As parents we all want to take the best care possible of our kids. We make sure they eat right, have enough sleep, stop licking the lead off the windowsills, and enough with the TV already. We take it upon ourselves to be their nurturers, their caretakers, and help them develop into people who can eventually navigate the travails of life on their own. That's what parenting is. But how far would you go to protect your kids from unpleasant or harmful experiences?
Far enough to commit suicide?
Sharon Osbourne would.
Her father died last summer of a degenerative brain disease and it was tremendously difficult for her to watch his decline. “I saw my father suffer from the day he came back into my life in 2002
to the day he died in July. There's no way I could go through what he
did, or put my kids through that.”
So, the obvious answer is...suicide?
For Sharon and Ozzy, yes.
Moral and ethical questions aside, and assuming you've no compunction about suicide to begin with (and I haven't), somehow the notion of suicide being a "final gift of love" doesn't sit well with me. Suicide, and any death, is hardest on those left behind. I can't imagine that if the real reason was indeed to spare adult children the burden/difficulty of dealing with a drawn-out decline and eventual death, that suicide, hastening death, would be the answer. And in my mind, suicide is more about the person doing it than it is about anyone who might be left behind.
Jeez, how'd I get on THIS topic?
But seriously, as part of parenting, I think it's important to explore these tougher questions from time to time. Your kids are the only kids you'll have, and it's up to you how you play such a situation if it should arise.
P.S. You do have a will, don't you?
