RIP John Saunders

Coworker of mine was just diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. He's 67 and goes in Monday to get a port installed to start chemotherapy for what will probably be a futile attempt to tackle this thing.

Is that a better way of going out than going out on your own terms?

 

I have long said that if I were in such a position I would hang in as long as I could as I got my affairs in order and said my goodbyes. When the time came that it was no longer bearable I'd go sit in the side yard one sunny morning and eat a bunch of phenobarbital, wash it down with a pitcher of screwdrivers, and check out on my own terms. That goes double or triple if I was faced with declining mental faculties. Going the Pat Summit route is one of my biggest private horrors.

 

It could be suicide, and like others on here when I read an obituary, whether it's a famous person or just in a weekly paper, and it mentions dying at home or, in this case, no cause given, etc., my first thought goes to suicide as well. And it could be in this case. But...there are also many times when I read that someone died at home or there's no cause and it turns out to be of natural causes. There was someone from the board who passed away and the notices were worded like that I and I had a sense of dread that it was suicide. Ultimately it wasn't. And with Saunders could be hundred other things.

As for hoping it's not suicide and whether it's "better" if it isn't, I think a lot of that has to do with the survivors. Ignoring the stigma aspect right now (which is still there for survivors, even if it's not as bad as it was decades ago), the individual guilt that surviving friends and family feel with suicide is what always makes me hope it is something else. Because if it's suicide, they will be racked with questions and what-ifs for the rest of their lives. Yes, they would be as well if it's a car accident and you wonder, "Why didn't they just leave 2 minutes earlier," or if it's a heart attack and you wish they'd gone to the doctor earlier when they first started feeling uncomfortable. But it's just different with suicide. It just is. It can haunt them. The million questions about whether they missed signs or replaying conversations where they'll look back for hints or clues or replaying the final moments of their loved one's life, knowing how desperate or scared they were -- those images become life-altering, forever. It can in many cases start a cycle where suicide becomes something that is passed down to generations. On survivor's boards there are many people who talk about their dad committing suicide and now they've just lost a brother or a child.

He's dead no matter what. His family grieves no matter what. But suicide, for many different reasons, simply is another beast, and it's perfectly normal to hope that his family doesn't have to go through that, to hope they don't have to worry about forgiving themselves for something that was almost certainly out of their control. And to hope that Saunders in his final moments was not having to cope with that desperation.

This is probably the best book I've ever read on the subject and talks a lot about why the repercussions are so different than if someone dies in a different way.

 

My wife and I discuss what you wrote all the time.

My wife and I have watched one of our neighbors go down from ALS the last three years. Their church organized a dinner schedule. We do it about once a month.

It started out as dinner for the family. Then dinner for the family and soup or smoothie for her. Now just dinner for the family. And she lays there now. Every day.

The dying, to me is worse than being dead. Her poor kids have to see her deteriorate.

 

Moddy, geez, there is technology to help with that fear:

 

I was there for just about every moment as my dad was dying. It was long and excruciating and I'm haunted by it every day.

But I couldn't live with myself knowing we pulled the plug before every possible avenue was examined and exhausted.

He earned that effort.

 

My grandmother is 93 and we finally put her in a home this year. (She lived with my mom for a few years prior.) She seems to love it. Except when she talks to my mom. Then she pretends she hates it.

 

We did. Ugh. But I would say that every possible avenue had been examined and exhausted. He was never coming back. He lasted no more than a few minutes after they took him off support. I found a bathroom and I don't think I've ever cried that hard and uncontrollably in my life. Not when I was a toddler. Never. That said, my brother-in-law was dying of cancer at the time and my wife was seven months pregnant and, to this day, I don't think I've completely processed those few days in October, 2012.

 

Same here. I'm not going to be warehoused in a hospital bed somewhere.

 

The Hemingways being a famous example of it. In addition to Ernest, his father, a couple of his siblings and one of his granddaughters have all done it.

 

Unfortunately, there are sometimes life insurance ramifications for such actions, i e the cheap-ass company you paid premiums to for decades won't pay up if suicide is the cause of death.