Bad news, again. Apparently an aggressive form of suicide, because how else to explain? Guy wants to end his life (and they are overwhelmingly men), so he kills others along with himself. Finding the blame for his ill lived life outside himself.
Women will kill themselves of course, and sometimes their very young children, but usually not in some splashy overt manner involving strangers or even co-workers.
I've written about my own struggles with the urge before. For me, not being any more of a bother is critical. Apparently for violent young men, they feel quite the opposite. Make the most mess, take others with them, wreck everything. Make the news, go down in a blaze of "glory."
That ain't glory, that's muck.
Even a tidy, lonesome suicide leaves gashes across the world, though. Unexpected hemorrhages, ill placed inheritances. Is this the point of anathemizing the act? Not so much to condemn to hell, so much as to direct the anger and confusion of survivors? It can never have been so rare then, that every village, probably every family, has at least one death this way. My eldest uncle at 17, almost certainly drowned himself, though I was never told this until a cousin explained a couple of years ago. Makes so many interactions make so much more sense. My cousin's wife, in chronic pain from dental malpractice, again, almost certainly ended her own life. How many car "accidents" were impulsive acts of self destruction? How many overdoses were half intended to end all suffering permanently? How many crimes, a cry to finish with a chaotic life?
Hiding behind condemnation will never address this critical issue. Scorn only leads to greater desperation. When I most needed help, I would not reach out for it, lest someone take it all up a notch, to keep me from killing myself. I needed that option not to feel desperately trapped, I did not need to be under a heap of officialdom, only someone to help sort out my distress. Let me keep my choices open "Ok, well, let's see what we can do, if nothing else works, you can die gently."
One of those disparate themes of the unpublishable novel idea, in my imagined society, that anyone can suicide, it's a process of putting one's life in order, with help, then a sure and controlled death. Most people will do this at least once in their lives, only to omit the last step and keep on living.
The potter lays a steadying hand. If the lump will not center, it's mushed down, re-wedged, starts all over. No judgement, no regret, try again.
5 comments:
Kurt Vonnegut wrote about ethical suicide parlors in one of his book that I read years ago. Seemed such a sensible alternative to the messy events so common in the late sixties and seventies. This was before assisted suicides were making the news.
Crow,
I think that is part of where I got this idea. Those left behind so often are full of questions and a sense of betrayal and abandonment, so I think it's just as important to make the assisted way out include making peace and answering questions.
I saw an article in the NYT once about a woman who gathered her friends at her home for had a good-bye ceremony before ending her life with medical assistance of some sort, so it'd be relatively gentle and painless (one hopes).
(I think she was in the end stages of a painful cancer.)
I thought it looked like an example of a "Good Death" Catholics pray for, which I would like for myself.
*NOT* to romanticize old ways (reading about the Civil War era, they were awful!), but I fear modern medical approaches to death have yet to really shift the whole thing out of Desperate Avoidance Mode and into some sort of gracefulness.
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that medically assisted death is to be allowed in Canada and gave the Government of Canada until next year to come up with the laws that rule over this issue.
Needless to say, it is very contentious with doctors and educators and ethical specialists falling on both sides of the debate.
I am fairly liberal minded and generally side on the side that allows for this. But then, it is easy for me as I haven't ever personally known anyone who has had to come to terms with making such a decision.
Sad thing is, most medical folks I know would want the option for themselves.
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