but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.
Brian Andreas
After lots of thought and consideration of how this post might cause pain to people I care about, I have decided that today I need to defend those who can no longer defend themselves.
There are people I have met and who have become friends and acquaintances because they lost someone who took their own life.
Suicide is a word, and an action, that still polarises opinion and in light of recent events involving Robin Williams, the news and social media have been flooded with opinions.
The one opinion that I find difficult to accept is that Robin Williams was a coward.
I didn't know the man, I only know what has been reported and I suspect that many of those offering their verdict on his actions likewise did not know or understand his pain.
My personal feeling is that he died of depression not suicide but I realise that does not lessen the pain felt by those he leaves behind.
Suicide was the means of his death not the cause.
Many years ago, a man who I was testifying against (at his trail for sexual offences against his own children) killed himself.
He simply jumped off a bridge during the lunch break.
Another young man who I was investigating (for stalking his ex girlfriend and threatening to shoot her) shot himself in the head.
It would be too easy to focus on the criminal aspect of their actions prior to their deaths but actually both were mentally ill.
Over the course of my time as a celebrant I have spoken at many funerals for people who have decided that the life they were living was far more painful than the thought of death.
I just cannot see how their actions constitute cowardice?
Is it because of the way life is ended?
Is it because of the sudden and often violent manner that is chosen?
So let me ask this question of those who feel suicide is the act of a coward...
A man who has been active all his life suffers a brain aneurism and it leaves him able to speak and reason but unable to be the active independent man he always enjoyed being. He feels that life is ended for him and so he talks to his doctors and stops eating and gradually fades away.
He ended his own life. Was he a coward?
A man who has been a soldier and fought in wars and killed people comes back to civilian life and finds he cannot cope so he takes to drink. Over the course of the next few years he drinks himself into an early grave. Even though the doctors tell him what is happening, he cannot stop the urge to drown his misery with alcohol.
He ended his own life. Was he a coward?
A man has been hiding a secret from those he loves. The secret becomes intolerable to bear and thinking the world will never accept him for who he really is, he chooses to end his life.
He made the choice - was he a coward?
If you think they are cowards then I am a potential coward too because I believe that it is my right to end my life if and when I feel that my life no longer has value.
I don't expect to change opinions today but I cannot let them remain unchallenged, even in my own small way.
I might not have the reach of Fox News but I hope anyone who reads this will know that there are some people in the world who will be very sorry if you end your life but they will never blame you for doing it.
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
Arthur Schopenhauer
