In the Washington Post on July 4, 2006, columnist Abigail Trafford waxed eloquently about the tragedy of suicide, particularly among older men among whom it is becoming quite common. Basically, Trafford linked most such suicides to depression, mental illness and the impact of ageism. I’ll link this posting with her column so that you may make your own judgments about these views.
Today at lunch, three of my friends and I discussed the subject and came to a rather different conclusion from Trafford. All of us are in our early to mid-seventies and all suffer from a smorgasbord of the maladies associated with aging, including cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and mild to serious vision and hearing impairments, among other things. We are retired federal managers who worked together and have been friends for more than a third of a century. The event that inspired the column and the luncheon topic was the highly publicized apparent suicide of a prominent Maryland publisher who was reportedly depressed because of heart disease. The columnist found that this duality matched her profile of the suicide prone quite well.
At least three of us indicated that we had contemplated suicide as a possible end to our lives many times since middle age. The discussion quickly cut to the heart of the matter: talk is cheap and such thoughts are purely hypothetical until acted upon – and none of us has attempted it. We discussed the Maryland case as well as the death of George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak who committed suicide at the height of his corporate power. In both of these cases, the perpetrator/victims were men of wealth who did not match the profiles of those at our table.
Trying not to be snappy, the consensus at the light hearted luncheon discussion was that ending one’s own life might well be based on far different circumstances from those who were the prime subjects of the article. Economics did not come into play in the column, but we felt that this was a very important element in the decision. Sticking strictly with the older men subset of suicides, we thought that poor men had less of a financial stake in the decision. A poor older fellow intent on going on living despite a determination that his quality of life was poor could do so much longer than subjects of middle or higher income and resources but who were still not wealthy. The death of the former was considered to have less economic impact on his survivors than the latter who would have to use resources initially intended for his survivors to continue on.
Leaving money behind – no pun intended – the question arises: is it normal to feel the loss of quality of life without being depressed? Speaking for myself and – I’m guessing for my companions – we have all lost some physical abilities, but this, in itself, has not caused us great difficulties or undue depression. Since all of us had worked in highly charged atmospheres using our mental faculties and long experience in complex bureaucratic situations, it is the loss of mental acuity that we fear most.
It was at this juncture that we agreed that if we sensed significant drop in our intellectual abilities that there would be in a very real sense a loss of our personhood. With no great sense of depression would it not be reasonable to attempt to end it all before a total loss of ourselves and our esteem set in? Obviously, we, like most, wish to cling a little longer and at some point, the danger would be that we would no longer have the physical, mental or emotional capacity to commit suicide.
Before we skipped to lighter topics such as world peace, we toasted our health, such as it is, and the very high quality of each of our lives. While the statistics used by Trafford are very interesting, we felt strongly that her conclusions were far from the mark when it came to men like ourselves.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/03/AR2006070300764.html
World peace is good and worthy of serious contemplation, and we drank to it.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
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