Very interesting turn here. How do I say this without sounding suicidal. I have considered suicide from an intellectual perspective. Not from any intent of acting on the thoughts, but more in an effort to understand or empathize with with people who have expressed depression or even told me they were considering it. I am an easy person to talk to and try to always remain approachable. I had on GF who had attempted, before I met her, suicide by cutting her wrists and we spend a great deal of time talking about depression. Last I hear she became a successful clothing designer. As a judge I had 3 people ask if they could talk to me in private, which I allowed with consent of the attorneys. I have also had a few friends and acquaintances ask if I would listen to them. I have never turn anyone down. I find that what is often missing is someone that will listen and who values them for who they are, what they believe and dreams they hope to achieve. Each of us can help prevent suicide, but don't get down if you fail. I had 1 person who I spent time with commit suicide. I had helped him get on his feet but he let drugs take over.
I hope that if some asks to talk that you will listen. I will.

Thanks, Carlos.

My mother liked to give me kisses; She always did. She liked to be hugged and give hugs, too. I had a pretty good childhood, and never thought seriously about suicide as an option to life, but in the last few years, with the loss of my mother, it's not a completely crazy idea. I don't have any more living relatives or kids, and I don't have any friends who would be too upset with my death beyond a couple days or so. ~Why not go ahead and see what's on the other side of life? It's very interesting to me what happens at that door, but not enough to push it, yet.

---

The mind is a weird and mysterious place

My take on that is that I will always have an eternity ahead of me to find out what is "beyond" so I should stick around as long as possible to enjoy life to the fullest. If life ever becomes so miserable that I feel like ending it and can't see any hope, I will liquidate all my assets, sell off all the computers, quit my job and hop the next plane or boat to somewhere amazing I have never been and/or would never otherwise go to... I'm leaning towards Europe and Polynesia. Life is too short to make it even shorter, and there is so much out there I have not experienced yet.

I am convinced of the "scientific reincarnation" hypothesis that when I die, a tremendous amount of time can pass without "me" being conscious of it, and given enough time the exceedingly improbable can happen, such as something coming into existence, somewhere, that I perceive as "me" again, possibly in some unimaginably remote future so far off that it isn't even in this cycle of our universe, and certainly having no connection whatsoever to this life as that would be certainly unprovable, and more likely completely impossible no matter how advanced our understanding becomes. However, given that there are so many orders of magnitude more "lesser beings" than conscious and technological ones (how many trillions of times more insects and bacteria are there than humans?) I might have to have go through many millions of brief and miserable lives before I have a long enjoyable one again as something equivalent to a human being. So savor it as long as you can! :^)

---

Thanks, Kevin. You have a good plan, and I hope it works it out for you without suicide.

You and my mother would have had gotten along very well and had some nice conversations.

I told my mother while I was taking care of her that I saw no point in going on myself after she died. ~She said that was wrong, and that she didn't want me to feel that way.

---

The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Even though I have had an often difficult life, even to the point, at times, where I wished I were dead I have never come close to contemplating suicide. I have to admit that I don't understand the thinking of a mind that leads a person to that extreme solution to his or her problems. All of the suicides I am familiar with have been committed by people who were at least moderately wealthy if not filthy rich.

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

I am convinced of the "scientific reincarnation" hypothesis that when I die, a tremendous amount of time can pass without "me" being conscious of it, and given enough time the exceedingly improbable can happen, such as something coming into existence, somewhere, that I perceive as "me" again,

There's a good show on public tv here called, Closer to Truth, that explores ideas about the nature of consciousness. So, what do you think happens to the "me" after death? Does it just float around indefinitely? Where does it go in between tangible existences?

---

The mind is a weird and mysterious place

So, what do you think happens to the "me" after death? Does it just float around indefinitely? Where does it go in between tangible existences?

That make me think of what happened to "me" before I was born...
But I cannot remember nothing at all of it...

So, what do you think happens to the "me" after death? Does it just float around indefinitely? Where does it go in between tangible existences?

That make me think of what happened to "me" before I was born...
But I cannot remember nothing at all of it...

That is one interesting point.
AS you I have no recollection of a prior life before I was born.
However, Like most humans I have primal fears.

Mine are snakes, saber tooth tigers, Crocs and or alligators and Tigers.

Why you ask? I have no idea. None of my ancesters has been killed by one that I know of.. Is it racial memory handed down through our DNA. Or is it because we are reincarnated?

all life is electro- chemical. maybe we do just drift until?

---

[/quote]

Old James

I am now faced with a mother who is losing her mind - literally. She has dementia and is having a very hard time remembering words and, more recently, how to do things. On Mother's Day she tried to use an asparagus as a knife to cut her food. That's pretty disconcerting for her kids - me and my two brothers. She has almost no short-term memory. She is miserable regardless of where she is living. She was living in assisted living near my older brother in Oregon. Then she moved down to Texas because my younger brother and I both live here. She moved in with my brother. (I drive up to visit once or twice a month.) She eventually became miserable at my brother's house. She convinced herself that my brother's wife doesn't like her. (She does.) Mom then decided to go back to assisted living and has been living at a facility about five minutes from my brother's house for a few months. She recently decided she's miserable there, as well.

She won't live with me because I have so many pets and mine is an unusual lifestyle. I have several litterboxes around the house but still have pets that pee and poop on the floor. My house smells bad. I'm doing better keeping it clean, but it still smells bad. It's a life I basically chose and created for myself and, even though I'd rather not have to spend time cleaning up after untrained pets, I've accepted my life. But I don't expect anyone else to, especially mom. And she wouldn't. If she decided to live with me, she'd end up being miserable here, too. She would probably keep it to herself, though. Then we'd be finding her another place to live.

Physically mom can get around very slowly with a walker, but only for short walks. It is difficult to impossible for her to do the things she used to do - simple things like opening a jar, combing her hair (she can't move her arm up and back to comb the back of her head), etc.

Mom is miserable. She's told me she's miserable. But she's healthy, basically. She's 90 years old and could live many more years. I don't think she wants to and, frankly, I don't want to see her live a miserable life for much longer.

Here's my question:

If your mom was in this situation and asked you to help her to die, would you?

I'm not talking about what the law says. Assisted suicide is illegal nearly everywhere. If it helps, assume that it's legal wherever you live. I don't want legal answers/opinions. I wan't moral answers/opinions.

Feel free to ask questions.


Thanks.

---

~Sue~

So, what do you think happens to the "me" after death? Does it just float around indefinitely? Where does it go in between tangible existences?

To be scientific, it requires that there be absolutely no connection between the two lives. No phantom memories of going down with the Titanic or being beheaded during the French Revolution, etc. (Why aren't 99.9% of those "past lives" just nameless nobodies to match the real-world proportion I wonder...) Our consciousness is born and dies with our brain, and is utterly unconnected to the consciousness of some other "brain" or equivalent in an unimaginably remote future that we happen to perceive as ourselves.

The upshot of this elegant hypothesis is that given a either an endlessly cycling monoverse or an infinity of multiverses, or a combination of both, that "we" have always and will always be here. To us, as soon as we die we will be reborn without any mystic intervention required, with no perception of the chasm of time that may have passed.... effectively immortal albeit in small disconnected intervals, and mostly as barely-conscious beings.

Why you ask? I have no idea. None of my ancesters has been killed by one that I know of.. Is it racial memory handed down through our DNA.

Of course... our not-ancestors who were not wary of snaky or predatory beasts quickly found themselves their meal and didn't get to pass on their not-wary genes. Our ancestors who were wary survived and passed on their wary genes until just about everyone had them.

---

If your mom was in this situation and asked you to help her to die, would you?

Depends. Be Google, yes. Be Amazon, likely. Do the deed, not likely. (In case that didn't translate, give information, purchase supplies, push the button)

Both Mom and Dad had no code orders. I do understand it. But Mom and Dad both died of cancer. Cancer can be incredibly painful. It is a bit easier for me to accept ending pain sooner when you know the end is neigh and it can only get worse.

I guess you have to decide if "miserable" is at the same level of suffering.

So sorry you are having to deal with this.

Dear Suzie-Q,

do you have any family members who you could talk to?
Sorry I I don't have any more ideas.
only to say that I am praying for you and your Mum.

Love and big hug,
Byron

Sue, I'm really sorry about your mother's situation.

Back in March of 2014, my mother fell at home, and what should have been a fairly recoverable sacral fracture of her rear pelvis, became life-threatening due to her contracting pneumonia while recuperating in the hospital. She went downhill pretty fast and was on life-support for a couple of weeks, then intubated(breathing and feeding tubes) for the next 4 months. She never regained the ability to walk because she weakened considerably, and she didn't want physical therapy. I was bound and determined I was going to get her home(the house she and my dad bought after they got married), and that entailed me quitting my job, and moving back in with her(she had lived alone in the house ever since I moved out after I graduated from U of L in 1990).

I became my mother's 24/7 caregiver. We had no other relatives, and I didn't want any outside help because it would have just muddied the water, given the fact she was experiencing some mental confusion, and I hesitate to call it dementia, because it was definitely not your garden-variety type. Unlike your mother's situation, my mother was not upset about her predicament. She even thought everything was fine, and that certainly made things easier for both of us. Bottom line is, I made sure she was safe, healthy, and happy, and she died peacefully in her sleep on the sofa next to me, May 3rd 2017. Throughout this adventure, my mother reverted to much younger perceptions of herself, and I actually became her husband(my father - who died in 1982), and her mother(who died before I was born), and there were imaginary carbon copies of me running around(she asked sometimes where "the other gordon" was). I certainly was wearing all those caregiver hats, so her reality in many ways made sense to me. There are so many anecdotes I could go into, but in the grand scheme of things I have to say it all made me feel like she was living in multiple planes of existence, and reinforces my belief that there's more to life than what meets the eye.

Getting back to your question, my first reaction is to say, "no", I would not have helped my mother die if that was what she wanted, but it's so hard for me to fathom her wanting that, I just can't give you a straight answer. I was afraid many times during the last part of our life together, and I asked my mother if she felt like she was going to die, and she said she had "no intention of dying". Keep in mind, too, my mother was not in pain, and in spite of her fragile circumstances, she was for all intents and purposes just as happy the last three years as she was at any other point in her life.

I'm sorry Sue; I want to try to give you a straightforward personal answer to your question, but I just can't. It's a theoretical situation that I've never experienced, and one I can't give advice for. My heart is with you, though.

---

The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Kevin, based on what you said here -

I am convinced of the "scientific reincarnation" hypothesis that when I die, a tremendous amount of time can pass without "me" being conscious of it, and given enough time the exceedingly improbable can happen, such as something coming into existence, somewhere, that I perceive as "me" again, possibly in some unimaginably remote future so far off that it isn't even in this cycle of our universe, and certainly having no connection whatsoever to this life as that would be certainly unprovable, and more likely completely impossible no matter how advanced our understanding becomes.

I'm confused about your statement, here -

Our consciousness is born and dies with our brain, and is utterly unconnected to the consciousness of some other "brain" or equivalent in an unimaginably remote future that we happen to perceive as ourselves.

and that contradicts -

The upshot of this elegant hypothesis is that given a either an endlessly cycling monoverse or an infinity of multiverses, or a combination of both, that "we" have always and will always be here. To us, as soon as we die we will be reborn without any mystic intervention required, with no perception of the chasm of time that may have passed.... effectively immortal albeit in small disconnected intervals, and mostly as barely-conscious beings.

---

The mind is a weird and mysterious place

There is no contradiction... the "you" that will be born perhaps a trillion trillion years, or tomorrow, after "you" die from this life won't be the same "you" at all with no connection. It could be a sluglike being in a methane ocean in perpetual darkness, for example. But to "you" no time at all would have passed and "you" would have no possible memories of any previous life.

It's like the old conundrum of going through a Star Trek transporter: The people that come out will swear up and down that they are the same people who just went in, and for all purposes are, but it's just as possible that the people who went into the transporter are now dead and these doppelgangers who claim to be them are completely unconnected to them... one thread of consciousness ended and another began anew.

---

This is where I get confused on your viewpoint, Kevin:

given enough time the exceedingly improbable can happen, such as something coming into existence, somewhere, that I perceive as "me" again

From that, you seem to say you think it's possible that your consciousness can come back in some other form, but you also said

Our consciousness is born and dies with our brain

---

The mind is a weird and mysterious place

"If your mom was in this situation and asked you to help her to die, would you?"
No. Killing another human being , or aiding their suicide, is always wrong. No matter how logical or sensible it may seem it is still wrong. Every human being should live their lives from start to finish encompassing all joy and suffering. To interfere or cut this journey short cannot bode well. Sub consciously I believe everyone knows this so if you kill your mother you sub conscious will haunt you forever.

---

Tough question Sue. I say first check the law and plan from there. My Dad has already made his wishes known. If it comes down to a severe quality of life issue, a dirt nap is preferred. Same for my stepmom.

Now if it ever comes about and the deed is done. It is something you will have to carry with you to your dying day. Just hope their are no major regrets and you feel you done your best if it ever happens.

---

I have to agree with Monday.
I don't believe it is mine to decide when a life should end.
My life, or anybody else's.

---

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

I think part of the problem with addressing suicide is thinking that our intelligent friend would never "do that".

---

The mind is a weird and mysterious place