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Old 12-15-2018, 09:01 AM
 
Location: Williamsburg, VA
3,550 posts, read 3,097,975 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jasperhobbs View Post
I think it might be wiser to plan on how to live and not on how to die.

Amen Although I can understand a very minor amount of planning (wills, burial plans, etc.) I think this is one of those things where too much planning is pointless and a waste of the valuable time you have left. I could see the point of signing a DNR, that's about it.
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Old 12-15-2018, 09:09 AM
 
1,334 posts, read 1,664,999 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RosemaryT View Post
For those of you contemplating suicide, just remember that you'll leave behind a wake of horror that words can't describe. And for the loved one that finds you, they'll never be the same again. Never. If you kill yourself (even for a "good" reason), it will introduce an indescribable amount of pain into your family's life from which there is no recovery. NONE. .
The awful shock of death, when it is a family member or close acquaintance, IMO isn't limited to suicide. A friend of mine in high school watched her father collapse and die of a heart attack right in front of her. Suicide is complicated by the issue that the survivors feel guilt and responsibility for not noticing the problems or being able to help.

I've watched two close family members (I was their caretaker) dwindle to nothing over the course of a year. I will do anything that I can to make sure my children's lasting memories of me aren't as an empty, bedridden shell.

Death is usually going to be accompanied by heartbreak no matter how it occurs.
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Old 12-15-2018, 09:13 AM
 
13,498 posts, read 18,133,752 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kent_moore View Post
I just want to ask (and I don't have bad intention just out of curiosity and I just wanna hear different perspectives from senior people):

1. How do you feel that you will be gone soon? Scared? Sad? Happy because you're tired of living?
I will be eighty-one early next year. My medically major health problem seems so well under control that I often forget that I have it; whereas a condition that is rarely fatal but extremely debilitating and unpredictably extremely painful has a strong hold on me. My thoughts are that five year from now I will be dead, or in a condition not to want to continue being alive...but not living. What I am definitely scared of is death in a hospital. I have seen family members die in that environment and I did volunteer work where I saw many more die in it as well. As one person said about the white environment and cold temp of the room, "They shut you in a refrigerator to die." I was with other people when they died in rundown or even in a dreadful slum building in one case - they died reconciled and at peace because they were home. These places were not Better Homes & Gardens material, but it was their home. These experiences over the years have made a huge impression on me.

Of course, sure the prospect of a very painful death is also scare material. But I am more concerned about being simply alive rather than living. Over the past decade I have had to cut out travel, even local travel...walking in the countryside is very dicey. All of my local close friends have died or moved except for one couple - and she appears to be dying right now, and I have two in the U.S. I accept the loss of the people, but I have much more difficulty dealing with the limitation of being out in the local beaches, or the meadows and hills.

On the plus side I am outgoing and pretty easy-going so people I know casually (waitresses, computer repairmen, even the guy from the distance delivery service) spend time with me, and I like and enjoy them - they are not anything like close friends, but they are refreshing, lively people with good natures...and we enjoy each other. And I have always had a bookish/perpetual student side which has been essentially solitary. I have a thousand books in my apartment, and almost as many CD's (I'm 80 remember!) And there is the net. So, my life has certainly assumed much smaller dimensions than it had even five years ago, and of course this old man is dying. But the fact of the limited time is not depressing...the how and where of my death is my concern. I have a rigid medical treatment testament, which is registered with a certificate number with the government and can be accessed by all hospitals in the country where I live. (And I have discovered that they do check for it when you enter for even a minor procedure, and you get a notice by email that your testament as been accessed by them.) And my POA is my lawyer, a woman who has dealt with several deaths where terminally ill/or perhaps prolongedly ill people have ended their lives. And I know she found one...well, she and her son.

Scared...of my death itself, I don't think so. Sad about the fact that my death cannot be too far in the future? My contacts as a volunteer were with people expected to died within a year or slightly more, and the suffering they endured was wretched. I learned a lot from them (not a collection of saints, though two could have been), and I learned just as much back then realizing that I had no ballast and no personal rudder and that I was heading for the psychological rocks even as they were looking at me as someone to rely on. And for my own preservation I was impelled to really scrounge through every source that I thought promised direction until after inside out and upside down I started to know myself and be more honest to myself and did find that needed ballast. I needed it to sustain myself with these people, one after the other; and now the sense many years later is that it is what has "protected" for many years after and I would hope - expect - to my own end.

Quote:
2. If given a chance, do you prefer to live longer like 50 more years?
No.

Quote:
3. Are you prepared? did you serve your purpose well? What purpose is that?
In the sense that "purpose" might mean something as specific, as the old rhyme had it, "doctor, lawyer, Indian chief"....or Best Mom/Dad in the whole world, Greatest Teacher, etc. All I ever had was the conventional ideas of my parents, then public school layered on top of these and then a few personal paste-it notes on top of that, and it wasn't very substantial or focused. I flopped out entirely going that route for a little over twenty years, but then who was the jerk who went that route? So, purpose eventually got replaced by something more like orientation, and primarily it means making the effort to cull out or refuse to follow bad inclinations, and then when you have that direction to try to actively do good.
....
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Old 12-15-2018, 09:23 AM
 
1,334 posts, read 1,664,999 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kevxu View Post
There is a good book that is a discussion not only of the topic in an overview manner, but also discusses the very practical drawbacks or pluses of various means that can be used. One section that anyone considering this ought to read is the "Risky Drugs" drugs chapter.

The idea of a handful of pills may a poor blanket idea, even if the pills under consideration are narcotic. And if your stomach has been chronically stressed, you want to be sure that you don't just barf up your pills.

The book is Final Exit, Derek Humphry, Delta publishers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyNewMe View Post
Really good book for those who would rather to plan ahead.
Derek Humphry's Book is a bit outdated now. If you subscribe to the on-line version of this one they issue regular updates:

https://www.peacefulpillhandbook.com/

Potential methods of suicide are evaluated for accessibility, effectiveness and esthetics (e.g. how painful, both for the suicide and anyone who finds the body).

I find our national squeamishness about end-of-life issues baffling. It isn't as though any of us have a chance at living forever. Why are people who worry about making other rational life choices (getting married, having children, buying property) so reluctant to give some consideration to how their lives will end?

As others have posted, even if you don't intend to die by your own hand, it is good planning to at least make sure you have a will (and trust, if necessary), a health care POA, and an end-of-life directive.

Personally, when the time comes I hope to use the N2 or Ar bag, either in a shed on the property or in a car in the parking lot of the coroner's office.
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Old 12-15-2018, 09:36 AM
 
13,498 posts, read 18,133,752 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jasperhobbs View Post
I think it might be wiser to plan on how to live and not on how to die.
Plan one, plan the other, but existence is essentially impermanence/change. So, either type of planning can't escape that.

Creature are born to live and born to die at one and the same time. As much as I might plan for living, dying is always there; and if I am planning for dying I can only do it while I am living.

Alive and dead are opposites. But living and dying is an everyday mixture.
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Old 12-15-2018, 11:12 AM
 
Location: SoCal
20,160 posts, read 12,706,609 times
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I’m going to go with the song I’ve heard yesterday on radio, let it be, it will be what it’ll be..
So no planning here.
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Old 12-15-2018, 11:19 AM
 
Location: Myrtle Creek, Oregon
15,293 posts, read 17,619,593 times
Reputation: 25231
Quote:
Originally Posted by jasperhobbs View Post
I think it might be wiser to plan on how to live and not on how to die.
If you don't have any assets, heirs or close family who would get stuck cleaning up your mess, you may be right. Your landlord would wait 30 days and pitch your stuff in a dumpster. Medicare would notify SS. The probate court would give creditors 6 months to get their claims in, split any remaining money, and close you out. The county would cremate you and store your ashes in a basement somewhere, at least for a while. If you're living in a homeless shelter, you probably don't have the resources to plan much anyway.

I live in a rural county. They periodically find a skeleton, sometimes with no ID on it. The cops make an attempt to match the bones with missing persons reports, but they don't try very hard.

Lack of planning can lead to some interesting archaeology. I ran across a 1930s shop building once where the owner of record had been dead for 25 years. He died with alzheimer's. His heir was his daughter, who was not the brightest girl in the world, so other than paying the property taxes, she never did anything with it. Her kids were druggies and petty criminals, who used the shop as a base for whatever scam they were running. The neighbors complained, but no one would admit to being responsible for the property. The grandkids just ghosted, daughter was clueless, and the owner had been dead for over two decades. In another case, we had a deteriorating building downtown with a dead owner. He died intestate, with four kids. One of his sons had not been heard from in years, and couldn't be located by skip tracers. The remaining three had to go to court to get permission to sell the building and put the vanished son's share in an escrow account. It was expensive and time consuming for them, and they had to come up with the money up front. On the up side, if vanished son doesn't show up in 7 years, the court would declare him dead and distribute the money to the survivors.

On this topic, here is a song I first heard over 30 years ago. Make of it what you will.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HGuqz_lUow
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Old 12-15-2018, 12:47 PM
 
6,751 posts, read 5,455,181 times
Reputation: 17589
I already died.
Once.
(Clinically dead for 7 mins 40secs officially, 4 shocks to restart my heart. EMTs were going to give up if 4th hadnt worked. Had i not gone to work with pneumoniai wouldnt be here. I literally worked til I dropped dead!)

The next time im going to go out in a blaze of glory!

Surrounded by all my loved ones, who will watch the *big bang* and then watch as my visible soul draped in white flowing robe miraculously rises out of my body and i stand before them and i salute them, saying 'been great to know you', then my visible soul shall rise and disappear through the ceiling to the heavens as a lightning bolt flashes across the sky!.

(I dont want much do I?)

Or rat poison....

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Old 12-15-2018, 04:16 PM
 
Location: New Britain, CT
898 posts, read 594,796 times
Reputation: 1428
In a blaze of fire and glory


I certainly don't want to go out the way my dad is going. He is 88 and gets out of bed, has a muffin with coffee sitting in his lift chair (he can't get into or out of a regular chair). Can't go anywhere, can't do anything. He sits and watches TV and if the weather is ok, goes outside and smokes cigars. He can't cook, do laundry, drive (no longer has car access). All but one of the guys he used to hang with have died. He has one grandson who comes by every 2nd or 3rd week and brings him a beer and a sandwich. Otherwise, he watches news, Price is Right, Jerry Springer and smokes cigars outside.
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Old 12-15-2018, 04:40 PM
 
4,149 posts, read 3,885,849 times
Reputation: 10932
Quote:
Originally Posted by galaxyhi View Post
I already died.
Once.
(Clinically dead for 7 mins 40secs officially, 4 shocks to restart my heart. EMTs were going to give up if 4th hadnt worked. Had i not gone to work with pneumoniai wouldnt be here. I literally worked til I dropped dead!)

The next time im going to go out in a blaze of glory!

Surrounded by all my loved ones, who will watch the *big bang* and then watch as my visible soul draped in white flowing robe miraculously rises out of my body and i stand before them and i salute them, saying 'been great to know you', then my visible soul shall rise and disappear through the ceiling to the heavens as a lightning bolt flashes across the sky!.

(I dont want much do I?)

Or rat poison....

Did you have a near death experience? Bright light, deceased loved ones there, etc
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