Judith Letting Go by Mark Dowie
Mark Dowie’s reflections on the six months he walked alongside poet Judith Tannenbaum, as she prepared for her self-euthanization are tenderly shared in “Judith Letting Go: Six Months In the World’s Smallest Death Cafe”.
Written by Jade Adgate
When I was a little girl, I’d imagine myself into a state of utter fear at bedtime, in sheer certainty that there was a monster under my bed. Had I crawled out of the sheets and peered into the dark, I would have found a renegade stuffed animal, rolled off from the pack by accident. Instead I burrowed in, covering even my head with the quilt as protection, and dreamed up the monsters that terrorized me with fear. Judith Letting Go unlocks this childhood memory because in this recollection of Judith Tannenbaum’s last six months of life, death may be the stuffed animal under the bed and my only critique of this heartfelt story is that no one ever crawled down there to truly examine the spark of so much imagination.
Let me begin by sharing what I think Mark Dowie does perfectly in Judith Letting Go: Dowie asks us to consider the limitations of our shared vocabulary in the discussion of taking one’s own life. Dowie’s point is valid and his subject in Judith Letting Go exemplifies it: can the rational, contemplative, and deliberate extermination of one’s own life be considered a suicide? Does illness require a terminal prognosis to qualify for the right to die? Is a person entitled to a choice in whether they live or die when they are saddled with chronic and debilitating pain? Or at all?
While the right-to-die argument remains a consistent throughline of debate for the modern American, rarely do proponents for the expansion of Death with Dignity laws present such an intimate defense. Unlike fellow journalist, Dianne Rehm’s measured detachment in When My Time Comes, or Amy Bloom’s vulnerable portrayal of her husband’s euthanasia at Dignitas in In Love, Dowie finds himself in the land of both and neither; though he develops a friendship with Judith Tannenbaum in these last six month’s of her life, he met her for the explicit purpose of companioning her through the choice to self-exterminate. What emerges from their relationship has the gifts of both detachment (in their frank contemplations on death with no long-standing relationship tethers) and intimacy (in connecting with another human on the deepest of topics and tenderest of days).
Still from the book trailer for "The Book of Judith" (New Village Press)
My complaint about Judith Letting Go does not detract from the value of the book and can perhaps only be lodged by someone who professionally companions those who are dying, day in and day out. The premise of this book as named by the title is that Judith surrendered to death following a thorough examination of death (and therefore life too). Judith chose to let go rather than cling to this mortal coil. And herein lies my question: did she, in fact, let go? Or did she take control? It seems to me that with measured calculation and artful defense, Judith chose to end her own life to control her experience with death, much as a storyteller controls the narrative. Rather than ‘letting go’, Judith took charge; she wholeheartedly refused to engage in the dying process on death’s terms, instead accelerated through it on her own.
There is no judgement on my part, as to whether she should or shouldn’t have exercised her right to choose how she lived and how she died. But I do dissent to the choice to frame her brave act as one of surrender. In my work as a death doula, I am offered a frequent and clear view into the surrender to death. When I first meet a client, they can often creek and creep to the bathroom with only the help of their walker. Our next stage is with the help of their loved one, then to the bedside commode, finally to the diaper. This physical demonstration of the failing body prompts the spiritual process of dying that is the hallmark of surrender, a letting go of attachment to control what we want as we practice how to accept what is. Judith, in my view, didn’t let go, as the title suggests; instead, Judith tapped out. A bold and brave choice that may well contribute to the changing of our collective thought around suicide, the criminalization of the right to die, and how we view pain’s impact on the quality of life. But do we weaken the assertiveness of her stance if we shroud it in idolized and misplaced language of surrender? If we truly believe that Judith had a right to choose the terms of her death, then why do we need to frame her choice as a surrender to letting go?
Ultimately, I enjoyed getting to know the incredible person that Judith Tannenbaum was and was deeply moved by her bravery, honesty, and philosophical inquiry into this great mystery. Had she hired me as her death doula, I would have been keen to dig into the penultimate part of Judith’s story that was overlooked: why did Judith refuse to engage in the dying process? Death isn’t a moment, it is a slide. Dying isn’t a singular medical event, it is a physical, spiritual and emotional journey. Even if you are sitting bedside and staring into the face of a person dying, matching their every inhale to yours, we cannot identify the precise one true moment of “death” because death itself is a social construct of how we have agreed to determine when life ceases to exist. If dying is a process, just as living is, can you truly know death without dying? Could we truly know life without living?
I suspect the monster under the bed in this story isn’t actually death but fear of dying and instead of shining a light upon it, naming it, and inviting it into the menagerie of stuffed animals and mythical creatures, we’re going to pretend that we’re just not scared. But what if: what if the thing that made this monster so unique was that Judith chose to meet Death in her own way, on her own terms, as an ultimate act of control and autonomy, in a demonstration of how she tackled life. It’s as if Judith spent her life creating the most unusual, slightly controversial, but wholly unique stuffed animal that rolled under the bed. In couching her story as an act of surrender and letting go, we’re refusing to crawl into the shadows with the dust bunnies, pull this stuffed animal out and display it proudly for what it is.
Judith Tannenbaum chose to control how she died in a world that told her she shouldn’t. She did it brazenly, in conversation with a celebrated investigative journalist taking notes. She set a date to end her own life, drove herself to the store to buy the supplies, facilitated her own death on her own terms - time, place, down to the minute details. Judith Tannenbaum invited Mark Dowie to observe her choice, challenge her on it, and ultimately share it with the world. How beautiful. How brave. How unusual. How powerfully she demonstrated and exercised what should be a right to anyone living with debilitating illness. I will proudly put this creation of Judith’s, curious and controversial as it may be, in my treasured collection because it was wholly, uniquely, and in full integrity, hers.
Jade interviewed author Mark Dowie on his book, Judith Letting Go: Six Months in the World’s Smallest Death Cafe. Listen here for the upcoming episode of the Exit Interviews podcast.
