Morality of inflicting grief

[avalokitesvara]

Do you have a moral/ethical framework for approaching the consequences of your death on the people in your life? For the majority of the people who care about me I feel able to disregard their pain, because I care more about my freedom, and because they are adults who have their own responsibility to cope with adverse experiences which befall them such as losing a loved one.
However when it comes to the children in my life (nephews, I am not a parent) I am quite stimied by the imagination of what my voluntary death would do to their developing psyches, the sense of abandonment and the introduction of the idea of suicide into their lives at such a young age seems like an extremely evil thing to consciously do. I'm not sure how to get around this other than slowly fading from their lives until they lose a sense of connection with me, and then doing it.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I don't feel like I can inflict that pain on my Dad. Because I love him too much. Because he's already gone through so much shit in life. Because I think he may have considered suicide himself when my Mum died but, he hang on for me. So, I'm returning the favour I suppose in holding on for him.

Everyone else, I still have mixed feelings about. I still feel bad about it but, I'm largely estranged from a lot of people so- I'm hoping that distance will help.

Like you, it's maybe the younger ones I feel the worst about. An old friend has a child who I think is pretty sensitive. I worry about his reaction although really- we've only met a handful of times. It's more that it could upset this friend though. Although again, we've mostly lost touch.

I think, once my Dad has gone though, the balance will shift in my favour- that it will be time to put my needs first. My suicide shouldn't come as a complete shock to my closest friends anyway. They know I've had ideation from childhood.

 

[LostLily]

That is why I feel so ashamed about my desire to ctb. Because doing so will put my desire over my friends and family's.

 

[Seele]

I didn't ask to be born, I have the right to die, if my family neglected me since childhood and this caused me trauma, I don't have to worry about my suicide...

 

[avalokitesvara]

I am maybe changing my thinking. I have been nothing but kind and caring towards my family. I have given them what I had to give. I don't need to feel guilty if I have nothing else left.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I don't really feel guilty because the thing about grief is that it's inevitable anyway as you're going to die anyway. Grief will happen regardless of whether you die by suicide or by natural death. This is just the consequence of being birthed into this world against our consent so dying early on is fair game. I don't really care as to what pain my death would inflict as all I care about is dying as early as possible to prevent decades of pain happening upon me. Grief, in comparison, goes away in at least half a year so the future pain that I'd prevent to myself outweighs the pain my family members would get

 

[Alexei_Kirillov]

This is what I wrote in my Note:

[...] if someone has arrived at such a determination—that they are ready to end their life—then I believe it is immoral to keep them alive solely for the sake of others. That's not love; it's a hostage situation. In fact, if any of you were in my position, I would support you in your search for a death that is as safe, painless, and dignified as possible. My personal feelings do not come before your agency over your own body, and they most certainly don't supersede your prerogative to end your own suffering at the time of your choosing. That, in my opinion, is the humane response. That, is love.

 

[avalokitesvara]

This is what I wrote in my Note:

Thank you for this. It made me cry a little bit. You have a compassionate heart.

 

[curiouscvnt]

I care more about my freedom, and because they are adults who have their own responsibility to cope with adverse experiences which befall them such as losing a loved one.

I think you gave words to something I'd had difficulty expressing for some time!
I agree that people can withstand quite alot, and that life is definitely not easy, but I can't say I'd disregard the pain that the people who love me would feel as a result of my death. I think I weigh the costs of continuing a life that I don't want to live against ending that life. Low self worth / self-loathing (which can possibly change, I know...) over a lifetime infiltrates personal relationships like rot; the pain resulting from continuing my life in this way, perhaps to no significant avail in my relationship with myself, is not a cost that I'm willing to absorb. If I were to stay alive solely for others to not have to suffer the aftermath of my suicide, then I am doing something that I regard as unethical and presumptuous: deciding what's better for another conscious, autonomous adult without them knowing it.

So I can also see the hangup with leaving behind children who know you, because children are not yet responsible for themselves and need adults to make decisions in their best interests. My answer to the moral dilemma of completing / attempting suicide and perhaps inevitably subjecting specific, individual children to the knowledge of doing so is that if you don't bear a direct responsibility to those kids (i.e. they're not your kids or your partner's and you're not their guardian in any way), you're off the hook, so to speak. Their parents are the ones who will have to speak to them about your death and be make all those decisions about how to do so. Kids live in the real world, and it's their guardians' job to guide and to try to explain a shit ton of complex stuff to them (or to equip them with the means to live on knowing of intractable complexity); no one else, other than teachers, I suppose, is really obligated.

 

[avalokitesvara]

I think you gave words to something I'd had difficulty expressing for some time!
I agree that people can withstand quite alot, and that life is definitely not easy, but I can't say I'd disregard the pain that the people who love me would feel as a result of my death. I think I weigh the costs of continuing a life that I don't want to live against ending that life. Low self worth / self-loathing (which can possibly change, I know...) over a lifetime infiltrates personal relationships like rot; the pain resulting from continuing my life in this way, perhaps to no significant avail in my relationship with myself, is not a cost that I'm willing to absorb. If I were to stay alive solely for others to not have to suffer the aftermath of my suicide, then I am doing something that I regard as unethical and presumptuous: deciding what's better for another conscious, autonomous adult without them knowing it.

So I can also see the hangup with leaving behind children who know you, because children are not yet responsible for themselves and need adults to make decisions in their best interests. My answer to the moral dilemma of completing / attempting suicide and perhaps inevitably subjecting specific, individual children to the knowledge of doing so is that if you don't bear a direct responsibility to those kids (i.e. they're not your kids or your partner's and you're not their guardian in any way), you're off the hook, so to speak. Their parents are the ones who will have to speak to them about your death and be make all those decisions about how to do so. Kids live in the real world, and it's their guardians' job to guide and to try to explain a shit ton of complex stuff to them (or to equip them with the means to live on knowing of intractable complexity); no one else, other than teachers, I suppose, is really obligated.

Thank you for your really thoughtful response. I feel like you really understood what I was trying to get at in my op. I like your stance and the fact you have seriously weighed up the issue. By "disregard" the pain of the people close to me, really I mean is that if I do ctb I will simply have to try to forget about it, because I can't really cope with the idea at all and it would stop me if I properly thought about it. So I have to delude and deceive myself, and also cope with knowing that that's what I'm doing.

This is also connected with my life plans. If I move abroad to live in the monastery it will also mean my family loses me to an extent. I will be able to visit them and text and call them, but not that often, and I won't be in their lives to nearly the same extent as I have been heretofore. It is hard for me knowing that that will be hard for them. But not so hard that it will stop me living my life the way I want to ( the only way I a m capable of). The alternative would be to stay an eternal child, tethered to the family. The same applies to my suicide if that should come to pass.

Thanks for your perspective about children. Although possibly I am only agreeing with you because it assuages my guilt, I think I do agree with you. I did not choose to bring these children into the world and am not responsible for raising them into adults. It is also the nature of life for horrible things to happen, even to children. All I have control of is my own life and death, and part of that is also accepting that my suicide will be a horrible thing that will happen to some people.

 

[unknown_xav]

I think you gave words to something I'd had difficulty expressing for some time!
I agree that people can withstand quite alot, and that life is definitely not easy, but I can't say I'd disregard the pain that the people who love me would feel as a result of my death. I think I weigh the costs of continuing a life that I don't want to live against ending that life. Low self worth / self-loathing (which can possibly change, I know...) over a lifetime infiltrates personal relationships like rot; the pain resulting from continuing my life in this way, perhaps to no significant avail in my relationship with myself, is not a cost that I'm willing to absorb. If I were to stay alive solely for others to not have to suffer the aftermath of my suicide, then I am doing something that I regard as unethical and presumptuous: deciding what's better for another conscious, autonomous adult without them knowing it.

So I can also see the hangup with leaving behind children who know you, because children are not yet responsible for themselves and need adults to make decisions in their best interests. My answer to the moral dilemma of completing / attempting suicide and perhaps inevitably subjecting specific, individual children to the knowledge of doing so is that if you don't bear a direct responsibility to those kids (i.e. they're not your kids or your partner's and you're not their guardian in any way), you're off the hook, so to speak. Their parents are the ones who will have to speak to them about your death and be make all those decisions about how to do so. Kids live in the real world, and it's their guardians' job to guide and to try to explain a shit ton of complex stuff to them (or to equip them with the means to live on knowing of intractable complexity); no one else, other than teachers, I suppose, is really obligated.

I think you gave words to something I'd had difficulty expressing for some time!
I agree that people can withstand quite alot, and that life is definitely not easy, but I can't say I'd disregard the pain that the people who love me would feel as a result of my death. I think I weigh the costs of continuing a life that I don't want to live against ending that life. Low self worth / self-loathing (which can possibly change, I know...) over a lifetime infiltrates personal relationships like rot; the pain resulting from continuing my life in this way, perhaps to no significant avail in my relationship with myself, is not a cost that I'm willing to absorb. If I were to stay alive solely for others to not have to suffer the aftermath of my suicide, then I am doing something that I regard as unethical and presumptuous: deciding what's better for another conscious, autonomous adult without them knowing it.

So I can also see the hangup with leaving behind children who know you, because children are not yet responsible for themselves and need adults to make decisions in their best interests. My answer to the moral dilemma of completing / attempting suicide and perhaps inevitably subjecting specific, individual children to the knowledge of doing so is that if you don't bear a direct responsibility to those kids (i.e. they're not your kids or your partner's and you're not their guardian in any way), you're off the hook, so to speak. Their parents are the ones who will have to speak to them about your death and be make all those decisions about how to do so. Kids live in the real world, and it's their guardians' job to guide and to try to explain a shit ton of complex stuff to them (or to equip them with the means to live on knowing of intractable complexity); no one else, other than teachers, I suppose, is really obligated.

This is so well put, I always think that the major issue arises when it comes to direct responsibility for kids one brought into the world especially if they knew they would one day decide life had taken its course. Although I have an antinatalism bias one would say, I always think that to an extent it's unfair to bring children into the world especially when there is more likelihood of harm such as poverty. So the harm done for me is less by cost-benefit for someone who decides to be in another form who is also childless, and was obviously brought with no consent or thorough consideration by a parent. Than for someone who deliberately chose to have a child yet knowing they might along the line want to pass responsibility as they choose to die. Although I am open, and understanding of them having had enough, it's still a higher harm than someone who did not deliberately bring children into the world, or had children without consent for example.

 

[curiouscvnt]

Thank you for your really thoughtful response. I feel like you really understood what I was trying to get at in my op. I like your stance and the fact you have seriously weighed up the issue. By "disregard" the pain of the people close to me, really I mean is that if I do ctb I will simply have to try to forget about it, because I can't really cope with the idea at all and it would stop me if I properly thought about it. So I have to delude and deceive myself, and also cope with knowing that that's what I'm doing.

This is also connected with my life plans. If I move abroad to live in the monastery it will also mean my family loses me to an extent. I will be able to visit them and text and call them, but not that often, and I won't be in their lives to nearly the same extent as I have been heretofore. It is hard for me knowing that that will be hard for them. But not so hard that it will stop me living my life the way I want to ( the only way I a m capable of). The alternative would be to stay an eternal child, tethered to the family. The same applies to my suicide if that should come to pass.

Thanks for your perspective about children. Although possibly I am only agreeing with you because it assuages my guilt, I think I do agree with you. I did not choose to bring these children into the world and am not responsible for raising them into adults. It is also the nature of life for horrible things to happen, even to children. All I have control of is my own life and death, and part of that is also accepting that my suicide will be a horrible thing that will happen to some people.

hi-- thanks for replying to me. May you have at least a semblance of peace.
Do you think that suicide must be or in concept is a horrible thing that happens to those who survive the person who took their own life, or might that dilemma or phenomenon dependent entirely on the social, economic, and cultural circumstances and stigmas around suicide?

 

[avalokitesvara]

hi-- thanks for replying to me. May you have at least a semblance of peace.
Do you think that suicide must be or in concept is a horrible thing that happens to those who survive the person who took their own life, or might that dilemma or phenomenon dependent entirely on the social, economic, and cultural circumstances and stigmas around suicide?

I know it will be horrible for my parents, my sibling, and at least one of my sibling's children who is very sensitive and attached to me. The younger one seems more robust, but of course I don't really know. I think in almost all circumstances for a parent to outlive their child, it is a huge loss. I think it is the "choice" element of suicide that will be particularly difficult for my family, that I elected to leave them and didn't "try" more. The gulf between their understanding of what my suicide means and how I experience it for myself is, I think, unbridgeable. They don't know what it's like to decide life is not worth living and so it's a betrayal to their eyes. That I would rather die than spend more time with them. Most people are frightened of death, think it's a bad thing, and want their loved ones to be around as long as possible even through gruesome suffering. I've seen it with the families of cancer patients where the suffering is abundantly obvious, let alone a suicide where the pain is often completely hidden and incomprehensible to others. And simply they will miss me and have "what ifs" which will be hard to cope with.

That's just my own situation. I don't know and can't make any grand statements about family reaction to suicide in general and the factors affecting it. I do think death in general is a massive taboo and dealt with very poorly at individual and societal levels. Let alone suicide. Our whole approach needs changing.

 

[attheend13]

Do you have a moral/ethical framework for approaching the consequences of your death on the people in your life? For the majority of the people who care about me I feel able to disregard their pain, because I care more about my freedom, and because they are adults who have their own responsibility to cope with adverse experiences which befall them such as losing a loved one.
However when it comes to the children in my life (nephews, I am not a parent) I am quite stimied by the imagination of what my voluntary death would do to their developing psyches, the sense of abandonment and the introduction of the idea of suicide into their lives at such a young age seems like an extremely evil thing to consciously do. I'm not sure how to get around this other than slowly fading from their lives until they lose a sense of connection with me, and then doing it.

This is the barrier between me and peace. The inevitable reality of what it will do to my family. I resent them sometimes because I'm alone but alive so I don't hurt the ones who don't give a damn unless I'm dead. Life is a joke .