wishing to die

i’ve just spoken with my great-aunt and things are not going so well. things are going with her just as they went with my grandmother, which is scary. i mean, she went in for a hand operation and now can’t eat or drink and has sight and hearing problems. what the hell is going on?

i called her up to cheer her up a bit, but she apparently didn’t need that: she was basically telling me about her plan to die. how she wanted the hospital workers to give her something to die right there and then. she said she’d bought books - a while back - about the best way to end your life peacefully when you thought it was your time. pills seemed to be the choice she’d made, and she was basically saying she wanted to go home so she could let herself die. and what could i say? i told her i loved her and didn’t want her to die, to which she replied it was very nice of me to say so, but really, she just wanted to die and couldn’t see the point: she was not a participant anymore, just a watcher, and that just wasn’t as much fun. she was being very cheerful about it all, like she was telling me about holiday plans. it broke my heart and i couldn’t help crying, while trying to keep up my end of the conversation.

i understand, really i do. she’s 92, is the oldest person she knows, she’s seen the three men of her life die earlier than any of them should have and most of her family lives far away. but she’s always been so important to me - selfishly, and completely unrealistically, i’d like her to live many more years so that she can meet at least one man in my life, see that someone is taking care of me, and i’d like that man to know her. it’s bad enough my mother won’t get to meet that person, she was the other person i wanted to share this with.