A family member took his own life this weekend.

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49. My condolences to you PasadenaTrudy.

You made me think back to my own mom, then in her 80s - watching my dad in ICU - all trussed up with wires and tubes and a ventilator. AWFUL. AWFUL. AWFUL. She shook her head and said "this isn't living." And she kept repeating that. We were all grateful that he spent less than two weeks in that state. He was inert, at best semi-comatose. He could do little more than raise his eyebrows. Little more than a piece of meat by then. He was 83 when he made the jump to light speed. It was easier by then to determine what he was NOT dying of. It was MASSIVE cascade failure.

Her last hospitalization while she herself was pretty much still with it, even then, she started in on that again, too - regarding her own condition. "This isn't living. This isn't living." She kept saying that. She was dead in about a month-and-a-half. Barely made it to 90. At one point I even asked the hospital - isn't there anything that can be done to ease her passage? Don't they all follow the basic rule - "first, do no harm"? Oh no. Just wait it out and let her suffer. Yeah, that's the ticket.

That's the other side of the knife blade - living that long. It's not always a blessing.

My deepest condolences to you.