Euthanasia and its Discontents, Part Five
by Joyce Gemperlein
OCTOBER 24, 2008 TAGS:
A week-long Obit exclusive series tracking the morality, legality and personalities of assisted suicide.
The documentary Jon Ronson made of minister George Exoo has a co-star who came to Exoo for help with suicide, but stayed to learn the trade.
Ronson calls the woman Susan Wilson, and he pixilates her face on screen. Now known to be Cassandra Mae of Gastonia, N.C., she tells the filmmaker that, behind Exoo’s back, she has started her own suicide company solely to make money.
“No cash, no help,” she tells Ronson, after criticizing Exoo for not doing the same.
Ronson is clearly horrified by Mae and asks her for more details about a trip she made to New Zealand in September 2007 to smuggle the veterinarian euthanasia drug Nembutal into Auckland for a woman there who was not terminally ill. Mae says she helped her die.
Police in New Zealand are investigating whether to file charges against Mae for what would be that country’s first assisted-suicide prosecution.
Mae tells Ronson that Exoo agreed to help her commit suicide after a spider bit her and she was in pain. But she changed her mind, she says, after she could not find anyone to care for her pet snake. Instead, she became Exoo’s student. Exoo says he has now has no contact with her; “she is avaricious,” he explains.
By Mae’s account and others’, Exoo and his domestic partner, Thomas McGurrin, struggle financially, using the contributions from clients for gas, heat, and other living and foundation-related expenses.
What, if not much money, does Exoo get out of his efforts?
Unlike other ministers, to whom “people bitch all the time,” he says, he likes working with people who afterwards “do not complain. The nicest thing that has happened to me is them looking at me, even as the bag goes over their heads, and they say ‘thank you,’”
He tells Obit that he is against laws legalizing physician-assisted death, because they require too much “rigmarole” -- paperwork -- for people who want to die. Also, because he is not a physician, such laws would make his actions criminal.
As an example, he relates the story of one client who had a heart condition, but was told that it would take six months for his paperwork to go through requisite channels.
“He didn’t want to do that! He was 90!” says Exoo, who says he pitied the man and so helped him commit suicide.
Exoo says that assisted suicide “should be like blowing up balloons. There is no law that says you have to blow up balloons, but no law that says you cannot.”
The clergyman adds that he is angry with Ronson for “ignoring the spirituality of what I do” in the documentary.
What about that spirituality?
In explaining it, Exoo talks solely about what he calls “post-appearances,” messages that people send, usually within 24 hours, after they “have gone successfully to the other side.” The message shows that “the other side approves of what I am doing [helping people die],” he says.
“This, of course, has a certain New Age quality to it -- like WHOO! WHOO! – but it is amazing. The messages come in great numbers and in quite ironic ways,” Exoo says.
The minister relates with delight the time that he unexpectedly visited a home in which cockatiels were reared.
“I was blown over, started crying” because the day before his client had said she would send a sign in the form of a cockatiel after she died.
Another client said she would send an owl message, he recalls. Sure enough, the next day her daughter went for a walk in the woods and saw an owl.
Perhaps his favorite sign, though, involves excrement.
One client who collected panther memorabilia couldn’t decide upon a sign, so Exoo recalls with a chuckle that he suggested “the scent of panther poop.”
The night after the man’s death, Exoo says he suddenly “smelled this shit smell – it wasn’t doggies’ and there was no doo-doo on the carpet – and it disappeared in five minutes.”
The minister says he has begun fundraising to open a “right-to-die hospice” where people can succumb on the day they check in, or stay a few days before doing so.
His venture will be in a state like his that has no laws one way or another against assisted suicide.
He wants a place with a great view, on a mountain top in West Virginia” or on the coast in South Carolina, where, he says, people can come to commit suicide “surrounded by love” and “with helium, probably.”
“If you know anyone in need,” Exoo tells Obit, he welcomes referrals.
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Read Part One: Meet George Exoo, Reverend Death.
The Unitarian Universalist clergyman, who does not have a congregation, says that as “a midwife for those who want to hasten their deaths” – including chronically depressed people -- he has provided instructions and a “compassionate presence” in the suicides of 82 people in person and 20 “from a distance,” meaning by telephone.
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Read Part Two: A good argument for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.
The minister’s actions and demeanor might be seen as criminal or benevolent, frightening, sensationalistic, justified or jaw-dropping – alternately and simultaneously.
.gif)
Read Part Three: Terminally ill v. Chronically Depressed
Other activists within the right-to-die community have worked quietly for decades advocating for legislation and disseminating information on how terminally ill people can end their own lives. Their attitude toward Exoo is complex.
.gif)
Read PART FOUR: Obit’s Interview with Rev. Death, George Exoo
Exoo explains, “I tell them, ‘Look, I am going to succeed with you – unless, of course, you chicken out.’ [But] sometimes I’ve driven 800 miles [to them] and then they change their minds!”
Joyce Gemperlein is a regular contributor to Obit.
The documentary Jon Ronson made of minister George Exoo has a co-star who came to Exoo for help with suicide, but stayed to learn the trade.
Ronson calls the woman Susan Wilson, and he pixilates her face on screen. Now known to be Cassandra Mae of Gastonia, N.C., she tells the filmmaker that, behind Exoo’s back, she has started her own suicide company solely to make money.“No cash, no help,” she tells Ronson, after criticizing Exoo for not doing the same.
Ronson is clearly horrified by Mae and asks her for more details about a trip she made to New Zealand in September 2007 to smuggle the veterinarian euthanasia drug Nembutal into Auckland for a woman there who was not terminally ill. Mae says she helped her die.
Police in New Zealand are investigating whether to file charges against Mae for what would be that country’s first assisted-suicide prosecution.
Mae tells Ronson that Exoo agreed to help her commit suicide after a spider bit her and she was in pain. But she changed her mind, she says, after she could not find anyone to care for her pet snake. Instead, she became Exoo’s student. Exoo says he has now has no contact with her; “she is avaricious,” he explains.
By Mae’s account and others’, Exoo and his domestic partner, Thomas McGurrin, struggle financially, using the contributions from clients for gas, heat, and other living and foundation-related expenses.
What, if not much money, does Exoo get out of his efforts?
Unlike other ministers, to whom “people bitch all the time,” he says, he likes working with people who afterwards “do not complain. The nicest thing that has happened to me is them looking at me, even as the bag goes over their heads, and they say ‘thank you,’”
He tells Obit that he is against laws legalizing physician-assisted death, because they require too much “rigmarole” -- paperwork -- for people who want to die. Also, because he is not a physician, such laws would make his actions criminal.
As an example, he relates the story of one client who had a heart condition, but was told that it would take six months for his paperwork to go through requisite channels.
“He didn’t want to do that! He was 90!” says Exoo, who says he pitied the man and so helped him commit suicide.
Exoo says that assisted suicide “should be like blowing up balloons. There is no law that says you have to blow up balloons, but no law that says you cannot.”
The clergyman adds that he is angry with Ronson for “ignoring the spirituality of what I do” in the documentary.
What about that spirituality?
In explaining it, Exoo talks solely about what he calls “post-appearances,” messages that people send, usually within 24 hours, after they “have gone successfully to the other side.” The message shows that “the other side approves of what I am doing [helping people die],” he says.
“This, of course, has a certain New Age quality to it -- like WHOO! WHOO! – but it is amazing. The messages come in great numbers and in quite ironic ways,” Exoo says.
The minister relates with delight the time that he unexpectedly visited a home in which cockatiels were reared.
“I was blown over, started crying” because the day before his client had said she would send a sign in the form of a cockatiel after she died.
Another client said she would send an owl message, he recalls. Sure enough, the next day her daughter went for a walk in the woods and saw an owl.
Perhaps his favorite sign, though, involves excrement.
One client who collected panther memorabilia couldn’t decide upon a sign, so Exoo recalls with a chuckle that he suggested “the scent of panther poop.”
The night after the man’s death, Exoo says he suddenly “smelled this shit smell – it wasn’t doggies’ and there was no doo-doo on the carpet – and it disappeared in five minutes.”
The minister says he has begun fundraising to open a “right-to-die hospice” where people can succumb on the day they check in, or stay a few days before doing so.
His venture will be in a state like his that has no laws one way or another against assisted suicide.
He wants a place with a great view, on a mountain top in West Virginia” or on the coast in South Carolina, where, he says, people can come to commit suicide “surrounded by love” and “with helium, probably.”
“If you know anyone in need,” Exoo tells Obit, he welcomes referrals.
--
Read Part One: Meet George Exoo, Reverend Death.The Unitarian Universalist clergyman, who does not have a congregation, says that as “a midwife for those who want to hasten their deaths” – including chronically depressed people -- he has provided instructions and a “compassionate presence” in the suicides of 82 people in person and 20 “from a distance,” meaning by telephone.
Read Part Two: A good argument for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.The minister’s actions and demeanor might be seen as criminal or benevolent, frightening, sensationalistic, justified or jaw-dropping – alternately and simultaneously.
Read Part Three: Terminally ill v. Chronically DepressedOther activists within the right-to-die community have worked quietly for decades advocating for legislation and disseminating information on how terminally ill people can end their own lives. Their attitude toward Exoo is complex.
Read PART FOUR: Obit’s Interview with Rev. Death, George ExooExoo explains, “I tell them, ‘Look, I am going to succeed with you – unless, of course, you chicken out.’ [But] sometimes I’ve driven 800 miles [to them] and then they change their minds!”
Joyce Gemperlein is a regular contributor to Obit.
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