Yes

by lily frost

Created on: October 22, 2011   Last Updated: October 23, 2011

Your father is dying of old age. He does not know your name. He may have signed the closest thing we have to suicide of the body and that is the 'Health Care Proxy' in modern medicine. He is a DNR.

This means "Do Not Resuscitate." To our society this is okay. He is old and he has no use to our society. As a matter of fact, he is a financial burden to family and the country. So why not let him die in this case?

Now go back a few years, when he was working, or as a active father. He knew your name. He participated in your life. The life insurance company would have  insured him for very little money. Life was good and yes, suicide was not part of it.

Now he is ill. He has a incurable painful disease, or an invisible mental illness has stricken him. He can't see a value in his life. Medicine doesn't help and he is suffering in a world that the living says will get better. He knows or feels, that it will not. Now he is expected to live because of the family which he might have forgotten in his old age anyway. Maybe because of the grandchildren which he won't see grow up.

Worse you are now the one caretaker of your children. You try to do your best and agencies keep coming in to tell you that you failed. You become more depressed and your symptoms are not relieved by the medications, from the help you did seek. You turn to God and now you beg his forgiveness. You feel that you are not serving as well as society is saying that you should.

Maybe you a person addicted to drugs. Yes, they say you are a disgrace to your family and another financial burden to society. Maybe you even have a jail record that prevents you from reestablishing your good name.

There are some little reasons that may make one feel that there is no way out. Who says that one must live for others? If a person is in the mist of demons voices, or feels the banishment of God or feels like every person they come in contact with will die, because of their knowing them, what is one to do?

They call them delusions, signs of severe depression and voices from where? Life can be very frightening to live each day. And yes, you are not old enough or sick enough to declare a "DNR" in today's society. A doctor went to jail for his assisted suicides and that may had been 'just.'

I know that the act of suicide is one of the most painful decisions one may ever make. One has to deal with the "what if." They have to deal with the consequences of whom they leave behind prematurely. They have to deal with God, as so many people say suicide is forbidden in the Bible. Maybe... but for me ignorance is bliss. God says,"he gives us what we can handle" but then why are so many people unable to handle their pains.

I know I would be devastated if any of my children committed suicide, as I would feel I had failed them. I also would have to review what I did to help. Was I there for them? Maybe if I committed suicide, I would not had been there for them. Does this necessarily make my suicide their reason to die. No!

Children grow up all the time in divorced families, foster care and in whole homes. It is not necessarily the reason for more suicides. If society would look at the life the person was living before they criticize; then maybe suicides could be as an accepted as "DNR" is. The family could be there and know that all was done to relieve the pain. It wouldn't have to be misunderstood or someone to blame. It wouldn't have to be a shock by a knock on the door. If suicide is taking seriously by everyone and not ridiculed by friends and family; then there might not be a need to commit suicide.

People who commit suicide are in great distress and it is not a easy way to go. It is lonely and frightening. It has it's uncertainties. It is not a decision to make alone but it is necessary in today's society. Suicide prevention centers are not enough. When people are allowed to end their life, despite others opinions as to their pain; there would be at least less suicides which are done without family. There may be less suicide all together, as people will pre-plan and attempt to understand. Also, all possible help will be given.

It is a lonely world, when you are in the mist of ending your life. It is not a selfish act but a desperate act to seek relief. To have to do it alone is the same as murder to me.

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