of helium, lethal in its purest form. Sixty bucks.

Sharlotte sells about 1600 of the kits per year, they come in a box decorated with a butterfly on the side. She calls her business, The Gladd Group although she is merely a company of one.

Ms. Hydorn shared her motivations in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, her husband, “a six-foot-four, wonderful, handsome, loving, intelligent man,” was dying of colon cancer. After several operations, the cancer had spread to his brain, and surgeons had cut a hole in his stomach, out of which came his excrement, into a bag.

“It was my duty, and I did it willingly, to empty that thing every three or four hours,” she said. “One time I ran out of bags and went all over town looking for a pharmacy that sold them. Even years after my husband died, I would wake up and say, ‘I’ve got to go get those bags.’ ”

No one should have to go through that, Hydorn said, to die a slow, painful death in a hospital bed. “Death should be with loved ones beside you, holding your hand."

The FBI raided her home last week, confiscating her computer and three boxes of files. She said that the intrusion was so disturbing that she had to go out and get an ice cream. All I can say is good for Sharlotte. You aren't going to intimidate a 91 year old woman who knows that what she is doing is right.

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You would think that if we had any rights or liberty left at all, one of the first rights should be to end our life at a time of our own choosing.

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I still feel a twinge of guilt over one of my experiences. Years ago I apprenticed with an old sign painter named Les Gampp. He had a sign shop in Alhambra for 50 years  and I learned things the old school way. One stroke alphabets, over and over, the old way. Les was 94. One day he called and asked if he could come over and spend the night. We mistakenly left the window open and he ended up getting pneumonia.

Les went to Tri City Hospital. When I went to visit him both of his hands were tied and his mouth was duct taped. He was agitated and trying to talk to me and the nurse assented to free a hand so that he could write me a message. In a scribbled scrawl, red pen on on a yellow pad, he wrote Cut me loose.

I asked the nurse if I could be alone with him for a moment, thinking that if his hands were free, he could tear the tubes and plugs that were keeping him alive away. He had no chance of ever leaving the hospital at his age. I knew that, he knew that and the nurse knew that.

She looked at me and said, " Mr. Sommers, if he pulls those tubes out, we will have you arrested for murder." She went on,"Les may not want to live this week but maybe he will be feeling differently next week." She agreed with me that in any case, my friend would never be leaving the hospital in his advanced state of disrepair. By what right, I ask?

Les lived another agonizing and horrible two weeks before he succumbed. A 94 year old man deserves a better finale than being trussed up to a breathing machine like a hog, against his will. I always viewed the incident as a time of personal moral failure. And wonder about the medical industry's own moral standing and the idea of keeping people alive at all costs, no matter what their desire is. We need to get the government and the moral majority out of these important personal life decisions.