suicide

So it goes

17 July 2014
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Assisted dying, Assisted suicide, suicide

Posted by Vale

Have you ever thought what it is to be a King or a Queen?

You are, usually, born to it: it is your life and your duty. Our own Queen clearly feels this keenly. As far as a commoner can tell, for her, the coronation oath confirmed what birth had bestowed: she became Queen for life, a vow as absolute as a nun’s.

Others, apparently, see it differently: Queen Beatrice and King Carlos have just unthroned themselves and nobody seemed to mind.

Who’s has the right of it? Our queen or the continentals?  Who cares? It’s strange now to remember that, once upon a time people fought and died over just this question. Did kings rule by divine right? Could you dispose of a bad one without sin or was it really the worst of crimes – worse than murder or treason, an affront to the very order of the universe?

Suicide used to carry a similar stigma. It was both self-murder – a broken commandment – and a direct affront to god. Our lives aren’t our own. Choosing to end them is to fling the gift of life back in god’s face.

In this week of debate about assisted dying, I do wonder how much its opponents arguments are rooted in these old beliefs. The feeling in our bones that suicide, however rational the argument, is still taboo.

Of course assisted dying is more complicated. It raises different, difficult questions. At its simplest, it’s about the way that others become implicated in a personal choice, blurring the line between suicide and murder.

But we need to work these issues through because attitudes are already changing – starting with suicide itself.

I need to be careful here. I am not praising or promoting suicide. If you are a celebrant or funeral director you know only too well what suicide means – the agony of families ruptured by the loss; the disbelief; the unanswerable questions; the terrible feelings of failure regret; the anger.

But there are occasions when it is not like that.

I took a service recently for someone who had lived a very full life. She was clever, accomplished and active.

She had known hardships and grief – her husband was dead and, many years before, her daughter had died. She had faced both losses with courage and great resource.

Without family now, she was connected to a wide network of good, loving, friends. She was involved, loved to to learn new things, enjoyed writing and painting.

Then Parkinsons was diagnosed and, as it progressed, she realised that her life was dwindling. It was becoming more about staying alive than about living so, well before she needed to, she made her arrangements and killed herself.

The service we planned was full of the thoughts and poems she had left us. The crematorium was filled to overflowing with all her friends. There was sadness and a deep sense of loss but there was respect too for her decision and her determination. We sympathised with her. I suspect that many of us were thinking about our own old age, wondering if we would be as brave as she had been.

Is helplessness and incapacity a universal fear these days? Is it feared now more than death itself?

There was no horror, though, or despair; just reflection and a determination to honour and celebrate our friend’s life. We wanted to do justice to her courage.

Too many things have changed now for lawmakers to avoid the hard questions. As we age we know what awaits us. We know that medicine now has powers to both save and destroy us.

People are already making their own choices, beginning to join that old stoic Seneca saying:

‘The ship that I sail in, I choose; the house that I live in, I choose; so will I choose the death by which I leave life.’

We need to support people in their choice. We will need support ourselves when the choice comes to us.

Why are men killing themselves?

14 May 2014
Charles
No comments
Categories: suicide

In an article in a recent Spectator magazine, Elizabeth Hardman reflects on the problems that beset males today:

The idea of women having a rotten deal has become so firmly entrenched in British public life that we have become blind to the problem emerging for the boys.

Hardman gives evidence, including the suicide rate:

This year the Office for National Statistics reported that young men are no longer the group most likely to kill themselves. That is because men in their early forties have taken over as the most vulnerable group. Men in general account for 77 per cent of all suicides in the United Kingdom, up from 63 per cent in the 1980s. The suicide rate for men in their forties is the highest it has ever been. The overall suicide rate is down, but that’s driven mainly by a decrease in women taking their lives — the rate for female suicides has halved since 1981. The male suicide rate has fallen by just 8 per cent since then.

Hardman concludes:

But while our political debate quite comfortably lumps certain problems together as ‘women’s issues’, there is a noticeable reluctance to do the same for men, or to worry about our sons. Last month, opposition MPs and journalists kicked up a stink about the new women’s minister, Nicky Morgan, not being senior enough. Perhaps on the basis of the trends we’re seeing today, we also need a minister for men.

Just checking

25 April 2014
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Assisted suicide, euthanasia, suicide

In the good old days, death happened before we were ready for it. It struck untimely. Now, it creeps up, perhaps getting to us long after we have timed out.

Which raises the question: when is a timely death?

Journalist Matthew Parris is not alone in contemplating old age with trepidation. In a recent article he asked “How long do you want to live?”

It is a question my generation are the first in modern history to be asking ourselves in very large numbers. We ask it because we are among the first to expect — again in very large numbers — that our lives may be prolonged past a point when we may want or think we ought to live.

We will ask it, too, because we are the first generation among whom a majority no longer believes that suicide is a mortal sin.

I’ve decided to write myself a letter to be opened at the age of 75 and thereafter revisited annually. It sets out my criteria for carrying on. These are the criteria for me alone and I don’t apply them to others, who must frame their own.

Dear Matthew,

To the following eight questions a box is to be ticked, “yes” or “no”. The answer to some may obviate the need to ask some others. If the answer to either of the first two questions is “yes” then brush this letter aside and live on. If the answer to both is “no” then read no further, and reach for the razor blade.

1 Do you still, on balance and taking good times with bad, enjoy being alive?
2 Is there anyone else whose life would be devastated by your death?

The final six questions are not critical, but they may help you to decide in case of doubt:

3 Are you still of any practical use?
4 Are you more or less of sound mind? — in which case who is the prime minister, and multiply two by nine then subtract seven.
5 Are you more or less in possession of your physical faculties?
6 Are you still curious about the world? Can you get on a plane?
7 Behind your back, do people pity you?
8 Can you justify the cost to others, to the NHS and to your country of staying alive?

Full article here.

Remembering a suicide: outward appearances and inner selves

30 January 2014
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: suicide

By RR

I’ve recently attended the memorial service of a friend I’ll refer to as B, who committed suicide towards the end of last year. He hanged himself with his belt in a hospital room, just an hour after being sectioned following previous attempts to take his own life. Having had an intimate funeral at a crematorium, his memorial service was a bigger gathering in a church, and was followed by drinks at his club.

Perhaps more than after premature deaths by accident or illness, the mood swings of those left behind are complex after a suicide, both at the public send-offs and during private grief. Regret is tainted with anger and incomprehension at the person’s decision. There’s also guilt that we were powerless to change things.

The memorial service and party came three months after B’s death, time enough to lessen the intensity of fresh grief. He was remembered in speeches, prayers and music. Causing both tears and smiles, the tone was respectful and affectionate. At the social afterwards, guests chatted freely, neither obliged to share good memories especially, nor to articulate feelings about the awful circumstances of the death. That he is missed is a given.

The event got me thinking about what can and cannot be said on such occasions. Initially, my response had manifested itself by constantly asking, why? A sensible friend, who was chosen as executor, was more practical. As well as busying himself with funeral arrangements and financials matters, he investigated a case for negligence at the mental institution. Why leave someone alone with a belt when on suicide watch?

I had no taste for such wrangles. I just wallowed in private misery. I considered posting a blog but couldn’t string a sentence together about something so personal. I was freed from this solitary numbness by what started as an unrelated phone conversation. To my surprise, a casual chat somehow gave me permission to let it all out. I ranted and sobbed with uncharacteristic abandon.

However, I also had a slight disagreement with the executor during a conversation about the ‘whys’ of B’s suicide. I mentioned B had talked of serious money worries, something the executor promptly denied. He should know, I thought, and decided never to repeat the ‘money angle’ lest I was indeed spreading false information. Certainly a no-go subject at the memorial gathering.

This was nevertheless my impression from my final conversation with B. The last time I saw him was after he’d just been sectioned for the first time after overdosing on pills. Briefly allowed out of care before curfew, we met in a bar early evening, him sticking to soft drinks as he was on lithium. I told him how shocked I was by his situation. He’d always seemed so together, not just because he was successful and popular but because he exuded an inner calm. The swan was clearly peddling like crazy beneath the water’s surface.

Did he realise how loved and admired he was? Was it a genuine attempt to end it all or a cry for help after concealing his demons for too long? Would he promise never again to hide his troubles as if vulnerability was somehow shameful?

He shrugged nonchalantly, his gaze still. Was he being evasive? Was he medicated beyond feelings? I persisted. So what were the triggers? People say depression needs no fuel, that it’s a mental disorder that can consume regardless of external forces. But could he identify any preoccupations that caused his predicament?

Had he been diagnosed with any serious illness other than depression? No. Had he been heartbroken in love? No. Had drink or recreational drugs escalated into a problem? Not really. Did he have money worries, having gone self-employed after years as a salary man at a big firm? I thought I’d identified a catalyst here as he claimed that establishing his own company was the biggest mistake of his life, that business was slow and not covering the overheads of office rental and staff salaries.

I tried to offer a positive spin. We’d admired his entrepreneurial spirit but career defeat was no big deal in the greater scheme of things, even in a buoyant market let alone a recession. He could walk away and become an employee again. Besides, he also owned homes in London and the country. Far from being broke, he could easily regain solvency with a few lifestyle adjustments.

He looked sheepish, saying he was closer to bankruptcy than I imagined, his properties mortgaged to the hilt. I wanted him to see a light at the end of the tunnel regardless. He could downsize to release the profits and start with a clean slate. At the end of the day, wealth was relative, and all any of us needed for physical comfort was a roof over our heads, a bed, shower, fridge, computer…

The direction of this dialogue now started to reveal a side of B I’d never previously encountered. He alluded to affluent mutual friends, and the need to keep face among privileged company. I brushed aside this self pity. Come on, B, you’re surrounded by loyal friends who adore you. We all know people who are both richer and poorer than us.

I didn’t judge him for seeming insecure, I was in fact thankful he was opening up to something that seemed so simple to remedy through reason. Other more visible character traits were now falling into place. He had always been extravagantly generous. Was he a pathological people pleaser, better at giving love than receiving it?

As we said goodbye, I reminded him many of us were there for him. When I next called, we arranged to meet over the weekend. He then cancelled by text saying he’d had to leave town. It transpires he was in fact attempting to jump off an infamous ‘suicide’ bridge in the home counties. He was caught behaving suspiciously on CCTV camera, and picked up by the police. This time, the sectioning didn’t work. Whether or not his belt had been confiscated, he was clearly intent on dying.

As I dwell on the executor’s dismissal of financial matters as a cause for the clinical depression, I realise the whys are not so important. We can ask whether life determines demons or demons determine life, but we’re all different things to different people, and some things go with us to the grave.

What if you’ve just had enough?

30 October 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Assisted dying, Attitudes to death, suicide

Silvan Luley, who is unofficially known as the deputy director of Dignitas, says he is concerned that under current Swiss law the association cannot offer assisted suicides to individuals who are “perfectly healthy”.

Luley said: “The more restrictive you design a law, the more difficult you make it for people to access a dignified end in life, the more people will turn to ghastly methods.

“I can try to talk people out of it. I can try to show people alternatives, but if somebody does not enjoy the sunlight, the smell of freshly cut grass in the morning any more, then what do you do then?”

Full article in the Sunday Times here. (£)

Peter Roebuck

13 November 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: suicide

I once saw Peter Roebuck, the ex-Somerset cricket captain who yesterday took his own life. He was pacing up and down outside the pavilion while the pitch dried out, deep in thought, consuming a brooding cigarette.  An analytical, introspective loner, he was no stranger to melancholy and controversy. The title of his first book, ‘It Never Rains — A Cricketer’s Lot’ tells you something about his emotional disposition. 

The day I saw him Ian Botham was still a Somerset player. (When Roebuck got rid of Joel Garner and Viv Richards because he reckoned them over the hill, Botham decamped in fury to Worcestershire.) I remember sitting watching a damp afternoon’s play. Botham square cut a ball to the boundary with such effortless power that it dematerialised as he hit it and rematerialised a second later as it crashed into the boundary board. It was as sweet a shot as I have ever seen. 

Cricket has a very high suicide rate in the UK, double the national average. In South Africa the rate is even higher. Cricketers are the only sportsmen so afflicted. 

But suicide is not a problem in the women’s game. And it is pretty much unknown in non-Anglo Saxon countries — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the West Indies.  Do you know why?

There’s a very good tribute to Roebuck by team mate Vic Marks in the Guardian here. 

What do you say?

9 June 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: suicide

I was at Bristol Temple Meads and a five-hour train journey lay ahead. A party of young people boarded and a girl headed straight for my dog collar. “Can I talk to you, Reverend?” It had all the hallmarks of a “chat up the vicar” joke and I was tired. But no. Three hours earlier her boyfriend, a long-term depressive, had intentionally taken a lethal dose of tablets and she had discovered him dead in their flat. He could no longer face the pain of his existence and she was travelling to her parents for comfort.

Read the whole article in the Guardian here. Worth it.

 

Pulling the plug

11 January 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, Longevity, self-deliverance, suicide

I know I go on about this, but I think it important. Long, long life is getting to be a problem. Thirty years ago dying was a relatively brief, often unexpected episode. Clever medics can now prolong it – intolerably and expensively.

That last goodbye for most of us just keeps getting put off and the state has to find more and more money for more and more tottering and tumbledown folk. Not for me, I drink and smoke at lot, I’ll go down like a felled ox thank god when that big vein in my forehead goes bang. But you self-denying abstinence- and exercise freaks – how many years of decrepitude, double incontinence and dementia is it all buying you?

Here’s some food for thought, perhaps:

In the Jan Oldie magazine there’s an interview with a man called John Barnes. He’s eighty-something and fit as a flea. The interviewer asks him this question: ‘Have you found a way of coming to terms with death?’ And he replies: “You have to learn to accept that you don’t come to terms with it. Sometimes I think that people who’ve got blind religious faith and believe they’re not going to die are the luckiest. My feelings swing to extremes. Life seems marvellous when my old ramblers [he takes oldies walking] are enjoying sunshine in the country, when I’m holding an attractive girl in a dance, or when I’m entertaining a crowd of people with my songs. The rest of the time I wonder whether the NHS ought to be spending so much effort on keeping me alive.”

Over at the Morialekafa blog we read this:

Somehow I found myself last night in a discussion of what should happen to old people if there is not enough money available to keep them all alive. That is, would there ever be enough money available for health care for all, and if not, what about “death panels.”

You are all doubtless http://quotecorner.com/online-pharmacy.html aware of the claim that Eskimos would sometimes leave their old people to freeze to death when there was not enough food to feed everyone. There is little doubt that old people accepted this as a necessity and perhaps even volunteered themselves …

First of all, I doubt that anyone really knows very much about what happens to old people in the United States at this time. For example, it is clear that the suicide rate for those over 65 goes up rather sharply … I think it is entirely possible that many of these suicides are deliberate senilicides, carried out to relieve the potential burden on their survivors, but does anyone really know this? …

How much is a week of life, when one is ninety, really worth?

…

Where I worked for a time in the New Guinea Highlands, when a person is considered so old they are obviously near death, their survivors and others hold a funeral ceremony for them while they are still alive, to let them know they are respected and will be missed (also to placate their potential ghost so it will not hang around causing misfortune). These occasions, perhaps needless to say, are very emotional, the speeches can be endless, and the oldsters are sometimes overcome, weeping and even falling to the ground. This seems to me to be a more sensible and genuine way of saying goodbye and expressing grief than by feeling guilty and regretting you did not do and spend more to prevent the inevitable. [Source]

Now hop over to the excellent Death Reference Desk for a series of articles about Republicans and Tea Party nutters in the US who either out of stupidity or malignity have been confusing end of life planning (a now ex-component of the Obama Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) with death panels. [Source]

It’s a whole new ethical area, isn’t it? As abortion once was…