If I were president, I would try to make things easier for ailing elders and kids who see no reason to keep on living.
In my Facebook feed yesterday:
Porter Scott ·A lovely humanistic tradition…
Tata Mundele
October 30, 2023
·
“In Sardinia, the use of the "femina agabbadòra hammer" was a women's practice. Whenever an elderly man or woman of a given family was dying and in great pain, the family would call for the Accabadòra or Lady of the Good Death. She would usually be a widow dressed entirely in black, who likely inherited her role from her own mother or grandmother.
The title Accabadora means "She is the One Who Ends." She arrives with a large hammer of carved olive wood wrapped in heavy wool, and is left alone with the individual who may yet be screaming in agony and terror.
A witness testimonial of the practice translates: "It was dark. The room was illuminated by a single wick in mastic oil. The Accabadòra entered the house -- the door had been left open for her. She passed no one as she enters her patient's room at at the bedside.
"She caressed the face of the dying person, chanted the rosary, sang one of the many lullabies usually sung to children. Finally she raised her hammer wrapped in thick, black wool, and gave a quick sharp blow on the skull.
"She then left the bludgeoned patient in quiet peace, and our family blessed and thanked and paid her for her good work as she was leaving. It is a hard job. The Accabadòra may herself be feeble, and is often a friend of the ailing individual. So you must always respect her.
"We do not consider her a murderer. In our village she is known as compassionate, a holy assistant in fulfilling the final destiny. Her act is loving and benevolent. She is our Last Mother."
Though usually done with a hammer, each Accabadòra may have her own technique, including smothering with a pillow, or climbing atop the sufferer to wrap her legs around the neck to squeeze the throat closed.
The last recorded Accabadòras went about their missions of euthanasia in 1929 in Luras and in 1952 in Orgosolo. But a recent work of fiction about the life of a modern Agabbadòra alleges that the ancient practice still exists in rural parts of Sardinia, where there are no physicians or any other help for the suffering.”
===Photo: An Accabadòra ready to serve, though her hammer is considerably larger than would be used by a real Accabadòra . Inset: An actual femina accabadòra hammer in a Sardinian museum.Sloan BashinskyBring back the accabadoras.Beloved ailing pets get put down by animal doctors, beloved ailing humans are forced to live as long as possible, no matter how much it cost$.
To the Young Who Want to Die
By: Gwendolyn Brooks
POETIC OUTLAWS
JAN 30, 2024
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here--through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter
Apologies, Eric, that’s a really splendid piece of writing, but I’m gonna demure, and if it’s out of bounds, please toss it into a landfill.
As for miserable kids who kill themselves, who can say it was wrong, who can know what it was like for them, who was not living in their skins? Who can know how it would have gone for those kids if they had not killed themselves? Would they have lived in a hell we cannot begin to imagine? Is it their sorrow, or ours, that we cannot abide, when they kill themselves?
I threw a baseball left-handed and a football right-handed, and batted right-handed and kicked right-footed, and dribbled and shot baskets with both hands. I was a bit cross-wired, but was pretty good and got an award for being the best basketball player in the 8th grade (before there were junior high schools).
Alas, I utterly missed that really important right of passage, when the season to reach puberty came and went, and I grew more desperate, feeling like a freak of nature. No way would I undress in the boys locker room.
My high school’s sports coach tried to talk me into playing basketball, and I shriveled like a boiled daffodil and could only shake my head.
I grew more and more desperate, mortified to speak to anyone about it. I am pretty sure I was insane. Although I never thought of killing myself, I felt doomed.
A few months after turning 16, I entered puberty. All of a sudden, I was very interested in girls. But when I tried my hand at the sports in which I had excelled, I had lost my edge, my tone. I no longer could throw or punt a beautiful 40-yard spiral, or dropkick a 30 yard field goal. I had lost my touch catching passes, and sinking basketballs from anywhere. I could not even hit a softball with a bat, which I had been pretty good at when I was a Little League pitcher and first baseman, and could catch anything hit my way.
I was left playing golf, right-handed, which was my father’s sport. He could have been a pro, but chose business instead. He told me that I needed to learn how to play golf, because all business deals are made on the golf course.
I became pretty good, won the Birmingham Country Club Junior championship when I was 16. Then, I developed a hitch my swing an dcouldn’t feel the clubhead in by backswing, and over time the game that is the X-ray of the soul, if you don’t believe it, you don’t know the first fucking thing about golf, made me feel like I had not reached puberty, but I never thought of killing myself.
My solace all along was fishing, which my mother knew I had to do, or I would die. My father did not fish, so my mother got other men to take me fishing. She wanted me to be a priest, but did not understand that lakes were my church, the fish were angels, and when they had taught me how to fish, they would send me forth to fish.
Things came, and went, some of which were very painful, but most awful was years of premature ejaculations, the inverted hell of not reaching puberty on time, and I did not think of killing myself.
When that passed and my dick worked just fine in the romance arena, my first child, a boy, died of sudden infant death syndrome my senior year in law school, and I was in hell, but I did not think of killing myself.
About 18 months later, my G.I. tract went haywire, permanently, in one day’s time, and medicine had no answer, and I was in hell, but did not think of killing myself.
My marriage failed, not gracefully, and I was in hell, but did not think of killing myself.
Being a lawyer came and went, not gracefully, and that was hell, but I never thought of killing myself.
Writing three dang good books for people who bought and sold homes and used lawyers, insider knowledge, consumer protection stuff, published in New York and widely exposed in local, regional and national news media, but the publisher did not get the books into bookstores, and that was hell, but I didn’t became a great capitalist like my father and his father, didn’t cause me to want to kill myself.
Then, I unwittingly became a mystic, and then a poet, and then the dark night of the soul came, and I thought plenty then about killing myself. It lifted on its own after four years, as it had come on its own.
The black night of the soul came two years later, in two days’ time. That black hole made the dark night seem like a cakewalk, and I plotted my demise every day for 16 months, and then it began to lift, and I started looking forward to being alive, again.
Becoming estranged from my father and my brother and my children and their families was hell, but it didn’t cause me to want to kill myself.
Becoming blocked from earning a living wage was hell, but it did not cause me to want to kill myself.
Living in ways John Kerouac could never possibly imagine, was hell. Broke, penniless, sleeping in doorways, on sidewalks, in backyards, on beaches, on park benches, in shelters, in tents, in spare rooms, in vehicles, for years, I never thought of killing myself.
Then came an inheritance from my father and a breather, and then came a couple of more years of living wild, and I never thought of killing myself.
My bisexual in the closet younger brother killed himself and tried to make it look like murder, because someone was threatening to out him and there was nothing he could do to stop it. It fell on me to explain that to those who would listen, and to those who would not and still today think he was murdered.
Running out of money again and living on the homeless edge for a couple of more years did not cause me to want to kill myself.
My daughters and I reconciled and that was wonderful.
A small inheritance from my father got me off the homeless rolls.
During the covid lock down, my father’s main estate settled, and I figured he was paying me a living wage.
By then, other parts of my body were behaving differently from their original design, and I started wishing I would not wake up in the morning.
I wondered continually why old, ailing, beloved pets are put down by animal doctors, but old, ailing people are required by their loved ones and doctors and laws to suffer as long as possible, regardless of how much it cost$?
That’s when I realized I was fucked, and I figured I was not alone by any means, but maybe it was rare for anyone to just come out and say it where someone else might hear or read it.
I shared my sentiments with a retired veterinarian friend, who had taught many years at Auburn University’s vet school. He said he understood completely, but he was retired and could not help me when I felt it was time for me to be put down, and that’s when I knew I was fucked again.
So, I go to bed each night hoping the mother ship will come fetch me, and I wake up each morning wondering why I am still here, and then I thank God, or whatever inspired the internet, which gives me plenty to do with my ten fingers and a laptop, which I could not possibly have imagined when I entered highschool and my father said he thought I should take a typing course, because being able to type had proven very valuable to him.
In the middle of my life, I became a writer, then I became a novelist and a poet, writing far way out of any box I had ever seen or heard about.
And then I learned about blogging, and that became a cosmic milky way for me.
And then came more stranger than fiction books and novels even stranger than the early novels.
And then came free podcasting and the free internet library, archive.com, and, dang if people weren’t reading and watching my looney ass all over the world, and when I croak my droppings will still be around for who the hell knows how long?
Not eternal life, but then, maybe the internet replaced God for much of humanity 🙂.
I ain’t no James Joyce, and this loopy portrait of a young man with no artistic leanings whatsoever, which all changed, and somewhere along the line, actually the spring of 1994, when this naughty lady of shady lane wiggled her way up out of him one word at a time and his ex-lawyer pen could not but obey its jealous mistress.He feels deep beauty in the dark pool from which his writings flow, she clings to him like fine silk, precious oil, she feels solid, compressed, like… a black pearl, growing every larger from inside out, with each stroke of his pen, pushing her precious waters over her banks into his dreams and life.
It was many years after my son died that I realized his mission was complete, he had done his loving vicious best to blast irreparably to smithereens the sacred hardened in concrete molds my parents and their parents and I had built to contain me.
The first clue, though, was in the spring of 1994, when this bolt of love lightning arrived:Only fools rush inwhere angels fear to tread,but if there were no fools,who’d lead the angels?For a couple of weeks, I felt something huge and wonderful wiggling and squeezing its way into me. Often I wept, and then one day I heard, “This thing coming into you is your angel twin, and it will live out your life with you.”
Tears welled in my eyes and heart.
Then, I heard, “By the way, this is your son.”
My knees buckled, and I nearly fell to the ground.
I’ve had a remarkably rich, adventuresome life, and while getting older and more feeble really sucks, and I keep wondering why I’m still here, I get up each morning and type something.
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
