Suicide: the Selfish and Cowardly Way Out (Usually)

When I first heard about my niece’s suicide, my emotions were not of sorrow and sadness.  My major emotions were disgust and anger.

Shannon threw away 25 years of life that could have been spent watching her three children grow, marry and have children of their own.  She made herself into a pathetic, tragic figure, losing respect in the process.  In the minds of many family members and friends, she will be forever thought of as someone who had something terribly wrong with her.  That’s not a great way to be remembered.

My Niece Commits Suicide

My niece Shannon lies comatose in a hospital bed tonight.  Today is her birthday, the last one of her life.  Tomorrow they will cease life support and turn off the machines that keep her heart beating and her lungs respirating.  Less than a week ago she went into the garage of her home in Santa Clara, California, stepped up on a sofa there, wrapped a curtain drawstring around her neck and stepped off.

Minutes later, her husband Dan and eldest daughter found her hanging in the garage.  They quickly cut her down and applied CPR, as did the medical alert team that quickly arrived.  She was taken to the hospital where she was put on life support and tested for vital signs.  After two days the doctors could find no sign of brain activity; she was in a vegetative state.  

Shannon had been experiencing Covid 19 symptoms for several weeks, which started after she was vaccinated against the disease.  She was told by her employers at San Jose State that she could not resume her teaching position until she got the booster shot.  She got it and the symptoms worsened.  She was in constant pain and suffering from anxiety, but her doctors said she wasn’t dying and death was not expected.  

What drove her to commit such a terrible act?  Did the vaccine cause insanity?  I am no doctor and can only speculate.  She leaves behind a husband, a son and two daughters, the youngest of whom will graduate from high school on June 1.  

Shannon is 53 years old today, forever 53.

Update:  She passed away peacefully at 12:13 Pacific time today, Sunday, May 29, 2022.

Fear of Death

When I was young, the fear of death bothered me a great deal.  I remember taking my first business course at West Valley Junior College, when classes were still being held on the former campus of Campbell Junior High School, before it moved to a permanent campus in Saratoga, California.  During a break, I stood outside the classroom drinking vending machine coffee.  I was filled with horror and dread at the knowledge that I would someday die, that the world would go on without me.  Traffic would still fill the streets, people would still go to work, students would still attend classes but I wouldn’t be there.  

As the years passed, the dread and horror lessened and now, in old age, they have ceased completely.  So many friends and family members have preceded me in death that I feel somewhat guilty at having survived them.  Why am I still here?  Am I being punished?

A subject that interests me greatly is the near death experience, a common phenomenon among those who have flatlined but still survived.  A common characteristic is that the experiencers have felt enveloped in a bright light and immersed in feelings of great love, i.e., that they feel loved beyond all prior experience.  They meet loved ones who died before, and are even reunited with deceased pets like dogs and cats.  Most do not want to come back but are told they have no choice, that their time is not yet.  

An original researcher into the phenomenon is Raymond Moody, whose book “Life After Life” introduced the subject to millions.  Moody reported that after studying thousands of NDEs since, he finally just accepted it for what it seems, that there is an afterlife and that we survive physical death.

I hope so.  I would like to rejoin departed friends, family and especially my dogs, in another dimension, in a better world than this.  Is it true?  Hope costs nothing and I will find out in not too many more years.  

Another Death of a Friend: Life Sucks and Then You Die

Questions About Death

When you’re my age your friends and family members die at an increasing rate.  Yes, I know my own departure awaits out there within time and circumstance.  This week I learned a friend since 1969 passed away from cancer, one Danny Bassler.  He was younger than I am and I never thought he would die before me.

When my older brother Ted died on Aptil 5, 2019, Danny observed “He was my best friend.”  Now perhaps they are reunited.

I have so many unanswerable questions about death.  When you’re dead do you know you are dead?  Do all of your memories and personality disappear like smoke in the wind?  Does your essence somehow survive and continue on?

Also, how does your body know when to die?  How does your heart know when to stop beating?

Faces In Death: Exploring Cemeteries

Cemeteries can be fascinating places to visit, even when the entombed are just ordinary people, not famous or well known.  The granite and marble tombstones, crypts and statuary are grief frozen in time by those left behind.  

Even for ordinary lives each grave represents a human being with a unique story.  Often their stories can be gleaned from the internet, from Find-A-Grave or from Ancestry.com or Newspaper.com.  

Some video bloggers have learned to put the two together to make YouTube videos that show selected graves and tell the stories of the departed.  Some of the best vids talk about crimes or disasters like fires that killed the entombed.  

My two favorite V-Loggers who do this include “Lamont At Large” (see pic above) and “Faces of the Forgotten.”  The latter enhances his videos with some great drone footage, a feat I hope to duplicate soon.

Check out these vloggers when you have a chance.

A Good Definition of Grief

Grief is the Worst Psychic Pain of All. How Can We Endure It?

I still grieve for my dog, Bogie.  I hate grief, it is the worst psychic pain of all.  How can we deal with it?  I think it’s similar to the flu.  You just have to suffer through it while waiting for it to pass.  In my home I see Bogie everywhere, in the back yard, in the living room where he lay in front of my armchair where I watch TV, at the foot of my bed where he slept most every night of the last twelve years.  I am waiting for scar tissue to cover the gaping wound in my soul.

I know there are many people suffering even more terrible grief than I, like the families in Waukesha, Wisconsin who lost six family members who were run over by a car that plowed into the Christmas parade that they were part of.  I have a friend, a Lutheran pastor, whose 14 year old son committed suicide over some personal pain he was experiencing. He was a talented kid who was a lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol, a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans, and his parents’ only child.  I can’t imagine how painful that must be to his parents.  Also, My best friend for sixty years lost his only son in a car crash in 2001.  My grief pales in comparison.

May God grant us all peace and release from such unbearable pain.

Rose Kennedy had this to say:  “It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’  I do not agree.The wounds remain.  In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens.  But it is never gone.”

 

Life, Death and the Hereafter

On Life and Death

I am not a member of any religion but I do believe in a higher power.  Some call it simply the universe, the source, or God.  I’m not a fan of this life on Earth, because of the existence of death.  I’m now 77 years of age and I have seen so many of my friends and relatives die.   One day they’re here and the next day they’re not.  Where did they go?  Did they have immortal souls or is that just a happy myth?  Absence a body, can they still have memories, retain their personalities, still think?  Do they know they’re dead?

No one can be sure but studies of the near death experience give us hope that these things are true.  Better yet, these experiences indicate dogs and cats and other animals also make it into the heavenly realm.  I hope so, I sure want to see all of my dogs and cats again.

Older Than Dirt

Today is my birthday.  I am 77 years old, the same age my father was when he died in 1991.

I have outlived my two brothers, Ted and Dennis.  Ted died at 76 in 2019 and Dennis died at 72 in 2020.  

To outlive my father I need to survive until March 9, 2022, when I will be one day older than he was when he passed.  I figured this out using an Excel spreadsheet.

I certainly do not fear death.  However, my health is excellent for my age and I suspect I am fated to suffer this mortal coil until my eighties.  

Rush Limbaugh Dies; Life Goes On; Preparing for Death

Sad event this past Wednesday, February 17:  the great Rush Limbaugh died of lung cancer.  I will miss his voice on the radio.

Perseverance, out latest Mars probe, landed safely on the red planet.  That was a relief since there is always the danger a probe will crash. 

I have been doing back to back tax returns for the past couple of weeks, too tired t post anything here.

When the tax season is over, I plan to start planning for my own death, by going through all my belongings and figuring what to bequeath, give away or throw away.  I am not in imminent danger of dying but at age 76 there is always that possibility.  I have kept diaries and journals since I was eleven years old and I would like to transcribe the best of the manually written ones into Word files to distribute to my kids and grandkids.  Most of the journals are already in Word format, but I want to go through them and delete or edit any comments that might hurt anyone close to me.

I really don't want to do taxes after this season.  I need to find a way to end it without totally pissing off my wife, who thinks we can keep doing taxes until we are a hundred years old.  It's time to downgrade our living style, sell this house in this ruinously expensive state and move somewhere  sane.

Next year I will be 77.  My dad died at 77, my older brother at 76, my younger brother at 72.   My mom died at 85 and I think I take after her.  If so, I will have to endure this existence longer than I would like.

A Pox on the Years 2019 & 2020: I Lose Both My Brothers

Nothing makes you more aware of your mortality than the deaths of friends and relatives, and I have lost several of each during the past two years.  My older brother Ted died at age 76 and 31 days on April 5, 2019, of congestive heart failure.  He sometimes commented on this blog as "Bro."  My younger brother Dennis followed him on February 27, 2020, of Alzheimer's Disease.  Dennis was 72.

I turned 76 last month and this week passed my older brother in longevity.  I do not fear death and often find myself welcoming it.  Old age, aches and pains, the recent loss of our democratic republic to the fraud and ruthlessness of Democrats, is discouraging.  Facing another four years of Democrat gross mismanagement of the economy, the military and the border is very depressing.  

I am in very good health for my age, according to my doctors, but a year ago I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes, which I keep closely controlled with medications and diet.

Dying of old age is not a tragedy, it is a fact of life and a part of nature.  Nevertheless, I don't have to like it.

Above Photo, Circa 1966:  From left to right, my father on steel guitar, me on bass guitar, Ted on guitar, Dennis on drums.

Cemetery Musings: Preparing for My Final Expenses

Oak Hill Cemetery, San Jose California

Since my wife had heart surgery on Wednesday, she became concerned with the what-ifs of our earthly existence, and figured it was time to arrange for our burials.  We already had our cemetery plots picked out and, along with our coffins, paid for, just a few yards from the graves of my parents.  However, there is more to final expenses than that.  You need a tombstone and have to pick out the type and color of granite from a wall chart, as well as a "vault," which is a metal box that encloses the casket.  The vault prevents your grave from caving in and prevents water intrusion.  There are several types of vaults to choose from, including stainless steel, copper, bronze and others.  We chose the stainless steel.  We settled on a slate-blue gray for the flat tombstone, which will be one stone for the both of us.

The cost of all this is $9,000 for the two of us, paid over five years:  $1,000 down and $150 a month to pay off the balance.  If one dies before payment is complete, the balance due for that person is forgiven.  If we both die, the entire balance is forgiven.

So when we die, our corpses will be sealed and preserved for centuries to come.  Why?  For what purpose?  I would prefer the old-fashioned way of burial, in a pine box where the remains are allowed to completely decompose back to their basic elements, perhaps adding some nutrients to the soil.  The other alternative is cremation.  As I watched the blur over the crematory's smoke stacks, i.e. the heated air carrying water vapor from burning bodies, I decided that was not for me.

Walking through the administrative offices of San Jose's Oak Hill Cemetery gave me the creeps.  Death is all around you.  Somewhere, down the halls in the back rooms, corpses are being washed, embalmed, coiffed and dressed in their Sunday best, then laid out in richly upholstered coffins for display.  A large HD screen in back of the reception desk displays the names of the deceased, the funeral services to be held, the burial dates, the chapels to be used.  A large percentage of the names were Vietnamese.

Everywhere you go, in the sales offices, the viewing rooms, the main vestibule, and even the bathrooms --  there is the cloying smell of flowers. It is a perfume that seems spread through the facility through the air conditioning system.  No doubt this has the same purpose that funeral flowers have had for millenia -- to hide the smell of death.  In older times, the smell was that of decay, but today the smell is that of formaldehyde, i.e. embalming fluid.  The smell took away any appetite I might have had.  I didn't even want to drink the bottled water they gave us.  It was "dead people's water."  Or so I imagined.

I first noticed the weird smell of a funeral when I was around seven years of age, and saw my first deceased person in a coffin -- my maternal grandfather.  I was very aware of the odor of embalming fluid, a smell that I will forever associate with funerals and death.  Which is convenient, since that's about all it is used for.

It's pretty hard to have any cheerful thoughts when visiting cemetery offices, to prepare for one's own final expenses.  You have to finally admit that you are mortal, that you are going to die.  You can ignore it and not think about it, and delay the morbid feelings that acknowledgement brings.  Let your surviving relatives worry about what to do with your body and how to pay for it.  Or, you can do as I and my Mrs did this week, make the arrangements well in advance, sparing your relatives the burden.

In spite of my morbid thoughts about this experience, I am grateful that cemetery companies exist, that morticians and coffin makers and florists and grave diggers exist.  Sending someone off on their final journey is not a pleasant task, but someone has to do it.  Now that it is settled, I plan to wait around for the Grim Reaper to show up, then punch him in the mouth and run.