a placeless world

There was an understanding in William Plott's eyes. A look that said more than the aging man ever could.

He hardly knew Kimball and Beata Jencks. For three years he lived across the street from the couple, but he'd never so much been in their home.

Such is the nature of neighbors, these days.

But Plott knew something. Something that, on Wednesday evening as he watched the news, quickly led him to the belief that it was his neighbors whose bodies police were removing from a third-floor room in the north tower of Cottonwood Hospital. A "murder-suicide," investigators said.

And he was content.

Content that they'd gone the way they wanted to go — even before he learned that Beata had indeed written a note confirming she and her husband had chosen this path together.

The impulse to call Kimball's actions a "mercy killing" was already there for Plotts and others who shared this quiet, gently curving street with the elderly couple.

Well into his 80s, Kimball was often seen mowing his large front lawn — with a push mower. It was assumed he did the same in the back yard, where a lush patch of green stretches back in a shape roughly the size of the house itself.

He was proud of his yard. Too proud too let someone else handle its care. But he'd recently hired a service to do just that.

Beata — who was every bit as proud of her small garden of white, yellow and red roses and often was seen picking plums from a tree in her front yard — hadn't been seen in weeks.

And so they all suspected the couple's health was declining.

And as no one on Kenwood Drive could imagine Kimball without Beata or Beata without Kimball, no one seemed particularly surprised by the couple's decision to leave this world together.

Or angry. Or condemning.

Or anything other than understanding.

Those who oppose physician assisted suicide — most notably, Attorney General John Ashcroft — claim the practice is unnecessary.

Pain can be medicated. Bills can be written off. And, most of all, life — precious life — can be sustained.

Those who wish for their own deaths — or support a family member's wishes — are indited by so-called pro-lifers as weak, immoral, ignorant and or wrongfully worried about becoming a burden.

What would Ashcroft say about Kimball and Beata Jencks? And what would he say to their neighbors, who described the couple as educated, highly moral, hard working and extremely thoughtful.

This was not a couple worried about becoming a burden on anyone. They had no one to burden.

No children. No grandchildren. And perhaps no relatives in the entire United States.

They had no bills to worry about.

He was a military veteran with an Ivy League education. She was a retired professor with a university pension and a bank account padded by a extremely popular book.

A few years back, they bought the home next door — simply to keep it empty and quiet, rather than risk the chance that a family with loud children might move in.

This was not a couple sliding down the "slippery slope of euthanasia."

Nonetheless, they weren't given a choice to make their case.

Which brings us back to the look in Plott's eyes. A look that said he understood their motive. A look that said he could find no blame.

His only regret — one that seems to unanimously be shared in this neighborhood of middle-class families and a generous population of elderly residents — was a simple wish.

"If only there could have been some other way..." Plott said, his voice trailing off as he stared toward the four bushy blue spruce trees that shield his neighbors' home from view.

Of course, there is. But Oregon — the only state in the nation in which physician assisted suicide is legal — is hundreds of miles and an entire world away from this Salt Lake City suburb.

Here, death with dignity means committing a crime.

It means risking a mistake worse than death — or life.

It means looking your wife in the eyes and telling her you love her one last time.

Before shooting her in the head.