Death In The Family

"This will be my last campaign, Booth Gardner said. This will be the biggest fight of my career. He walked along the lane between the beach of driftwood and his compound of houses. The driftwood clotted the shore; it was the end of summer now, and the cove was still, but in winter massive branches and trunks churn up out of the water of Puget Sound. Bone-white roots clawed at the air on this late afternoon; Gardners grandchildren climbed across them. His walk was a vigorous lurch. One foot twisted inward, one knee buckled. His torso keeled slightly with each step. He has Parkinsons. He was governor of Washington State for two terms in the 1980s and 90s. He is 71, and his last campaign is driven by his desire to kill himself. I cant see where anybody benefits by my hanging around, he told me, while his blond grandchildren, sticks prodding, explored the waters edge.

The Last Campaign When exhaustion overtakes him, Booth Gardner naps in the bed that he slept in as a child in one of his family’s homes.

From the beach on Vashon Island, where Gardner spends much of his summers, not far from Seattle, he drove me to the islands town. His Lexus was cluttered with debris: a crushed soda can, a tattered magazine put out by a local pollster, an old plastic cup from McDonalds, a torn T-shirt, sunglasses missing a lens. Wearing a gray fleece, he led me into a simple restaurant with rustic décor. Full cheeks and green eyes impish, he chatted with the waitress and tried to start conversations with the people at tables around us. Youre not having dessert? he asked a young couple immersed in each other. Almost everyone seemed to recognize him, and almost everyone was friendly — hed been the states most popular governor in recent decades. But it wasnt always clear how interested they were in talking. The young couple gazed back at him, perplexed. It was 14 years since hed been in office.

Why do this? he asked, turning from the other tables toward me. I want to be involved in public life. I was looking for an issue, and this one fell in my lap. One advantage I have in this thing is that people like me. The other — his leprechaun eyes lost their glint; his fleshy cheeks seemed to harden, his lips to thin, his face to reshape itself almost into a square — is that my logic is impeccable. My life, my death, my control.

The campaign he was starting, when I spent time with him this summer and fall, goes by the name of death with dignity, and the statewide law he hopes to enact by popular vote on Election Day of 2008 would allow for physician-assisted suicide or, as the death-with-dignity movement prefers to call it, hastened death or aid in dying. The law would let doctors prescribe lethal doses of narcotics to terminally ill patients who ask to end their own lives. It would be modeled closely on a statute in Oregon, the only state where the movement has been successful. In all others, suicide is not illegal, but in nearly all it is a crime to help someone kill himself. (The law in a few states doesnt address the issue of such assistance, which leaves the one assisting exposed to possible prosecution.) The movement has put measures like Gardners directly before voters once already in Washington, in 1991, and in California, Michigan and Maine in the years since, and it has tried several times to turn its vision into law through state legislatures. Some of the failures have been narrow. The referendum in Washington was defeated 54 percent to 46 percent; in Maine 51 percent to 49 percent. With Gardner giving voice to its cause, the movement hopes for momentum.

Yet the proposed law in Washington wouldnt go far enough for Gardner. It wouldnt include him. Parkinsons isnt terminal. The disease can leave the body trembling, contorted, rigid; it can rob the memory and muffle the voice; it can leave a person still and silent; but it doesnt offer an end to its torture; it doesnt kill. Gardner wants a law that would permit lethal prescriptions for people whose suffering is unbearable, a standard that can seem no standard at all; a standard that prevails in the Netherlands, the Western nation that has been boldest about legalizing aid in dying; a standard that elevates subjective experience over objective appraisal and that could engage the government and the medical profession in the administration of widespread suicide. What is unbearable? What level of acute or chronic physical pain would qualify? What degree of disability? Would physicians be writing suicide prescriptions for the depressed?

Gardners campaign is a compromise; he sees it as a first step. If he can sway Washington to embrace a restrictive law, then other states will follow. And gradually, he says, the nations resistance will subside, the culture will shift and laws with more latitude will be passed, though this process, he knows, would almost surely take too long to help him. He knows he probably wont be able to carry out his wish for himself, not openly and legally: to secure a suicide prescription from a doctor, then to assemble his son and daughter and their mother, his first wife, on the porch of one of the houses on the compound, the one where his first wife now stays. There, facing the driftwood, he would tell them goodbye before going off by himself — while he still can go off by himself — to take his pills and die. He wishes he could do this, despite the energy in his ungainly stride and his ability to drive and the strength in his voice as he tries to connect with the people he once led, reaching out for their attention, asking, Youre not having dessert? Only his current cause keeps him much interested in living — this and one other goal: to connect with his son, Doug, whose growing up Gardner missed as he took power in business and politics, and who is repelled by his fathers campaign.

The arrangement of houses on Gardners Vashon estate, and who stays in them, is a map of regret. His daughter (who didnt want to be interviewed for this article) and son, his grandchildren and his first wife stay in houses along the water, exposed to the sun; he occupies a sparsely furnished house, ensconced in fir trees, up a steep hill from the others. It is reached by a different road.

He provided for us, Doug told me, but he wasnt there for us.

The two men dont look much alike. Dougs tanned and lined face is slender, his nose sharp; his fathers features are blunt. Dougs body, at 45, is as lithe as a teenagers and seems almost frail; Gardners thick build lends him a look of resilience even with Parkinsons, though the disease can overtake him suddenly during the day, his distorted but determined walk giving way to consuming exhaustion and a craving for sleep. Dougs steps are light, tentative, and when he sits he appears to fold inward on himself, minimizing his narrow shoulders, as if he wishes to assume none of the power he watched his father acquire. It hardly seems possible that he was once a collegiate all-American on the tennis court.

Daniel Bergner is a contributing writer to the magazine; his new book, The Devotee: A Quartet of Desire, will be published next year.

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