The Suicide of a Canadian Clown

Happily, Dr. Green had become adept at brokering delicate family discussions over the past year. She had presided over 35 deaths since the Canadian law for medical assistance in dying passed, each intimately different from the next. One man got dressed in his amateur clown costume, complete with wig and red nose, and died telling her jokes.

Read the complete story in the NYTimes

The fishing’s good in Canada -- the poutine’s mighty tasty.

And if you wish to croak at once, your doctor will be hasty.

For even jolly circus clowns, when feeling sad and bitter,

Can have their doctor bump them off, to get a final titter.

For circus clowns are all upset to see the Ringling show

Depart to never come again on green lots here below.

Mercurial in temperment, the carefree circus clown

Is ideal for the death doctors to expertly put down.

The government then pays them a delightful little fee

For sending grinning customers off to eternity.

Oh, I have got arthritis and a host of other ills

That keep me from my clowning -- and rack up gigantic bills.

Perhaps I’ll move to Canada and let those sawbones loose

On my failing body so that they can cook my goose.

For making people laugh is all I ever want to do --

And if I cannot do it anymore I get real blue.

Assisted suicide sounds like a smooth way out of life,

Avoiding further pain and threat from any surgeon’s knife.

But even though I’ve never been much more than a buffoon,

I think I’d like to stick around to see another June.

I guess this here old circus clown will suffer, with God’s grace,

And muddle through until that final pie’s thrown in my face . . .