So, what if you have lost the only person/thing that made life worth living? Say, a 40-year marriage. Absolutely irreplaceable.
Add to that the fact that there are very few people out there who 'love you' in any meaningful way?

When every day is a searing, aching yawning void of loss.
When it never gets any better.

That's when they start demanding grandbabies...

Pie, is there any way you could convince your mom to come live near you? If she's really at a point where she feels she has nothing to lose, uprooting everything and moving couldn't be too traumatic by comparison, could it?

Because it might.


But don't get me wrong, I get that way too. Have attempted several times; came close once. But most of the time, all I can think of is that I might miss something good here that I won't get there.

Sometimes knowing that you could, if you chose to, end your life can be a freeing thought. Nothing need feel too heavy as long as you have your ticket out stuffed in your back pocket. Not a ticket i imagine I'd ever use, not as long as I have loved ones and/or a sense of purpose, however small and personal. (Youthful experiments in this area threw family's responses into sharp relief. That's no longer a picture I'd be comfortable with.)

I like that it's there nonetheless. It's mine, I fucking earned it. Life is precious, but so is death. We are culturally disposed towards choice in the one and an absolute absence of choice in the other.

I am trying to get her out here. She's on the fence. There may be an opportunity for her to work with one of the governmental agencies near here; it would provide her with some meaningful human contact. These days, she says she leaves the house only every other week or so. She's only 60; a little young to become a shut-in.

She's reluctant to leave a town she loves, with people she knows (even if she rarely gets out to see them, sometimes folks drop by to see her) to move out to a place where she knows only two people -- me and my husband. And to leave a house with her last happy memories of my father, and possibly have to give up her dog. (We'd be taking the dog.)

I don't know what I would do under similar circumstances.:(