She told us she was going to do it. To kill herself. She wanted us to be prepared.
She was eighty-two. The doctor had said she might have cancer again. She'd already lost both breasts to cancer. Now it might have invaded her colon. She told us she would not fight cancer for a third time, and she would not die a lingering, degrading death. She would take her own life instead.
We three sisters and our families understood and even sympathized. But we thought Mother's possible suicide was on hold until the biopsy results were in.
She outfoxed us. On the Monday morning before the Thursday that the biopsy report was due, my niece Clare called, sobbing, to say, "Grandmother killed herself last night. Mom and Dad are talking to the police."
My sister Beth and her husband had gone to Mother's Seattle apartment after her phone went unanswered for too long. The superintendent had let them in. They had found Mother's body on her bed with a plastic bag over the head. She was no longer in her body.
By law, the police had to be called. When Beth said, "I wish she'd told me she was going to do this now, so I could have been with her and comforted her," the cop said, "It's a good thing you weren't here. I'd have to arrest you. It's illegal to help someone commit suicide in Washington."
As soon as I emerged from the emotional tornado that had swept me up with Clare's phone call, I made plane reservations to fly with my son from Santa Fe, where we lived, to Seattle (getting sympathy-fare rates conditioned on my later providing the airline with a copy of Mother's death certificate - a request that seemed both surreal and reasonable).
My two sisters and I soon received letters that Mother had mailed the afternoon of the day she died. She told us how much she loved us and our children and how much she wanted to stay alive to see how our lives turned out. But her body no longer lived up to her high standards, and, furthermore, she was depressed (our family has serotonin reuptake issues).
She didn't care whether or not she had cancer since, in any event, it was time to go – before she physically deteriorated further. The letters are evidence that her mind was as sharp, witty, and original as ever. And most people would have thought her body was in damned fine shape for an eighty-two year old.
But in her letter to me, Mother said she didn't care what the biopsy said. She didn't want to grow older ungracefully. I was, at least, glad that whatever signs of wear her body was showing, her sense of humor was still fresh and irreverent. In her letter to me, she said dryly, "After all this, I certainly hope I have the guts to bag my head tonight."
In Mother's living room was the bestseller Final Exit. The relevant passages about the most painless suicide tactic (the one she'd chosen) were highlighted in yellow. She'd taken the pills; she'd fastened a plastic bag from a local drugstore over her head and tied it securely around her neck.
An autopsy would reveal that she'd even enjoyed a final cup of coffee, a pleasure she'd been denying herself for health reasons. Then she'd wound strips of plastic wrap around her fingers, presumably so she couldn't claw off the bag after she lost consciousness. When they found her, she looked peaceful.
On the day that my sisters, our children, and I began emptying Mother's apartment, we found that not only were the rooms as immaculate and orderly as ever, but also the fridge held enough food to see us through. There were such notes as, "This is my wedding ring in the original Florentine leather envelope." And behind her bedroom door was a flattened cardboard box, apparently because we'd need boxes in which to pack her belongings.
My sisters and I went through Mother's address book and divided up the friends we needed to call. Eventually I also called my friend Carol, who had known Mother well. Because Carol is Catholic, I was afraid she might say Mother was burning in hell for killing herself. But what she did say was the most insightful thing anyone said about Mother's death: "She always wanted to be in control of her life. And she was. Right to the end."
Is it possible for suicide to become a family tradition? All I can say is that I hope I have Mother's courage and self-respect if my body or mind shows signs of deteriorating to the point where I can no longer take care of myself in my own home.
Mother's autopsy, required by law in a case of apparent suicide, showed no signs of cancer.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Love Grandma
Wally Gene
O'Really?
GalaxyMan
tregibbs
old gold
Salon.com
Comments
I'm afraid I don't have it myself, but I truly admire it in others.
My mother was the most vain person on earth and she would have hated how she ended but dementia took over before she could know what would happen to her.
I, too, hope that barring unforeseen accidents in the meantime, one day far in the future I will find the determination to go out on my own terms, with as much grace and wit as your mother managed.
Gracielou, I worry about your being "too ..." . Thank you for writing. Please take good care of yourself.
Verbal and P&P, I wish Mother could read your comments. She'd love being seen as you see her.
But I want to.
Even though, in the end she did not have Cancer, perhaps your mother knew her time was winding down and wanted to go on her own terms? I strongly believe that we (and I include animals and childern in this) know when we are going.
and whether you believe this or not, you Mother can read these and she loves you and is proud of you, never forget that.
Hugs and Kudos, honey!
Rated!
rated
My Dad recently passed away, and while I was there for most of his illness bladder cancer) I was away the week he died. There is this nagging feeling that I could have changed the outcome had I been home with him. I suppose it a version of the Kubler-Ross "bargaining" stage.
I know it was a while ago, but my sincere sympathies.
Listen, i'm feeling badly. I just wrote a post about my own struggles with suicidality. i also own Final Exit. it's supposed to be funny. i just didn't want you to stumble on it and be horrified.
thank you for this!!!
I'm sorry for the loss of your Mom...regardless of the circumstances.
I hope your family moves past it OK....
the way she thought of everyone fussing about was the mark of one who loved deeply.
Fast forward 20 years and my mother passed away of a lingering illness. 2 weeks later the light of my life, my hero, my son Erick , asked me to get him some Cool Ranch Nachos from the local market. I knew that he was depressed, that was my profession, I should have know more than most, right? When I returned home my son was upstairs in his room with his head blown away. That day I basically ceased to exist.
2 years later my younger sister was found hanging from the door in her bedroom in Eureka.
I envy you your peaceful resolution of your mothers passing. I am not nearly as strong as my son or my father but I yearn for the relief that death will bring. Thanks for sharing your reminiscence of your mother. Chris
Please accept my very belated condolences.
This is an absolutely beautiful story, and beautifully told. I have no words right now except extreme appreciation for you for sharing it. I was with my 84 year old mother when she died this past summer. She was in failing health and had contracted pneumonia and been in a hospital for about 10 days. She was in and out of consciousness on the day that I, my two brothers, our wives and children arrived. After we all said our hellos to her, she said "I must be dying because you're all here", and she lapsed back into her space and didn't speak again. She died peacefully 36 hours later. she had remarked for years that she just wanted to die, but...
Many thanks!
Depression (which I have known intimately) causes us to think and do awful things. But our family is not required to validate those choices if we make the worst selection of all.
Our society lionizes people who survive great setbacks and work through terrible handicaps to continue sharing their love and efforts with the world. We do it because the good a person can do is so valuable to all of us. We also value those people because they provide a valuable reference point and inspiration to others working to overcome their own difficulties. Human life has an inherent dignity and value that illness cannot wipe away.
Hawley's mother faced a world with old age's many indiginities and decided to punt. How is this honorable? Did she have nothing left to offer to her family? Did she have nothing left to offer her friends and neighbors? In her sickness, it looks like she wrongly believed so.
What a sad legacy to leave her children and especially impressionable grandchildren. I fear how this self indulgent act will be viewed by a serotonin deficient granddaughter who loses both her fiance and job during a particularly difficult year in her early twenties.
I don't presume to know how God views the mother's act, but she certainly failed in her bequest to her family and community. Hawley's mother might have left behind neatly stacked boxes and a few rings, but that's not her legacy. Her legacy is how she lived her life, how she treated others, and what she valued. The mother left a damn poor example for her loved ones, and a self-centered world view. Graceful writing does not obscure this failure. Nor do pretty words turn a mistake into a triumph.
I'm sorry you lost your mother, Hawley. I really am. But I am truly dismayed that my fellow readers see her choice as anything but a cop-out. She still had much to offer you, your sisters and your children. I wish I did not see so many people openly admiring a shallow choice made in the grip of a powerful and horribly destructive disease.
As someone who lost parents under much more protracted circumstances that benefited no one but the medical providers, I have become very pragmatic about this extremely difficult and personal subject.
Thanks for sharing your story. You have put a human face on a volatile social issue. No matter how heated or bellicose the rhetoric gets, it all boils down to a solitary soul making one of the most intimate & courageous decisions imaginable.
Suicide is not something I want to teach my children, but then who is into suffering?
Wow, this really hits home. I suffer from depression and there have been times when my meds weren't working that I seriously considered suicide. The only reason that I didn't do it is my mother and my daughter. I didn't want to put them through the pain. It seems that I am too nice to kill myself :)
My last statement just reminded me of a story I read in the paper many years ago. There was a man who suffered from depression his entire adult life and there we no meds that could help him. He pushed himself through life doing the best he could. He coached children's baseball, volunteered in the community and was well liked and respected by all. One day he couldn't take it anymore and he killed himself. His best friend's comment was, "he finally did something for himself."
I don't know what to think about your Mom's suicide. On one hand it seems selfish, yet on the other hand it seems powerful and self-caring.
Thanks for the post. I'm feeling really sad right now. Depression is such a horrible thing. You're story has certainly affected me.
Thanks,
Zumi
rated
Perhaps proper care could have lowered this mother's "standard" for life and she could have been helped to actually enjoy another 10 years with her family. Or perhaps this was a family that somehow gave her the impression that she was simply in their way and removed herself as a burden to them.
While some praise this Hawley for not getting in her mother's plan of suicide, one has to wonder if any District Attorney would have the same attitude.
The Mayor was a crusty old guy in his 80’s who had written several articles about the Georgetown Divide for National Geographic some time prior to the 50’s and if I recall he said most were published in the 30’s. We had a few cups of Coffee spiked with Irish Whisky as he spoke. Soon Stan, the fellow who I had brought me here and introduced me to the mayor, asked if he had completed repairs to one of his apartments in the Sacramento area. I soon came to find out that he owned several apartment buildings in Sacramento and a substantial amount of property in the Lake Tahoe area also some with apartments and as I recall a hotel. He was worth millions but lived in this cabin in the middle of nowhere. He also owned a substantial amount of land around this cabin which he walked over frequently.
Stan asked how the Mayor how he was faring health wise. He commented on his last hospital visit saying he felt he was coming “near”. That was near to the time for his departure and when he felt it was time he would wander into the woods to a cave he had known for years and would lie down and leave this earth, much like the Indians had who previously occupied the area many years before. No one would find him as only he was aware of that cave.
Some years later the Mayor went missing for several days and they began searching for him. This search went on for a few weeks and no one ever found him. He would not have approved of this as he felt once his time was ended it was his choice to become part return to the land as all like eventually does. The Indians he said respected the elder as they left on the journey to die I peace.
"It is hard to tell who is more bizarre: the author or those commenting. This seems to be a mother whose daughter did little to either discover if she had a terminal disease, was depressed, or had some other issue that could have been resolved without her family essentially telling her to proceed to commit suicide by their "benign neglect."
I find it disturbing that you pressume to say that the author "neglected" her mother. It was the mothers choice to decide whether or not to find out about her test results.
"Perhaps proper care could have lowered this mother's "standard" for life and she could have been helped to actually enjoy another 10 years with her family. Or perhaps this was a family that somehow gave her the impression that she was simply in their way and removed herself as a burden to them."
How arrogent, cold and jugdmental! How the hell would you know?
Perhaps the woman knew she was going and wanted to go on her own terms.
"While some praise this Hawley for not getting in her mother's plan of suicide, one has to wonder if any District Attorney would have the same attitude."
Obviously, no charges were filed after her mothers death, so that point is moot.
Monique, I agree the story is sad in that Mother did want to live - but not in a body aging in ways that were unacceptable to her. But it is also inspiring.
Lisa, I can't speak for the others in my family, but the autopsy left me feeling ambivalent and uncomfortable. Would Mother have left us right then if the cancer scare hadn't happened? Once it did happen, she began thinking about her own death, and that led her to a slippery slope that ended in a place where she didn't want to live with or without cancer.
Seymour, I wish Mother were able to read the posts from people who are meeting and liking her now.
Without a Paddle, that's the best way to go – suddenly and too quickly to know it's happening. But not too young. You don't mention how old your mother was.
BL, one reason I posted this story is that I found comfort hearing on Ira Glass's "This American Life" the story of a son who helped, as far as he legally could, his mother take her own life by the same Final Exit method our mothers used. And Betty Rollin has written about going as far as the law allowed in helping her mother die. Opening the curtains and throwing open the windows of this dark room is, at best, healing.
Lady Miko, I hope you're right that Mother can read the comments here.
SunnyB, I suppose suicide can be the coward's way out. But it can also be the hero's way out. To me, there is a very wide gulf between young, healthy people who kill themselves in despair, and people who kill themselves because their bodies and minds, due to illness or aging, no longer live up to their high standards for them.
Jessabelle, MB, and Proud and Progressive: YES! It is outrageous that we can't be by their side when people we love choose to make their own final exit. The laws should change, but I know that's a very complex issue.
Mari, I do wish that during our last weekly Saturday conversation, two days before she killed herself, I'd known Mother would not wait for the biopsy result. Not that I wish I'd talked her out of it if she really wanted to do it right away. But I have a nagging feeling that maybe if she'd talked through her thoughts on the subject, she might have stayed with us at least a little longer. Then again, I have to admit that if she'd wanted to be talked out of it, she would have told us the biopsy result wasn't the key factor in her decision. You are probably accurate in saying you and I are both still bargaining retroactively.
Lea, thanks for the support.
Janie, it's significant how often the theme of depression appears here when people write about others' suicides. However good elders' "reasons" may be for taking their own lives, I wish that there were a fail-safe cure for depression and that no one would commit suicide while depressed. Maybe your grandmother and my mother would have wanted to live longer if their depression had been treated adequately. Mother's doctor did the best he could for her. But there's no magic anti-depression drug that works for everyone at all times. Yet.
Lainey, people planning to kill themselves may mail their farewell letters to boost their courage for an act they do want to carry out. Your comment reminds me of a woman in her fifties who emailed friends (two men I know received this email) saying, "If you're reading this, I'm dead." She had programmed her computer to send her farewell note the morning after she killed herself. Who knows if she had done the same thing in practice runs and then deleted the message before it was sent? She had a distinguished career, but the Los Angeles Times obit did not, of course, mention those strange emails.
Theodora, far from being "horrified" by your reflections on killing yourself, I am impressed by your sense of humor and sharp mind. And since your genes suggest that you'll live to a ripe old age if you don't interfere with the program, I hope you'll at least hang in here on earth until you're 100 or so before you make any more attempts to leave us prematurely. Surely there's a doctor/therapist who can help you continue on the journey?
Gary, thanks for your remark about "one who loves deeply."
Norske, your story is overwhelming. I can only send sympathy and hope for solace. And a plea not to blame yourself for leaving the house to get comfort food for your son. As a professional in the field, you know he would have done it soon if not then.
Grif, your mother's death sounds closer to ideal than most. Good luck with rehab. My father was an alcoholic who gave up drinking, so I know what a gift that is.
Mike, although I strongly disagree with you about my mother and her legacy, I recognize that life is complex and points of view vary widely on this important topic.
Punterjoe, you phrase it beautifully: "No matter how heated or bellicose the rhetoric gets, it all boils down to a solitary soul making one of the most intimate & courageous decisions imaginable."
Sandra, Mother would have liked your choice of the word valor.
Mary Joan, I understand that a Catholic is apt to view suicide from a different perspective than my agnostic mother and her non-church-belonging descendants. While I can't imagine being "furious" with her choice, I do see fury as a possible response in a belief system different from ours. I should add that Mother was not indicating lack of confidence in us but rather the opposite: she believed us empathetic and wise enough to understand that her death did not suggest a lack of appreciation of and love for us.
Zumi, I'm concerned about you and hope you have, or find, a skilled therapist to talk to when you feel depressed and suicidal. Killing one's self at 82, when one's body is failing, is very different from killing one's self at a younger age. Mother suffered from depression off and on throughout a life that for the final decades was difficult. By the time she left us, my father had died of lung cancer. Their grandchildren were old enough to be mostly absorbed in their own lives, although they loved seeing their grandmother. Despite everything, she hung in there until she was sure we could all take care of ourselves. Please see her not as a role model for suicide but rather as a role model for keeping on keeping on (despite depression) through eight decades and into the ninth.
Peter, your assumptions don't quite fit with the facts. Mother was not neglected. She was under treatment for depression. She spent a lot of time with my sisters and their families, who lived in the Seattle area. My son and I lived elsewhere but visited. She had a group of women friends in her apartment building with whom she swam in the pool on the property. She kept in touch with friends she had known during various periods of her life. She read with great pleasure. She loved living in Seattle. She was still witty, irreverent, and erudite. She seemed engaged in life. As for our doing "little to find out if she had a terminal disease," we actually did exactly what was needed. Had the district attorney you refer to (!), asked, we would have said Mother would only commit suicide should the biopsy reveal cancer. We were stunned when she did not wait. But we understood. Naturally, not everyone does or even should understand.
To all those who have posted: Thank you for helping free a crucial subject from whatever taboos still cling to it.
Please don't be concened about me. I'm okay. The article did make me sad. But it is mostly because depression affects so many people and the natural end to this disorder , left untreated or under treated is death.
Please don't be concened about me. I'm okay. The article did make me sad. But it is mostly because depression affects so many people and the natural end to this disorder , left untreated or under treated is death.
I'm good. I managing my depression and if it gets out of control, I will seek any and all treatment available. I refuse to kill myself no matter how much the depression eggs me on. I am a Christian and I believe that God wants me to play this hand all the way out no matter how rough it is. After all we don't know why we are here or what our pupose is. See Thom Rutledge's post called, "Don't Assume You Know Why Your Are Here" It's a fictional conversation with God and a man who asks God what his life purpose was. http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=42727
Sorry for concerning you guys. I certainly didn't mean to cause any distress. I going over to Mom's for some homemade soup. Life is good!
Have a great day.
Zumi
You were "stunned, but understood?" I suppose we all handle our guilt in different ways. Your way seems to be denial. If my mother were under treatment for clinical depression and was talking about suicide, I would have employed a full-time caretaker for her immediately. I wouldn't take a chance that my mother (or wife or daughter or son or father) would take her life - especially while I knew she was depressed and thinking about suicide. I would assume that with what you received from your two divorced husbands and the money you must have earned from your resume almost too long to post, you could have afforded to care for your mother and prevent a depressed 82 year old from killing herself.
I also find it odd that you give advice here that it may take seeing a few doctors to find one who will make life happy for yourself or someone else. Apparently, your mother's psychiatrist either didn't understand the serious nature of her suicidal illness or didn't communicate his concern to your family very well or your family members decided it would be alright with them if mom committed suicide because you would all "understand." You should have taken your own advice and found a physician who could make your mother happier, if your own family members could not do it.
Your mother: The irony of finding no cancer upon autopsy. But hey, she did what she wanted. What more can anyone ask? Sorry for your loss.
You assume I feel guilty about my mother's suicide and am in denial. I don't and am not. No reason to be.
You assume that your way is the best way and that what you would have done is what we should have done. I, in contrast, am not convinced that you know what is best for others, although I don't claim our way is right for anyone else.
You assume a full-time caretaker could have helped my mother. Had we forced one on her, she probably would have dealt with that severe betrayal in a way that separated her from the intruder fast and permanently. But yes, you are right that money was not the issue, although not for the reasons you fantasize.
You and I agree that it would have been wonderful if medical help could have allowed Mother to live longer. But what she needed was not, as you assume, the kind of therapy and psychiatric medication I suggest to people whose bodies are still satisfying to live in. She needed a fountain of youth not yet discovered to make her aging, depressing body worthy of housing her young, proud, and vigorous intellect and spirit.
You write: "...what she needed was not ... the kind of therapy and psychiatric medication I suggest to people whose bodies are still satisfying to live in."
I suppose California is rather a rather liberal State and anyone who graduates Wellesley, with a major in English, can practice medicine - at least in a blog. When my wife wanted to practice medicine here in Massachusetts, she had to go to medical school and then take a residency and then pass some difficult medical boards to both recommend medical treatment and "suggest" medications. I hope that you stop at "suggesting treatments and medications and don't take the further step of prescribing them. In fact, I am quite certain that the State of California would actually look dimly upon your "suggesting" treatment and psychiatric medications.
Was your mother's physician a medical doctor or a blogger?
Folkmuse, I love the story about the Mayor of Quintette. I wonder if he was channeling Thoreau. (Just kidding.)
LadyM, if you aren't wild about Peter's comments here, you should see the emails he sent me privately after getting the address from my website! Thanks for the support.
Delia, I'm sorry about the woman who killed herself in her 50s. The first person I was aware of having committed suicide was in his late teens. I knew him only as a star of shows the high school put on when I was in grade school, but that gave him a certain glamor that I'd naively assumed meant he had a wonderful life. His death changed my worldview.
Your uncle's comments about people perhaps not having children if we could see the future suggests that people are more rational than I suspect we are. To me, babies are so deliciously rewarding that I don't think I'd give up the experience of being a mother and grandmother no matter what a look into the future showed. So far so good; fingers crossed for whatever is to come.
Thanks so much for sharing your story.
I am dealing with the opposite end of the spectrum and some of the negative replies you have received have prompted me to write about my situation with my mother on my OS blog.
What a moving story. This was even the perfect death. I have long been a right to die advocate. My God, the courage she had touches me so. The letters, the plastic bag joke,all the "preparations". You most likely were fully mixed with emotion. Were you Okay with the negative biopsy issue? What a profound story and I am so grateful to have shared it.
This issue is one that has crossed my mind, myself.
I am only 57 yo, yet have had a chronic disease all my life and topped off with depression. That is why I SO understood your Mother's description of her body's usefulness. I am a fortunate Crohn's Disease person.Except, a couple times a year, when I get my obstructions bad, the pain and horrific deep, deep vomiting only makes me more determined that I will not go out in a fast, furious,painful and frantic way. I will not. I already am tiring of these episodes and find myself sobbing as I get sick.
You are courageous for sharing Hawley,for putting it into words for that I think is very hard, even if time has passed.
Thank you
Thanks to your Mother
Keith, I read your posting about your mother, and my heart goes out to you. Your ironic implication that hell may be a lingering and degrading old age of helplessness, rather than whatever might come after death, is another good argument for choosing our own time and method for a final exit.
QC, you don't want my life - trust me. It's not that the parts of my life that appeal to you aren't great or that I'm not, as you say, grateful for them. But there are the other parts. The parts I haven't written about here. My friend Karen Silk and I are writing a joint memoir about our marriages to gay rageaholics. And, as I used to write in the "issue box" at Cosmo, "much, much more!" Stay tuned. You ask if I was OK with Mother's negative biopsy. I'd never asked myself that direct a question about it, and now that you ask, I learn that the candid and tough answer is, it would have been easier to find she had had cancer in an early stage that didn't cause her any suffering. Nonetheless, I am glad that she had the satisfaction of choosing her time and place to leave and that she left in a way that was so much in keeping with her lifelong character: everything planned and orderly, with a witty aside to lighten the burden. You, on the other hand, are dealing with disease and pain, and you are still relatively young. I wish you healing and happiness.
Coleen, I'm so sorry about your father. Although his suicide was so long ago, I wish PTSD had been understood and treated in his generation. And I, too, wish you and Mother could have known one another.
Carol, thanks for reminding us that our society does not generally deal with death in healthy, enlightened ways. But having lost a sister of 58 to brain cancer in 2005, I do need to acknowledge the hospice care that has helped our family in her final days and in my father's. It is a blessing. Take care of yourself, too.
Mick, shouldn't we distinguish between euthanasia and suicide? Euthanasia is, I've read, routinely (if secretly and sometimes illegally) carried out by doctors and nurses and by families who withhold extraordinary measures that would prolong a dying person's life. Doctors or nurses may even mercifully administer a tad more morphine than is recorded in medical records. In contrast, suicide one does to one's self.
Shiral: yes to everything you say.
Ah, Beth, how warming your support is.
Fireeye, my heartfelt sympathy for your recent loss.
I have a story I've been wondering how to write about my brother's suicide. It has been on my mind for some time, as we are fast approaching the 10th anniversary of his death. It took some time to understand the courage it took for him to do this (for very different reasons from your mother), but courage is a word I would use in retrospect.
Very moving and respectful. Rated. Thank you.
Your amazing column about what you wish you'd learned from Care and Compassion before your mother chose to stop food and hydration is encouraging as well as enlightening. It suggests we are becoming more enlightened about permitting people to choose to die on their own terms. I hope so.
Monsieur, yes, Mother was an original.
But I want to add: with severe reservations based on the age and health of the person who wants to die. And surely pharmacological help should be tried wherever it might help. Moreover, suicide is a very different option for a young person who has or could have good physical health from the choice it offers old people and others whose bodies don't serve them well enough.
I just watched "The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain" and have no idea how his inner pain and turmoil could have been relieved and his heroin addiction ended in a way that would have allowed him to continue. We need to know a lot more about how to make life bearable for people who - for whatever psychological and biochemical reasons - experience their lives as too painful to continue.
Also in Seattle (where Cobain lived), one of my best friends committed suicide years ago when she blamed herself for the accidental death of her third child, a newborn. She had been suffering from severe postpartum depression. I suspect she might have lived if her depression had been treated effectively as soon as it began.
In other words, the spectrum of reasons that people want to kill themselves is so wide that we need to create a wide variety of approaches. Your class on the ethics involved in the decision to kill one's self sounds like a meaningful contribution to this daunting challenge.
My parents lingered into their 90s with a very low quality of life the last few years. At least my mother had dementia so she was unaware of her impending death. My father though was quite aware and suffered a lot of pain.
I don't know if I would have the courage but your mother's story is very inspiring. Thank you for sharing.
Few people know that the elderly are the group most prone to completing suicide (versus attempting). Elderly men, particularly. These people have lost spouses, friends, function.
I wonder, too, about the influence of our culture's devaluing of the aged. We care so poorly for those who have cared for us.
Let's save resources for the young, for those who need it to live a fulfilled life. My mothers life was fulfilled. She had traveled the world, she had worked in war zones helping children and the aged alike -- she had a PhD in Public Health Nursing and an MD in Epidemiology. she met people she loved, often on either side of waring factions, sometimes not. she taught from University to, eventually, preschool Severely Emotionally Disturbed saying it is these children who will destroy our culture and our society and we defund them every year.
She lead a good life, she loved her life -- she knew when it was time to take the time of a physician and when it was time not to. She knew when it was time to take medicine and when it was time to let another have her place in line --- we were always taught to share what we have --
EVERYTHING IS FINITE. Oh it's just ten minutes with a doctor -- that means that doctor can only see 6 people an hour. Oh it's only 30 minutes talking to the doctor -- he can help only 2 people or less since he has to chart the conversation.
I hate to say it, had she seen -- well it's state by state -- but in many states if you have seen a doctor within x days, and you have a close to terminal Dx then no autopsy is necessary. And so all insurance pays out -- Sure you call the cops -- but you clean up first -- we did -- clean clothes, clean bed -- We had a wake -- and during the wake I called the cops -- Oh, by the way, my mother died, we are having a kind of neighborhood wake right now -- do you want to come now, or can you come later -- then her doc who called the coroner and said -- she's mine and it's x leading to y leading to z which caused her death.
cool -- then cremation -- land is finite and can grow crops and make children happy a they grow up - she and I have seen death up close and very personal - far, far FAR from any clinical setting --
Everyone feels differently -- for you it's a quality of life issue, for my mother it was 'let's stop wasting resources' for me -- I'd like to experience it -- I've always been an Adrenalin junkie -- but if it can't be fast enough for me, or the quality of life goes so far down that I can't experience death (or try to) -- then I think I'll join forces -- and save resources for those who can use them -- if my life would buy a class room a new set of history, math, reading, English books every day I was dead -- I'd go as soon as I've stopped doing good RESOURCES ARE FINITE - but let's not get gestapo or gestapa about it -- it's a personal decision -- and if my quality of life was one of dependency and pain -- where my dignity was assaulted several times a day -- let me go. I have a 'flight kit' and I urge everyone to build one up over time -- get your pain killers, and your sleep meds, and your tranquilizers, and what all you need -- just in case.
Mom turned off her oxygen and fell asleep -- had a hear attack and died -- if that didn't work, she and I had a formulary worked out and I had orders to TURN OFF THE o2 -- to save it for someone else if they could -- don't let things to to waste. her meds went to a hospice nurse who gave them to her poorer clients -- and her ashes now help Daphne, narcissus, woodriff and pink dog wood grow. Just like others in our family.
Brave --- it's hard to tell.
To be the BOSS until the end -- yeah, but not anything to be remembered for -- she always had to get her own way is not flattery.
And I cannot attribute what I don't know -- but I can hope that part of it was to make room for the next generation, to help 'save the whales' to do her part in reducing the carbon foot print, to save her social security to get kids new books, To just stop taking up so much time and room and concern and love -- maybe it was best given to another --
I know that when I am no longer useful, not old, or crippled, or mentally ill, but when I can no longer give far more than what I take, I hope I have the courage to recognize that time, and to do the right thing by others -- so that they might have what I had, maybe more -- I was raised poor, everything my mother made went to MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières ) everything my step father made went to the MaryKnoll nuns -- and perhaps, if I don't use too much, like your mother, there will be enough left over for a few children to have a favorite toy doll or fire-engine. And if it be the will of God, a favorite Book to read. And if I know about it or not is not important -- who knows what lies behind that veil -- we cannot comprehend it without us -- and we cannot comprehend it with us -- so - like I've said before -- it's Mississippi mud -- the speedometer says 120 MPH and that trees been there for two weeks. Something must be wrong -- but at least we are moving -- I have empirical evidence of that -- a scientific calibrated instrument says so -- 120 MPH.
I'm proud of your mother --and I am proud of you. Though I am not sure that English has a word for what I feel. Proud is close -- but closer still is a selfless desire to spare you and your family the true burden she could become, to give you an ultimate act of love, LOVE -- she threw herself on the grenade to save you -- and the fact that you still love her means she accomplished her last mission.
Some say that acts done in the name of others, advances their souls, and the sould of those who help. A dear friend gave a gift in my mothers name to Médecins Sans Frontières and I know that along with a gift to Amnesty International my mother is still making this world a better place in which to live. I hope you help her as she helps you.
I like your mother a lot. I think I like you about the same. Brave is leaving enough for others to enjoy, valor is just another word for sharing. Death is just another word for adventure.
She sounded like she still had her mental ability and though through what she wanted to do and why.
My mother had bladder cancer. The doctors told her how she was going to die and she didn't want that. She was planning on ending her life when it got to the point where the pain was great or she was losing control of herself. Sorry to say, before she could carry out her plan she slipped into a coma during the night and her life ended not the way she was afraid of, or the way she planned. Her doctor, knowing her wishes, "snowed" her to the very end.
Your mother seemed like a proud woman. She maintain control of her life to the end. If she was my mother, I would have be proud of her. I know I was of mine.
Thx for sharing what must still be a very painful memory.
Thx also for reminding me that there is dignity in age and in death, even if by our own hand. I don't agree w/suicide--I'm not afraid of a lot, but God and eternal hellfire do scare me (the happy result of being female, Catholic AND Hispanic)--but if your mother felt as she did, then it was her sole decision to make.
She had been telling you she'd do it, so I hope you feel no guilt at "not seeing the signs." I think sharing w/us here has been cathartic for you--and I know it's enlightened me about this very delicate and highly personal subject. Your mother did what she wanted to do, and nothing you or your siblings did or didn't do would've stopped her. All you can do now is pray for her and celebrate her life in your own, not question her death and motivations therein.
PS I know I risk much ridicule, perhaps scorn, for posting what I'm about to say: I hope tequilaanddonuts reads this and thinks about it. I am continually appalled to see her ridiculing her own mother in her "Mom Day" and similar posts. I was brought up to believe in family loyalty: that whatever happens in family, stays w/family. Consequently, I'm always horrified to see T&D get a yuck at her aged mother's expense.
She might be calling it an "online diary"--but I seriously doubt if she'd post her own adventures in toilet training and Depends, once her day comes to pass as it now has for her mother. At age 50--as she informed me after emailing me not to post on her blog, ever again, after I said as much--she should know better.
Hopefully her own kids will have inherited her big mouth, too.
Despite Peter's attempts to lay blame or find some way to control the situation so that he is right, blameless, superior, this is such a painful and personal matter it is really none of our business. (Except as comrades in your pain.)
Your mother was bright, in possession of her faculties and determined. Even the most vigilent and loving family can't prevent someone from ending their life if they really want it. And it seems she did.
What is particularly touching to me is how she kept you all in mind until the end. Dotting I's and crossing T's so that you would not have to tend to details in the aftermath of the loss. I'm sad that such a person is no longer on the earth plane. I'm sorry you've lost your dear mom. Clearly she loved you deeply and you her.
Nurse, I'm sorry you had such a sad experience but am glad you are there to help people who need you. It says a lot about our society, doesn't it, that we take such poor care of our children and our elders? Looking at the quality-of-life scores for the USA, we often see that our nation scores lower than other industrialized nations in caring for those who most need our support. The attitude seems to be that if you're not earning and spending, you don't matter.
Stephanie, I'm sorry about your father-in-law but agree that we should respect such choices, however painful for us.
Desert, your take on the subject is new to me and is interesting. You give me a lot to think about. I like you and your mother, too.
Catnlion, I agree that we are lucky to have had mothers we can be proud of.
Elsma, tnak you for your open mindedness about my mother's choice, especially given that your own Catholic beliefs conflict with it.
Velina, you underline and important point: wanting to commit suicide doesn't necessarily mean you should. If you can improve the quality of your life, find a way to do that.
Seattle, I wouldn't have written about Mother's suicide if I thought it were purely a private family matter. The responses to my posting gives us a glimpse of how much people want and need to discuss this delicate option.
I am lucky in that I have someone who is willing to "pull the plug" for me should I become hopelessly incapacitated.
I always admired Sigmund Freud's physician for providing him with the morphine pills necessary to do the job, knowing just how they would be used.
"Greater love hath no man..." or woman.
I would (will) choose to exit the stage voluntarily should I become robbed of quality of life due to stroke, dementia, vegetative coma, or the like.
I just wanted to thank you for your beautiful and touching essay. I am definitely in agreement that there are certain instances where taking one's own life (towards the natural end, of course, and not when there are an indefinite amount of years ahead) is brave, noble, and much, much better than the alternative.
I was about six years old when my grandfather was receiving in-home medical care - dying of emphysema - and my father and his brother took it upon themselves to "pull the plug" more or less. He was completely incapacitated, in a lot of pain, and so drugged up that he could barely move and speak. The last thing they wanted was to sit there and watch him die a slow and painful death when it was clear he would not be getting any better. I've always supported the work of Jack Kevorkian and I am still shocked that there are so many people who do not understand the concept of needing to exit life at your own time and in your own way.
I believe part of the reason for this is that we do not respect, value and honor our elderly in this country the way that they do in other countries and cultures. I had to spend a lot of time in various nursing homes and hospitals when my grandmother was dying a couple years ago, and what I saw was clear - as soon as our elders become a burden (financially, emotionally, etc.) we have a system in place to deal with them accordingly, and many of the places (not all, but many) we send them to are full of corrupt staff, poor medical care and are unsanitary and uncomfortable for the patients and visitors. I can completely understand the need to send your parent/grandparent to one of these facilities, but the problem is that there are just not enough options, especially if you do not have the financial resources to give them the proper care they deserve.
Anyway, now that I've gone off on a tangent, what I will say is this: The bravery it takes to do what your Mother did goes far beyond what most of us are capable of. Again, wonderful story. I've spent the past 2 hours at work reading all of the comments and I'm nearly in tears!
Megan, your experience with and understanding of some of the agonies that lie between many people and a release into death is sobering. I agree that our society needs to handle both aging and death more wisely.
In 1991, my father took a more direct approach and shot himself. He had been released from the hospital after suffering a stroke and was afraid he would have another. Although I understand his basic reasoning, I got no letter or kind words to prepare me. I've felt guilty ever since for not being a better daughter . Your mother's approach seemed thoughtful and courageous while my father's approach feels painful. Thank you for sharing, it has allowed me to share a little.
I have many feelings about this post. My first is that this idea: "All I can say is that I hope I have Mother's courage and self-respect if my body or mind shows signs of deteriorating to the point where I can no longer take care of myself in my own home" is the main reason so many people without disabilities pity (instead of respect) those who have them. They cannot imagine that one can have a life of dignity, yet still experience poop in the pants. But it is possible - hey, I'm living proof. Can you understand that the attitude displayed in the quote above is the cause of much painful social ostracism for people with disabilities?
And then on the other side, I am someone who thinks that one having the right over one's life is one of those "well, duh" things. I mean, how much more private can you get?? Also, my dad died suddenly a few years ago. Even if there was a chance that he might have been resucitated, he would have had severe brain damage. My mother assured me that it was for the best that he died, because he never wanted to have a life in which he could not take care of himself. And you know, that really did comfort me. I wouldn't have wanted him to stay alive in a state he would have been horrified by.
Can you see the reasons for my mixed feelings? My life is not easy, and I can understand people shying away from the thought of living it -- at the same time, it hurts pretty bad to hear people say, "if I ever had to have your life, I'd kill myself!"
Once more, I'd like to offer my condolences; the loss of my father changed me forever, as I'm sure the departure of your mother did you. And big change is not an easy thing to handle.
Sylvia, my sympathy on the death of your father. Evidently men are more likely than women to shoot themselves, and perhaps they are less likely to leave notes explaining themselves. Little do they realize how much harder suicide is on even adult children who had no idea it was a possibility. You make me wonder if there are any statistics comparing the percentage of male and female suicides who leave notes of explanation for loved ones.
Laurielou, I now see that the remark you spotlight could be hurtful. I'm sorry if it seemed to imply that the lives of those who are not fully independent physically may not be as fulfilling as others' lives. I certainly don't believe that. In fact, I spoke recently to a woman in her fifties whom I've known since she became a quadriplegic at fourteen (in a diving accident). Her voice is full of energy and enthusiasm as she describes the satisfactions of her life. And so my feeling that I could not rise admirably to such a situation is an admission of my own shortcomings and not a swipe at people who are able to enjoy life and make a contribution under such challenging conditions. How interesting that you were a Valentine baby while I arrived on the 13th, and that we are both lucky enough to live in Monterey County!
NamRose, I agree entirely about our society's dimwitted failure to allow people to choose to die with dignity, aided my physicians and supported by loved ones. How primitive of us!