Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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It's not the first time I've read of a parent committing suicide soon after their only child kills themselves:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7002179.stm

It is an intensely stupid and selfish act for this girl to have killed herself over some little tiff with her boyfriend. In a sense, her life is not hers to take. As an only child, she killed three people when she killed herself.

But when I think of her mother's death, it strikes me as unbelievably poignant and tragic. She killed herself because she felt she had nothing left to live for. Quite differently from her daughter, she judged that, yes, her life had lost its purpose and would not get better. In losing her only child, she lost her own future.

Perhaps this story is so upsetting because it is small scale. I can't relate to a thousand made homeless by an earthquake. But the death of a family strikes me hard.

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What about poor Gary Coombs, 48, Eh? What about that poor [censored] guy?
You think the daughter was a silly thoughtless girl but the mother's suicide was 'sad and poignant'.

At least when the girl killed herself she may not have realised how it would ruin her parents lives. Her mother had no such excuse - she knew how devastating it would be. So explain how she's not selfish for topping herself and leaving Gary to bury his daughter and wife.

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Yes, you're right. The mother's grief is clearly more significant and overwhelming than the daughter's; utter hopelessness. But she should have lived. There will have been counselling on offer, support networks to help her, or there should have been.

In a way, with his wife AND daughter dead it will be easier for the husband to move on and start a new family. Although, since the mother was in her early 40s they could have tried for another baby.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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Yes, you're right. The mother's grief is clearly more significant and overwhelming than the daughter's; utter hopelessness. But she should have lived. There will have been counselling on offer, support networks to help her, or there should have been.

In a way, with his wife AND daughter dead it will be easier for the husband to move on and start a new family. Although, since the mother was in her early 40s they could have tried for another baby.

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what? you're just sitting here playing God deciding who has the right to live or die.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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Yes, you're right. The mother's grief is clearly more significant and overwhelming than the daughter's; utter hopelessness. But she should have lived. There will have been counselling on offer, support networks to help her, or there should have been.

In a way, with his wife AND daughter dead it will be easier for the husband to move on and start a new family. Although, since the mother was in her early 40s they could have tried for another baby.

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what? you're just sitting here playing God deciding who has the right to live or die.

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pretty standard for luckyjimm - i think he's got a read on who's good and bad at high stakes poker as well

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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Her immature "grief" about breaking up with some boyfriend is trivial in comparison with a mother's grief for the suicide of her only daughter.

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How could you possibly know what either of their levels of grief was? Have you ever been so depressed that you wanted to kill yourself? I have not, but my guess would be that thinking clearly is not a priority, so trying to graft your "argument" onto them is pointless.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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However bad your life is, it can get better.

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False. Also, even if it were true, only a rational person would realize this. Someone who is suicidally depressed would probably miss this tidbit.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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Her immature "grief" about breaking up with some boyfriend is trivial in comparison with a mother's grief for the suicide of her only daughter.

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How could you possibly know what either of their levels of grief was? Have you ever been so depressed that you wanted to kill yourself? I have not, but my guess would be that thinking clearly is not a priority, so trying to graft your "argument" onto them is pointless.

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Perhaps that's a reflection of my being a consumer of modern news media. We consume other people's grief as a kind of terrible entertainment, and we make value judgements on the legitimacy of one person's grief over another, depending on the nature of what they've suffered, whether they can be blamed for it in any way, and so on. We do this all the time, whether it's with this case, or the parents of Madelaine McCann, or Paris Hilton crying in her jail cell. We consume grief.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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However bad your life is, it can get better.

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False. Also, even if it were true, only a rational person would realize this. Someone who is suicidally depressed would probably miss this tidbit.

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Eh? Unless you are terminally ill / held hostage by sadistic torturers, why can't ANYONE's life improve in some way?

But, yes, I agree with your second point. Clinical depression creates disordered perception, and the essence is the sufferer can't see a way out.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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we make value judgements on the legitimacy of one person's grief over another,

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you seem to be the only one doing that in this thread and it's lead you to say some illogical and irrational things

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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we make value judgements on the legitimacy of one person's grief over another,

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you seem to be the only one doing that in this thread and it's lead you to say some illogical and irrational things

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Well, that's unusual then, because in this regard I am being a typical modern media consumer. Both the news media and their readers and viewers make these kinds of judgements all the time.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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we make value judgements on the legitimacy of one person's grief over another,

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you seem to be the only one doing that in this thread and it's lead you to say some illogical and irrational things

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Well, that's unusual then, because in this regard I am being a typical modern media consumer. Both the news media and their readers and viewers make these kinds of judgements all the time.

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and the typical modern media consumer is illogical and irrational

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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we make value judgements on the legitimacy of one person's grief over another,

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you seem to be the only one doing that in this thread and it's lead you to say some illogical and irrational things

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Well, that's unusual then, because in this regard I am being a typical modern media consumer. Both the news media and their readers and viewers make these kinds of judgements all the time.

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and the typical modern media consumer is illogical and irrational

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It's not enough for you to just say that. In what way is that true? Make your case.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

Jesus christ you are bad at thinking.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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Jesus christ you are bad at thinking.

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Ditto

If you have a point, make it properly

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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I am definitely prejudiced against the girl in the first story. Her immature "grief" about breaking up with some boyfriend is trivial in comparison with a mother's grief for the suicide of her only daughter..."

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So you are prejudiced against the daughter for killing herself because of the pain and suffering the act will inflict upon her parents but you find the mother's suicide "unbelivably poignant and tragic."

Did you happen to read this part of the article you linked in the OP?

"In the days following Natasha's disappearance, her grandparents, Peter and Wendy Clackett, also made an appeal for help to find her and offered a reward to anyone who had information.

Clackett, not Coombs. AKA - the maternal grandparents. Still living. They are now left to deal with the incomprehensible pain and suffering of their own daughter's suicide on the heels of their granddaughter's suicide.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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It's not enough for you to just say that. In what way is that true? Make your case.


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lol @ this coming from you jimm

you're just spouting random paragraphs with no sense or reason or connection or evidence or even thought

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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I am definitely prejudiced against the girl in the first story. Her immature "grief" about breaking up with some boyfriend is trivial in comparison with a mother's grief for the suicide of her only daughter..."

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So you are prejudiced against the daughter for killing herself because of the pain and suffering the act will inflict upon her parents but you find the mother's suicide "unbelivably poignant and tragic."

Did you happen to read this part of the article you linked in the OP?

"In the days following Natasha's disappearance, her grandparents, Peter and Wendy Clackett, also made an appeal for help to find her and offered a reward to anyone who had information.

Clackett, not Coombs. AKA - the maternal grandparents. Still living. They are now left to deal with the incomprehensible pain and suffering of their own daughter's suicide on the heels of their granddaughter's suicide.

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And if Grandma was to kill herself, it would be unbelievably tragic and poignant x 100!!!

There is something uniquely sad, though, when teenagers kill themselves, their lives unlived. And when it's a parent's only child, even more so.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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Both the news media and their readers and viewers make these kinds of judgements all the time.

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Do they really? And? Even if we assume this is true, what is it supposed to be evidence of? Following along with the majority doesn't make an argument a good one by default.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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Eh? Unless you are terminally ill / held hostage by sadistic torturers, why can't ANYONE's life improve in some way?

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I like that you refute your own statement for me. "Anyone's" life can improve... unless they are in these categories where they can't improve. So, now that you are admitting it's possible to be stuck in a spot where improvement is highly unlikely or impossible, can we agree some people might choose non-life over life for a good reason?

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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we make value judgements on the legitimacy of one person's grief over another,

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you seem to be the only one doing that in this thread and it's lead you to say some illogical and irrational things

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Well, that's unusual then, because in this regard I am being a typical modern media consumer. Both the news media and their readers and viewers make these kinds of judgements all the time.

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and the typical modern media consumer is illogical and irrational

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It's not enough for you to just say that. In what way is that true? Make your case.

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It'll probably get posted about the same time as your case for why being love-sick was the only problem this girl had.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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There is something uniquely sad, though, when teenagers kill themselves, their lives unlived.

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You keep coming back to this, but you don't provide any reason for it to be true other than an empty emotional appeal.

If even *one* of these teenagers was going to end up living an utterly miserable life, who are we to say their life going unlived is sad?

The "tragedy" in young people committing suicide as I see it is that they are more likely to be fueled by irrational emotional states that maturity and experience would have helped them out of.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

there are many good arguments against suicide that aren't just emotional appeals. jimm has presented zero of them. i think people arguing against jimm have presented better logic for jimm's position than jimm himself has.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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there are many good arguments against suicide that aren't just emotional appeals. jimm has presented zero of them. i think people arguing against jimm have presented better logic for jimm's position than jimm himself has.

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agreed. also, upon reading all the posts in this thread, you appear to have everything under control so i will be stepping away from the OOT now [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

You guys arguing the girl was being selfish for killing herself, Do you think it was selfish for the boy to break up with her because of all the pain he caused her? Should he have just stayed with her until she got tired of him?

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

Jim,

You seem very emo.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

Fine. Even though mason's doing a fine job already.

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It is an intensely stupid and selfish act for this girl to have killed herself over some little tiff with her boyfriend.

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As already stated, you have no idea what other [censored] she had going on inside that drove her to make this decision. To assume to know her complete reasoning and trivialize her pain based on a 300 word column on bbc belies 3rd grade reasoning skills at worst and small-minded arrogance at best.

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In a sense, her life is not hers to take. As an only child, she killed three people when she killed herself.

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Whose exactly is it to take, if not hers, and how does her mother only having one child instead of 2 or 3 or 7 have any impact on that? Is the right to live my own life as I choose highly or completely dependent on if I have any siblings iyo?

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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Fine. Even though mason's doing a fine job already.

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It is an intensely stupid and selfish act for this girl to have killed herself over some little tiff with her boyfriend.

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As already stated, you have no idea what other [censored] she had going on inside that drove her to make this decision. To assume to know her complete reasoning and trivialize her pain based on a 300 word column on bbc belies 3rd grade reasoning skills at worst and small-minded arrogance at best.

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In a sense, her life is not hers to take. As an only child, she killed three people when she killed herself.

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Whose exactly is it to take, if not hers, and how does her mother only having one child instead of 2 or 3 or 7 have any impact on that? Is the right to live my own life as I choose highly or completely dependent on if I have any siblings iyo?

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Maybe it's my lapsed Catholicism coming out, but I don't really believe anyone has the right to take their own life. There are difficult cases with the terminally ill, but that's my general thought.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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Jim,

You seem very emo.

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You should see my blog!

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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You guys arguing the girl was being selfish for killing herself, Do you think it was selfish for the boy to break up with her because of all the pain he caused her? Should he have just stayed with her until she got tired of him?

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It's a question of degree. Breaking up is a normal thing; killing yourself isn't. You can find a new partner rather more easily than you can replace your only child.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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Eh? Unless you are terminally ill / held hostage by sadistic torturers, why can't ANYONE's life improve in some way?

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I like that you refute your own statement for me. "Anyone's" life can improve... unless they are in these categories where they can't improve. So, now that you are admitting it's possible to be stuck in a spot where improvement is highly unlikely or impossible, can we agree some people might choose non-life over life for a good reason?

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There are a small number of specific situations where your life can't improve where death may seem the best option. In reality, I can hardly think of a situation. Let's say you're serving a 100-year sentence in the world's most brutal and overcrowded prison. Well, maybe you'll get out some day - governments change, people are given amnesties, wrongful convictions are overturned. Or maybe one of the gang bosses will take a shine to you, and your standard of living will get better (at least while you keep your pretty face).

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one person for whom suicide must seem like a worthwhile option, particularly in the first few days after he was captured and before he'd been torture-interrogated. That guy doesn't have much to look forward to. So, in his specific situation, I could see why suicide would seem - and actually be - better than living. Dude ain't got much to look forward to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Shaikh_Mohammed
But, in his case, I'm sure his religious belief will keep him alive.

People survive all manner of torment and misery in desperate parts of the world, and yet they keep going. So I don't have much sympathy for Emo kids who top themselves.

Ultimately, since death is unknown, I can't really see how suicide can ever be preferable to life, however miserable. Just because you could be going to a place even worse.

Albert Camus is with me on that.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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I can hardly think of a situation...I can't really see how suicide can ever be preferable to life

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Your lack of imagination is not really evidence for anything other than you trotting out more fallacies [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ignorance

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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At the risk of repeating myself, let me repeat myself, because this sums up what I believe children owe their parents. It isn't too onerous, is it?

"by fulfilling your obligation to yourself to live well, to find whatever your idea is of happiness and obtain for yourself on your own terms the best life possible given the start your parents have given you, you are also implicitly fulfilling your obligation to your parents. You are making the most of the life they have given you, and allowing them to find happiness in your happiness, and pride at your success"

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I understand why one might think this way, but I think that no good parent would believe that their kids owe them anything.

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Maybe that's what being young is about: not realising that your current happiness or sadness won't last forever.


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Well said.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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Fine. Even though mason's doing a fine job already.

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It is an intensely stupid and selfish act for this girl to have killed herself over some little tiff with her boyfriend.

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As already stated, you have no idea what other [censored] she had going on inside that drove her to make this decision. To assume to know her complete reasoning and trivialize her pain based on a 300 word column on bbc belies 3rd grade reasoning skills at worst and small-minded arrogance at best.

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In a sense, her life is not hers to take. As an only child, she killed three people when she killed herself.

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Whose exactly is it to take, if not hers, and how does her mother only having one child instead of 2 or 3 or 7 have any impact on that? Is the right to live my own life as I choose highly or completely dependent on if I have any siblings iyo?

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Maybe it's my lapsed Catholicism coming out, but I don't really believe anyone has the right to take their own life. There are difficult cases with the terminally ill, but that's my general thought.

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That answers exactly zero questions I asked.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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In a sense, her life is not hers to take. As an only child, she killed three people when she killed herself.

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this is retarded. like, really idiotic. you control your own life.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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People survive all manner of torment and misery in desperate parts of the world, and yet they keep going. So I don't have much sympathy for Emo kids who top themselves.

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This is an unbelievably horrible conflation. Congratulations on self-owning for like the 50th time in this thread.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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What you're saying is, "it's okay to be selfish".

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It's so unimaginably easy to argue that it's easy to be selfish that I can't believe you even bothered to make this as an actual point.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

LOL @ condemning the child's suicide and condoning the parent's. That makes no sense at all.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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I take a different view. I think if someone wants to kill themselves, that is their choice, and the effect it has on those around them is not their fault.

You also don't know that she killed herself just over a tiff with her boyfriend. There may have been childhood abuse or a whole range of other stuff (guilt over which may have led the mother to take her own life).

This mutual responsibility view of family relations is kind of bothersome. Your parents chose to bring you into the world, knowing full well they'd have to raise you. You can choose to be grateful and reciprocate their love and effort, but it's only a choice. Taking it too far isn't healthy IMO.

But sad story, obviously

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right on dude. people like lucky jim are idiots for not understanding the mental suffering some people experience.

i worked for 7 years with the mentally ill. i've seen their suffering up close. there are millions of people who have suffered horribly day after day for decades until they can't take it any longer.

i'll tell you what. i'll chain you to my basement wall and use every possible method of torture i can think of... i guarantee i will break you within 6 months and you will beg me for a gun so you can end it.

anyone who claims that these people are selfish have never even come close to the level of suffering (mental and physical) of some of these suicide cases.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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I take a different view. I think if someone wants to kill themselves, that is their choice, and the effect it has on those around them is not their fault.

You also don't know that she killed herself just over a tiff with her boyfriend. There may have been childhood abuse or a whole range of other stuff (guilt over which may have led the mother to take her own life).

This mutual responsibility view of family relations is kind of bothersome. Your parents chose to bring you into the world, knowing full well they'd have to raise you. You can choose to be grateful and reciprocate their love and effort, but it's only a choice. Taking it too far isn't healthy IMO.

But sad story, obviously

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right on dude. people like lucky jim are idiots for not understanding the mental suffering some people experience.

i worked for 7 years with the mentally ill. i've seen their suffering up close. there are millions of people who have suffered horribly day after day for decades until they can't take it any longer.

i'll tell you what. i'll chain you to my basement wall and use every possible method of torture i can think of... i guarantee i will break you within 6 months and you will beg me for a gun so you can end it.

anyone who claims that these people are selfish have never even come close to the level of suffering (mental and physical) of some of these suicide cases.

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Dude, we were talking about the specific case in the original post. Did you even read it?
17 year old girl with no history of mental illness kills herself after boyfriend trouble. She was an only child, and her mother killed herself in grief afterwards. And, yes, daughter's suicide was stupid and selfish and wrong.

Re: Mother commits suicide at same spot as her only daughter
 

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In a sense, her life is not hers to take. As an only child, she killed three people when she killed herself.

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this is retarded. like, really idiotic. you control your own life.

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I rarely QFT, but

QFT.

Jimm, you can think she made the wrong choice, but it seems like you're saying that she shouldn't have had the choice in the first place, and that's just gross.