I’ve been doing this for years now, sticking around so other people don’t have to feel bad about my death.
I’m 57, going on 58 and have tried many times to do myself in and have obviously failed at it every time.
Now I can do just that rather easily with a method I now know would work with no pain involved except for the mental pain of getting to the point of actually doing it.
The reason for wanting to die doesn’t make sense to the people in my life, but to me it makes perfect sense. I’m not respected for my opinions and my only real job is to be here to care for my elderly father who doesn’t really respect me nor my opinions and never really has.
It’s the same thing with my girlfriend. She tells me that she respects me, but wants to silence my opinions so I’ve reached the point where I don’t even want to have an opinion about anything.
I’m staying alive so other people don’t have to feel bad about me dying despite the fact that I will eventually die even if I do nothing to make it happen by my own hand.
I’ve often asked myself just what would happen if I died today, right now and it always comes back to the same answer.
People will be sad and cry a lot, but they will get on with their lives, but at the same time they would be angry at me for ending my life just as they’ve been angry at me every time I tried in the past.
To them my death won’t be about me and my life and death, it’ll be about their grief and how much it hurts them. It’s always about other people’s feelings.
The reason we even bother to put up grave markers and cemeteries is for other people. Dead people obviously don’t care what happens when they’re dead.
So here I am along with countless others here contemplating death and what may happen once we die. I suspect that for a great deal of us the only thing keeping us going is that we don’t want others to feel bad once we’re gone. At the same time I don’t really know what to do about it. Do we just keep on going till we too become an unbarable burden on the people tasked with caring for us as elderly people? I have the unenviable task of caring for my elderly father and his wife (who by the way is an absolutely selfish ***** that NOBODY likes) and both of them have made quite clear that they don’t care if they live or die and yet I’m expected to do all of their dirty work, cooking and cleaning, grocery shopping and on and on while they do little more than vegitate watching TV till they eventually die themselves.
I don’t even want to keep on living and now I have to keep other people alive along with myself.
If I did nothing and let them both die there’s a very good chance that I would be charged with elder neglect of people who don’t really want to live and don’t have much respect for me and what I do every day for them. It’s a no win situation so I’m to the point where the only win I can feel is to beat them to the punch and die before they do.
One thing is absolutely certain. I will not be around long enough to become someone elses unbarable burden as an old man.
My children are both in their 30s now and I have 3 grandchildren. They all live in another state 900 miles away. The ONLY burden I am going to leave to them is to decide what to do with my dead body. They already know that I wish to be buried at sea, no funeral, no ashes, no coffin, just let the US Navy go to sea and boot my dead body overboard. See ya later and who knows..maybe I’ll end up in someone’s Mrs Pauls fish sticks for dinner.
3 comments
Maybe it’s time to have a frank talk with your parents about euthanasia. Obviously they cannot live without your support and if you commit suicide then they will die a very slow, miserable and painful death. You could do it as a group where you live or as mentioned go to a place that offers this service for the elderly and terminally ill.
You can maybe speak to your kids and see if they’ll take care of your elderly parents. I understand your position and that you’re trying to do the responsible and right thing. Ultimately you cannot live for others, your life is your own and it’s your right to choose when you’d like to end your life.
I’m like you in that regard-I do feel a sense of duty/obligation to those closest to me and that’s actually one reason I didn’t end my life 5 years ago when I decided I didn’t want to live any more.
One thing is certain, like you I have no intention of being a burden on anyone. My nightmare would be to end up elderly, senile, not able to look after myself and stuck in my weak/aging body unable to terminate my terrible existence.
So I’ll keep going until I begin to really hate living or if I become old, then I’ll pick a time where I’m still competent enough to commit suicide. I expect by then (maybe 20 yrs from now) euthanasia will be much more accepted and readily available, so it won’t be an agonizing decision or involve risky methods.
Update-I think I accidentally deleted some text. I was suggesting that you could go with your elderly parents to a place like Holland where euthanasia is legal.
Three years ago my sister, then 64, told the appropriate authority she could no longer care for my mother who at the time was 85 and living with my sister. My mother was promptly admitted to a CO state run nursing home. Done deal.