Thank you. I don’t see it as courage, but as the best way I could honor my FIL who was a good & honorable man. It was also keeping a promise my husband had made to his father before his own [my husband’s] death.
I agree with the above, I just wish we had spoken more literally about assisted suicide before my mother lost her ability to self-determine. I was able to provide all the things we had discussed, but we had not gone down that road, not in time for me to feel comfortable taking that step.
My dad died when he was 71. His dad died when he was…71. 72 is a big number in my house! I’m 55 and had a heart scare 6 months ago that left me with three stents after a pretty urgent situation (I’m fine now - just a boring diet of no this and no that). I thought I was a lot healthier then my dad / granddad based on lifestyle and exercise but maybe not. Much of it is DNA.
Anyway, I like to enjoy myself. I think I’ll make it way past them but I would prefer to make it to 82 or so while having fun then 90 without.
My sister and I did not see eye-to-eye on my father’s request for assisted suicide. It caused a rift between us and I do not believe that rift will ever be mended. It is very complicated.
@BerneseMtnMom Not assisted suicide, but our experience with varying decision methods:
My late MIL had a living will, and her wishes were clear. It’s just my husband and adult sons for descendants, and all were committed to respecting her intent. Husband was healthcare POA but included sons every step of the way.
Kids were both at peace with the decision to end nutrition and hydration. One of them took a little more discussion and more exhaustive analysis of input from the medical team. Everyone agreed eventually but took different method and pace (not enough to prolong the decision, but more intensive give and take during process) to get there.
This gave husband and me the chance to tell them that we’d set up our own paperwork as clearly as possible. We stressed that the most important entity in any decision about our death is their relationship with one another – we’ll be dead, but they’ll hopefully have decades beyond that. I also told them I’d haunt them if they weren’t nice to each other. 
When I was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer at 44 a few years ago I was beyond terrified. It’s a completely indescribable ball of fear, rage, sadness and disbelief. But that volatile cocktail is draining and after a bit you just focus on living.
I think because of that experience I don’t have much fear associated with the Coronavirus. We all need to do our part for the greater good. Protect one another.
But fearing death is a true waste of life.
@HouseChatte , thanks so much for explaining your message. I can barely write this, but my Dad and sister made a plan and excluded me from the discussions. I have no idea what they said or did between them. That resulted in a failed suicide attempt by my Dad when my sister was out of town. That is all I can write. It happened 9 months ago. The silver lining is, as you said, we have had wonderful discussions with our adult son and daughter. Their love and support for each other is the key.
I am so terribly sorry, @BerneseMtnMom. That sounds so painful. (((hugs)))
Thank you @collage1. The perspectives of others helps.
As a Christian I know where I am going and am not afraid to die. However, I prefer to at least be around until my kids are grown. If I were to die that would leave them with my ex-husband and that does scare me, he does enough damage as it is.
I hope that I would be able to approach death like some of my loved ones, including an aunt who died last year from pancreatic cancer. They fought to live, but also had peace in knowing that they were saved and ready to go. I also want my family to be able to take comfort in the fact that I have gone on to a better place. Having been to a lot of funerals, there was so much more peace for the family when they knew the final destination of their loved one, there was sadness for their loss but rejoicing for the deceased.
I think I am not so afraid of death itself but of saying goodbye, and of suffering (of myself and others). I believe generally what @banker believes but maybe I am not quite so evolved in being able to practice that serenity. I feel I am both rational and spiritual. I don’t think or feel that any one religion or culture owns the truth, but I think truth (warped by our misunderstandings) may permeate age-old religions, whether the creators of such religions were actually prophets or just highly intuitive people. I am open to atheism, but, like @privatebanker said, I can’t wrap my head around the “why” of anything without a spirit. I agree with the processes described by science once the whole thing is set off but, then WHY anything? Why not just continued void and nothingness… No atoms or particles or forces that could evolve into beings that could perceive them? How/why did the forces that created the Big Bang come to be?
I would like to believe in an intervening, whispering God, and feel I have experienced some transcendent, non-coincidental things, but I have seen and known of too much human suffering in which no God or guardian angel seemed to intervene: My husband’s extended-family ancestors in the Holocaust. People I lived with in eastern Sierra Leone who later experienced the blood diamonds civil war in which child soldiers were drugged and put in the front lines. People suffering slavery and abuse all over the world. Small children stuck parentless in immigration camps. At most I can hope to believe in a Spirit that comforts in the worst of the suffering.
I adopted my daughter when I was older. I have a seventeen-year-old at almost age 63 so, yes, I do have some anxieties about dying before she is fully on her adult feet and happy. Fortunately, my husband is a little younger and reasonably healthy (though he does scare me riding his bicycle at breakneck speed on winding mountain roads where cars and trucks drive too fast). My siblings are even older and my D grew up far from cousins she doesn’t really know. On the bright side, my D is intelligent and competent, but she also has a very soft, home- loving heart and I can’t bear the thought of her left to make her way in the world alone. So I do needs to stick around for a good while.
My greatest fear for myself re the Coronavirus is not so much the virus itself but the possibility of being hospitalized with an overwhelmed staff. I have multiple and severe food allergies that have evolved and changed over time, not all of which show up on tests (and not all specific foods/dyes/additives seem to even be included on tests). I have a severely limited diet and am used to it, but I don’t believe a hospital staff (especially an overwhelmed hospital staff) will believe me or be able to accommodate my allergies, nor let my husband come to feed me in a quarantine situation. I think I’d more likely die of a reaction from force-feeding than of the virus.
I have found one physician/Ph.D in immunology and pharmocology at Tufts whose cutting-edge research on previously unknown types of immune reactions in mast cells (that show up in idiopathic ”allergic” responses and other pathologies not measurable by classic immune testing) may describe what I’ve been experiencing (but no allergist could verify) and I had planned to spend time inBoston after my D goes to college to offer myself as a research subject or patient. I’m just hoping to stay healthy and out of a hospital until that can happen. It gives me hope that, since he is Yale-educated, his research is being published and he coordinates with the Mayo Clinic, his work won’t easily be scoffed at. I’ve been told for years that it’s all in my head.
In the meantime, I try (often unsuccessfully) to live by these lines attributed to the Sufi Rumi …(though the translation/intended meaning has been disputed FWIW):
“Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are thousands of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
If this is too wordy and too much…well, I’m a little raw right now from the sudden death yesterday of a little cat. A small thing in the scope of it all but I loved him.
If you got this far, thanks for listening. I usually don’t have a chance to say so much IRL.
My mother died a week ago today. She has given me three clear signs that she is okay.
She was very religious, strong Christian in a strong Christian enclave. The days following her death and her services, etc. were appropriately infused with faith and prayers. My nephew, her grandson, is a Methodist minister. He is wonderful. It has given me a lot to think about.
I’m not scared of dying myself but I am terrified to think of losing my husband. He is eight years older than I.
I am not religious, do not believe in afterlife, so for me dying is just like endless sleep without dreams. Very peaceful, no fear, no sadness, except for those who might miss me.
Watch some of David Abel’s videos. He’s 75. Clinically obese and has diabetes. He was on the Diamond Princess cruise. He got COVID-19. He was hospitalized because he was stuck in Japan. But he could have managed woth no problem if at home. He had pneumonia…but really he was never bad enough to need a respirator. He had no treatment other than rest and fluids ( oral). Except for a 48 hour period he never felt all that sick ( more like a mild flu). He’s fine now and home. His wife is 71 and also had COVID and some pneumonia. Never really felt too bad. No treatment other than rest and fluids ( oral).
This is the most statistically likely course of event even if you get the virus at your age.