Lost in Death — James Paddock

Hieronymus is not only ready to die, he wants to die. It's his time; however, the laws of Florida forbid him from carrying it out on his own. Self-murder they label it. How many of the youngsters—a title he freely applies to anyone under the age of sixty-five—who put their blessings on such a law would change their minds about the whole self-murder thing once they, themselves, come to realize their days are at an end and there is no point in trying to hold on, that there is no longer a life while certain death hoovers about them like a cold fog? And then when they do die why does the law make it so hard on their survivors? These are things Hieronymus thinks about while carefully navigating his oxygen tank from the bed to the bathroom to the kitchen to the sofa. Sometimes he goes to the window to gaze out at the golf course, regretting the choices he'd made in his life, irritated that so often they weren't his choices at all. It was about time he did something right; took control of his final choice, his choice as to how and when to die. What could possibly go wrong?