Threading back to your two previous newsletters about empathy, understanding what one doesn’t condone, I think I understand why middle-aged men who everyone sees as having everything to live for, feel worthless, used up, obsolete, too expensive to keep alive and feel being dead is not only the solution to their feeling useless, but the solution to the problems in everyone else’s life around them.
Their children won’t have to worry about the cost and toll of elder care; his spouse won’t be tasked with any emotional labor as the decades of holding in his emotions, needs and wants come tumbling out in an uncontrolled torrent, visibly scaring and upsetting those around him who always saw him as a rock; there will be no more requests for intimacy met with deep sighs; the costs of accommodating the needs of a broken body and mind won’t need tending...
I recently received my HS alumni newsletter and a milestone reunion was celebrated without me. There were fewer folks in the photo, but I mostly turn to the list of people who have died from my graduating year ... three more (we were only 87) and my first thought is always, “lucky bastard... he didn’t have to go through getting old...”)
I’m ok. I’m not going to end my own life. But at this stage in my life, I sure wouldn’t mind being dead. I’m a pain in the ass to live with on good days; I’m sure there would be sighs of relief all around.
I will regret not reading your views on the issue when you’re well into the winter of your own life, Liz. Maybe this Universe will curse me with another thirty years out of spite, if only so I could read _that_ essay. 😁
I really, really needed to see this today. If I say anything more, this will become a rambling novel. Just- thank you💚
Threading back to your two previous newsletters about empathy, understanding what one doesn’t condone, I think I understand why middle-aged men who everyone sees as having everything to live for, feel worthless, used up, obsolete, too expensive to keep alive and feel being dead is not only the solution to their feeling useless, but the solution to the problems in everyone else’s life around them.
Their children won’t have to worry about the cost and toll of elder care; his spouse won’t be tasked with any emotional labor as the decades of holding in his emotions, needs and wants come tumbling out in an uncontrolled torrent, visibly scaring and upsetting those around him who always saw him as a rock; there will be no more requests for intimacy met with deep sighs; the costs of accommodating the needs of a broken body and mind won’t need tending...
I recently received my HS alumni newsletter and a milestone reunion was celebrated without me. There were fewer folks in the photo, but I mostly turn to the list of people who have died from my graduating year ... three more (we were only 87) and my first thought is always, “lucky bastard... he didn’t have to go through getting old...”)
I’m ok. I’m not going to end my own life. But at this stage in my life, I sure wouldn’t mind being dead. I’m a pain in the ass to live with on good days; I’m sure there would be sighs of relief all around.
I will regret not reading your views on the issue when you’re well into the winter of your own life, Liz. Maybe this Universe will curse me with another thirty years out of spite, if only so I could read _that_ essay. 😁