Decisions
Today I’ve learnt that on Wedsnesday a friend of mine decided to finish his life. I can’t find the right words to say what I feel and I cannot imagine what his family feel now. We all have our ups and downs, but we always seem to find enough strength to move on … He didn’t.
So you only learned yesterday. Someone must’ve broken it to you in the evening, after we’d wished each other a good weekend. I feel sorry, Basia.
How different a story here. Coincidentally, on the same evening a friend of mine told me on the phone how her terminally ill mother had used the right to make decision about her own care. The moment she knew what the prospects were, she declined treatment of any sort except palliative care. Now in great pain, needing large doses of morphine to control the symptoms, she’s giving the baffled witnesses lessons in courage and dignified dying.
It’s ironic that while people have grown to live much longer, some invariably decide to live much shorter. A lapse of strength, weakness, you seem to say. Or, an act of courage? But under what conditions?
“April is the cruelest month … ” they say.
I’m so sorry to hear that, Basia. In situations like this, it’s so difficult to say anything, still, I do think one could at least try. In the last few weeks I’ve heard about a few people who took the same decision – and I don’t really think it’s the month, do you, Albert? I’d rather think it’s the times – when people pass one another, sometimes look without really seeing… People’s relations are not that easy to master and somehow I get the impression we seem to have lost it – the intuitive knowledge of how to behave ourselves in these interpersonal spheres. I know it’s chaotic, but it’s all I can write right now. I’m really sorry, Basia.