A View of Geriatric Suicide

The View section had an article about geriatric suicide (“The Murky Statistics on Senior Suicides” by Ursula Vils, Nov. 11). It neglected the main question, whether it is a good or a bad thing. It implied that it was bad, and that it should be predicted, detected and prevented.

This is not necessarily so. The youthful suicide attempt is often a response to an abnormal state of mind, and the victim often finds that things are not so bad as it seemed and that there is hope for the future. The geriatric suicide generally finds that things are as bad as before, if not worse. With advancing age comes deterioration, isolation, humiliation and pain. The article claims that for such people the past is very bad, yet it is often good and that quality is what makes the present so unbearable.

The geriatric suicide can look back on a life in which he was capable of earning a living, maintaining a home, raising a family, enjoying life and contributing to his community. He can only look forward to progressive disintegration. He sees that death is inevitable, and all that remains between now and death is increasing suffering.

His isolation increases in every way. His senses deteriorate. He can no longer see his world as well, or hear it as well, or experience it in any way as well as he remembers. His very mind and memories fade and become less reliable. His body betrays him. He can no longer move about as he once did, nor can he manipulate what he once could. Everything takes longer and hurts more. His friends die, his children leave and develop interests which preclude his company. To one of our society’s great religions, the worship of money, he is an outsider. To the other, the worship of youth, he is an abomination. He is a dread reminder of the vanity of that worship, and he is banished for it. He is like a leper. He is put away “with others of his kind” where he will “be happy” and forgotten to death.

If he is honest with himself, if he has the moral courage to make his own decisions, and if he is somewhat perceptive, he realizes these things. He knows that his disintegration and humiliation will continue, increasing until death. He may decide to take the scenic route, as it were, and continue until his body can endure no more and dies of its own accord, or he may take the express route and avoid the remaining agony of life. But in either case he will come to accept death as a friend, understanding and accepting these words of the poet, Swinburne:

From too much love of living,

From hope and fear set free.

We thank with brief thanksgiving

Whatever gods may be

That no life lives forever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to the sea.

SPENCER BOLES

Riverside