Is the Future of Death Scheduled?

Part 1: The Neighbors

Storytime. The topic of Canada’s MAID program has been tugging at me for over a year. It’s taken me a while to process. If this topic doesn’t interest you, please skip this installment of my newsletter.

The narrative below is based on a true story, but I’ve changed so many elements, names, places, and identifying characteristics of individuals to protect their privacy, that I’d now define this as a fictionalized account, but one that has no doubt occurred in some form to many Canadians.

If you want to skip the story, and read facts about MAID instead, go to the section with the heading MAID.

This is part one.

In the next part, I’ll share stories and comments Lagoon readers have contributed about assisted dying, including a particularly shocking tale about LSD and a planned death in Switzerland.

Trigger Warning: Suicide, Covid, Socialism

collage by Charlotte Dune

The Neighbors

Toronto, 2021

Simon usually responded within twenty-four hours to my messages, but one day, mid-conversation, he stopped answering. I emailed and texted him, but got no response, so we never spoke again. It didn’t hurt my feelings; I had too many other things to worry about, and I didn’t care about our relationship enough. I liked him, but we weren’t super close. I was, however, curious as to why he’d suddenly stopped speaking to me. Why had he severed our communications? Why was my older next-door neighbor ghosting me?

It never dawned on me that he might have become a ghost…

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