A Good Death by Gil Courtemanche

steak, never mind lobster and calf’s liver—none of these things are good for Dad. And since emotions are also dangerous for him, it would be best if we deprived him of the pleasure—which is an emotion—of coming to our wedding. Walking isn’t good for him, either. I know, he falls down regularly. He no longer likes to listen to music. He used to love the sound of his own voice and now he can no longer talk. We argue with him, tell him he can’t do any of the things he likes, in the hope that it will prolong his life. We let him live while we await his death.”
    “You want to kill Mother.”
    The voice is both Medical and a bit Buddhist. My mother studiously nibbles a crust of cheese, like a mouse, oblivious to everything around her. She even picks up the crumbs from the table with two trembling fingers.
    Two deaths have been announced. My father’s death will free my mother, hers would kill him. A nice problem for a family.
    I’m beginning to realize how hard it is to watch someone you’ve been living with for sixty years die, even if you don’t love him. Just as it is to watch someone who’s supposed to be dying go on living. I know how much my mother’s life has shrunk since my father’s began to end, neuron by neuron, and how, tired and defeated, she no doubt prays to God to give her back the husband she married. She has chosen to become the protector, the guardian, the nurse, but she also has to be the mistress of the house, the decision maker as well as the one who carries out the decisions. Did she choose that? No, probably not. Women of her generation have a sense of duty and long-suffering stoicism that benefit everyone around them, children, brothers, sisters, husbands. She has become both the father and the mother of the sick child that is her husband. If my mother is shrinking, it’s probably because she is neither a man nor a woman, because she has assumed the responsibilities of both sexes and none of the pleasures. She doesn’t actually live in her house, she functions. Although I understand these things, I say nothing. I keep my own counsel.
    “Well, the neurologist told her that…”
    The neurologist, as his title suggests, talks a lot about neurons but rarely about my father. He measures electric impulses, notes which ones are malfunctioning, describes deficiencies, forecasts storms in my father’s brain and the destruction they will leave in their wakes. Neurons feel neither happiness nor pain. He, too, thinks that all strong emotions must be avoided—for electrical reasons, if I understand his explanations correctly. A too-strong emotional charge would overload the circuitry, possibly causing a power outage. At this he gave a small smile of satisfaction, apparently pleased with his own reductive joke. I asked about happiness. He replied that in such cases—that is, in the world of electricity—happiness and pain belong to the same family, demolishing in a few words everything previous generations have taught us when they said that happy people live better and longer lives than unhappy people. Science has progressed backwards. My father is an electrical panel.
    My mother has turned the family room into a kind of pantheon to her successes and happiness, which means to her family and her children. We are seated in a kind of shrine, surrounded by icons. Each of us is represented by at least one photograph. We are actually visiting ourselves. My mother chose each photo after patiently going through the hundreds in her albums and boxes, which she dusts off regularly. Those of our children have places of honour. Then come my mother’s favourite brothers, set beside her own mother and father. Then Richard at the piano. The biggest heartbreak of Mother’s life, the schizophrenic child who could play Bach from memory, our whipping boy, who began to die the day he was born because of a stupid hospital error. If he were still alive, I’d be eleven months older than him. We went to the same