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Carol H Tucker
Passionate about knowledge management and organizational development, expert in loan servicing, virtual world denizen and community facilitator, and a DISNEY fan
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beladona Memorial
Be warned:in this very rich environment where you can immerse yourself so completely, your emotions will become engaged -- and not everyone is cognizant of that. Among the many excellent features of SL, there is no auto-return on hearts, so be wary of where your's wanders...
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the last choice....
At times like this I think of the theme song from M*A*S*H, first the movie and then the TV show – both comedies with some very dark undertones at times.
“…That game of life is hard to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card of some delay
So this is all I have to say
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
I can take or leave it if I please
The sword of time will pierce our skin
It doesn't hurt when it begins
But as it works it's way on in
The pain grows stronger, watch it burn…”
My mother committed suicide – but she was old, tired, sick and going broke. She was at the end of the road, and she didn’t see any reason to fight against the ending. At least that is how I assume she felt, it isn’t like she said anything to me, but I felt that I had closure anyway and was content to live with her choice. Although there were many details to attend to, there really wasn’t a huge impact from her choice on others.
My stepson committed suicide last week, and I am finding that harder to live with. Not that we were close – he had abused my trust in a way that I could not countenance and we were estranged for the past seven years or so – so it isn’t so much that I am going to miss him as his mother and sister will. Billy made his choice for himself regardless of the impact on those around him. His mother, already frail, may possess a backbone of tempered steel, but she was close to complete collapse and now has his estate to deal with. His sister is simply overwhelmed, trying to cope with this while being strong for her mother, and hurting. His nephew will bear the burden of being there for both of them. The girlfriend is now alone. The friend who was upstairs and then found his body is a total nervous wreck. There is little anyone can do for any of them but try to be supportive and hope that helps a bit. What haunts all of us – family, friends, co-workers -- is not understanding why three weeks before his 57th birthday, he made the choice to terminate his life. Was there some unknown stress in his life that was just too much to handle? Was it the drag of everyday things, that tired feeling as you get up and face another work day? Was it an exaggerated concern about the fate of the country as the news hammers home the changes under the current administration? Was it intimations of his own mortality as his birthday approached, that feeling of age bearing down on you -- joints creaking, muscles aching, slowing down, less stamina – for which there is ultimately no remedy?
The common dominator in both of these final choices? Neither my mother nor my stepson seem to me to have had any hope left to hold onto when they gazed into the future, and therefore they both opted to log out of their RL in much the same way that I log out of my 2nd Life.
They decided they were done.
Totally, finally, irrevocably done.
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