Suicide on Ice

While doing my annual physical examination at the VA Clinic last week, nurse Dave asked me a couple of obligatory questions that I have certainly answered before: Have you thought about suicide in the last sixty days? Have you ever considered taking your life? Of course, the answer is no; I don't have time to die at this point in life, despite age; there is just too much left to do. The Veteran's Administration has taken a proactive, and responsible, approach to saving vets from suicide, especially those suffering from some form of latent post traumatic stress.

I have given thought to the end, nevertheless. Being a classic existentialist at heart, I have a considerable amount of respect for the Inuit, or traditional Eskimo, and how they have sometimes dealt with death as a necessary choice. In their multi-generational family situations, it has regularly been a tacit cultural tradition for extreme elders who have reached a point in life where they no longer pull their weight in a contributing familial role, to leave the rest of the family one day, walk out to an iceberg and float away into oblivion or freeze to death.

Personally, I find that to be a very responsible choice once a person has become not only unproductive in their interactive community, but also once they have become an encumbrance on those around them. Pharmaceutical advancements are great, but sometimes they keep us living longer than we should, and too often in misery at that. When it is time to die, we should accept it.

At this juncture, approaching 70 years of age, I do not feel that I have yet become an encumbrance upon anyone; in terms of productive interaction, I still feel like I am an essential contributing member of the family or community within which I live. So, that being said, I have not been looking around for an nice cool iceberg to memorialize just yet. If there is someone out there who begs to differ and would claim I have become an encumbrance, may I suggest that it is they that should take a hike and go find an iceberg of their own.