Life Worth

I've thought about suicide a lot.  Not so much doing it, though I have sometimes felt so bored of life that I've thought I may as well, but about why I or anyone else would do it.  When I've felt particularly bored of life - same ol shit, different day - I've essentially ended up chastising myself for being unimaginative or just downright lazy.  

Once someone contemplates suicide they essentially stop placing value on life, and when that happens the person is liberated to do anything.  A lone suicide means that the person values the life of others - they didn't use the terrible strength and freedom of that decision to go postal on their boss etc - and so from their lonely death arises the realisation of a value that may have justified their existence.

I don't feel that value.  I don't believe there is a god or any sort of afterlife/reincarnation punishment.  I believe that we are animals with instincts and when we die we cease to exist.  I don't believe in morals (right and wrong) but I do believe in a... malleable... sort of ethics - how to live your life.  I may not instinctively find worth in the lives of others but I would not have a better life myself if I showed this to the recurring characters in this drama we call life.

Stories from childhood 2

Ok so I wasn't a child when this one happened - but I was a very immature 21 year old.  My parents had gone on holiday after my graduation and my elder sister and I traveled back to the family homestead.  Our grandmother hadn't been answering the phone, and no-one had heard from her for several days, so it was a reasonable assumption that she had died.  My sister wanted to go over to her house ASAP; I wanted to relax for a bit first - if she was dead then there was no hurry.  I'm reminded of Tim Minchin relating a conversation with his wife about going to check on their baby, "well if she's dead we may as well watch the end of this film before our lives are destroyed by grief"

When we got there there was no answer at the door so we let ourselves in with the key we had.  We went upstairs end into her room.  There was a body in the bed turned away from us with the bedclothes covering her.  I went around the bed to her and saw she was in a comedy death pose.  It kinda reminded me of Nosferatu - the way her wrinkled face was in a slight grimace and she had one hand in a claw-like pose up near her face.

So I shook my head at my sister and went over to her; through some tears she said "did it look like she died peacefully?".  I figured she was never going to go over to look at the dead body so I said "yes, yes she just looked like she was sleeping".

We go downstairs and I call the ambulance and put the kettle on... and then my sister says she's going upstairs to say goodbye.

I still don't know to this day whether she actually went up to her and saw what I saw.