by Mateo Stefano

Created on: April 09, 2011   Last Updated: April 18, 2011

I idolized Dr. Jack Kevorkian in the late 1980’s when he made his stand against the Courts ultimately all the way to his own conviction and incarceration for his convictions and his assisted suicides.  He believed suicide to be a personal right that belongs to everyone.  His attorney Jeffery Fieger’s career was built on this foundation stone named Kevorkian.

 I grew up listening to Fieger’s brother’s band, “The Knack” and watching the hip Detroit suburb of Royal Oak enjoy their two local legends fame.  Jack Kevorkian dropped his dead bodies off at the Oakland County Morgue which was directly under the county jails giant receiving cell called, “R-9” where I was residing for possession of heroin.

 I believed that no one had the right to impose their own will upon another’s.  In my book, this was slavery or the equivalent of stealing someone’s right to do what they want to do with their own bodies, be it using drugs or killing yourself. I believed those rights belonged to each individual and not to the laws of governments to dictate.

 One day I brought the topic up to debate with my father who is crippled by the disease called multiple sclerosis.  He is a very intelligent man and I thought he might be proud of my strong opinion on the topic about: the personal rights of people to commit suicide.

 My arguments were based around my beliefs that the will of man is a tiny spark of God residing in all of us and that anyone who forces you to give this gift up, this God given right to choose for ourselves, is committing the deadliest of sins.  I will surrender my will to no man!  Just like Dr. Jack Kevorkian and so that was how I began my debate with my father.

 A little to my surprise my father did not agree with me.  He instead reminding me of a time in his life when he was just told he only had six-months to live and when my mother cheated on him the one only time in her life but he was so disappointed in her and so depressed by these events.

 Before he was properly diagnosed with M.S. my dad spent a number of years being the guinea-pig for any possible cure, from faith-healing in the Philippians Islands, too rattlesnake venom and bee venom cure-alls in Florida, to electric Frankenstein like surgeries in Detroit making him part machine, anything that was available, he would try.

 So my father reminded me of all these things and he

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