Do not kill and do not order to kill

На русском

       Do not kill and do not order to kill - this commandment is known for more than 4500 years. In Egypt, everyone, including Pharaoh, had to answer NO to 42 questions of the gods if he wanted to live in the underworld after his earthly life. Questions and answers concerned all aspects of life, for example:

      I did not commit sin

      I did not steal

      I did not utter a lie

      I did not commit adultery

      I did not attack any person

      I was not a spy

      I did not kill and did not order to kill either, etc. - a total of 42 responses.

     I want to tell a story about how I ordered
the murder of my very good friend, with whom we
had a mutual affection for almost 16 years.

        My friend became very old and ill. All this has
come gradually. At first, he became blind, and then
deaf, but everything else was normal. We went for
walks as usual and nothing special happened. But
gradually he became weaker and weaker and could
no longer walk far, but he could walk in the
backyard. He was walking all the time in circles. I
presume that he instinctively understood that if he
walked in a circle, he would not go far and become
lost. But in the end, the convulsions began. The
seizures were terrible, but he did not know
it because he lost consciousness. After that, he lay
quietly for a while, and then got up and started
walking as if nothing happened.

     I kept hoping that he would die during the spasms, but this did not happen. Then the cramps began to increase and happened almost every day.  I hoped that he would die without my help. It was a very difficult time for him and for me because I could not decide to help him die. In my head, all the time the words were: Do not kill and do not order to kill.

     In the end, he no longer wanted to walk in the backyard, as before. That day I took him to the yard. He lay down under a tree. Then I took him to the doctor who gave him an injection.  He left this life and got rid of this torture. Should I have given him this shot before?  I do not know. I will know if the same happens to me. When I cannot walk, cannot eat, and will not see or hear anything, then maybe I’ll understand how I should have acted. But now I do not know. Do not kill and do not order to kill - at what point are exceptions possible for this commandment?

     We took my friend as a little six-week-old, and in a few days, I was looking for his name. One day I took him to my lap, and he looked at me. And then I almost cried “Rusik!”

      Rusik was the name of my friend at school. I studied in the tenth grade and lived in a boarding school. It was in the winter, and very cold. I decided to learn how to knit mittens. So, I went to the reading room and knitted. The threads were of household spinning and were uneven so the mittens were not beautiful.

     Rusik also lived in our boarding school and usually came in the reading room when I was there. He was a year younger than me and was in the ninth grade. We were sitting opposite each other at our desks when he asked me to knit, too. I passed the mitten to him, but the result of his knitting was as disappointing as mine.

     Rusik looked at me with a loving gaze; very devoted, warm, enveloping and wrapping.

        I got used to it and was happy. But there could not have been any romantic friendship between us. He could not become “my boyfriend”. I was older than him and he was only in the ninth grade, and I was already in the tenth. At that time, a year of difference seemed like a great eternity. Besides, he was very small, like many post- war children growing up in hunger and cold. I left school and never remembered Rusik. I did not know where he had gone and what had happened to him.  And after all these decades, I remembered everything at once, in a flash, as if it happened today, now.

    The doctor asked me if I wanted to have a print of Rusik’s paw for my memory. I refused. I will remember for the rest of my life the look of both Rusiks and the feeling of happiness conveyed to me by this look.


Could you please send the story to your friends. 
Thank you!
               Do not kill and do not order to kill
http://galinapop-life.blogspot.com/2017/06/do-not-kill-and-do-not-order-to-kill-do.html