Skip to main content

No Sympathy From Me

Suicide Coming Home

Many years ago, a friend hung himself in his basement.  I was a pall-bearer at his funeral. I was shocked I was so asked.  I did this.  I did not understand why a good-looking fellow, intelligent, kindly, and true could do such a thing. He did. I do not.  His family suffered greatly.  Yet he left no issue.   Thankfully.

To my mind Country singer Mindy McCready, 37, showed us the very height of personal selfishness by committing suicide.  By giving birth to two offspring, she accepted the responsibility to raise her newborn and six-year old son.  She abrogated it spectacularly.  (As did the father a month ago.)  Though she may have suffered depression for any number of reasons, she has little sympathy from me for leaving behind a legacy that is now lost, is now parent-less, and may drift into problems of their own in the future.    There is shame and heartbreak in all this, but blame should be administered in full dose to Mindy.  Shooting the dog?  This is sick.

Sure, you can say she was addicted to drugs and alcohol; she was depressed.  But drugs and alcohol were her choices.  This makes her solution acceptable?  No! The suicide was her choice, but it flies in the face of human responsibility and the basic norms of humanity. Of course Mindy's solution is not unique to her.  Being a member of this redoubtable crowd does not diminish the ethical and moral bankruptcy illustrated by her action.

Many of us are depressed, but we accept our responsibilities; we do our best.  Many of us have hard lives, multiple disappointments, many disillusionments, countless setbacks, now and substantially in the past centuries.  Nonetheless, we all do our best; we live for the next generation.  Our children come first!


This is a time for grief, to be sure, but mostly for those two children whose loss of parents is beyond valuation. Sympathy accrues to those innocents, not to Mindy.

You will not hear these sentiments in the press or on television.  They focus on her clinical depression, her dependence on drug and alcohol, and her despair.  They will apologize on her behalf.  They will not mention her multiple sins against her children.

Story is at: http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/18/showbiz/mindy-mccready-death/index.html

Comments

  1. Very appropriate! You and I must have a unique gift to tell things exactly as they are.

    To many, this is an easy-out alternative and of course, the media shouts all kinds of niceties over the matter covering the real truth with insane lies.
    Unfortunately, this person will not be in heaven for murderers, even of themselves, will not make it in. This is according to scripture.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Please Comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Accepting Fake Information

Every day, we are all bombarded with information, especially on news channels.  One group claims it's false; another calls it the truth. How can we know when to accept it or alternatively how can we know it's false? There are several factors which influence acceptance of fake or false information. Here are the big four.  Some just don’t have the knowledge to discern fact/truth from fiction/fact/false*. Some fake information is cleverly disguised and simply appears to be correct. Some fake information is accepted because the person wants to believe it. Some fake information is accepted because there is no other information to the contrary. However, the acceptance of  information  of any kind become a kind of  truth , and this is a well studied topic. In the link below is an essay on “The Truth About Truth.” This shows simply that what is your point of view, different types of information are generally accepted, fake or not.   https://www.linkedin.com/posts/g-donald-allen-420b03

Problem-Solving - Obsession

Problem-Solving - Obsession Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "Economy," 1854.   Introduction . Many facets of problem-solving are well-known and understood. They range from vast knowledge to critical thinking, to intuition, to insight, and to experience. Today, we add a characteristic, though an important ingredient. It’s more like a condiment-to-food, or a sauce to a delicacy. It’s needed though sometimes not essential. It is mostly helpful with big problems, difficult problems, or imossible problems. It is the quality of obsession. Each of us has experienced obsession in one form or another and is often relieved when the problem is solved. One literally leaves oneself becoming an engine driven to resolve the matter. Obsession is an all-consuming state of mind, possessive, jealous of distractions, and impervious to interruptions. T

Your Brain Within Your Brain

  Your Bicameral Brain by Don Allen Have you ever gone to another room to get something, but when you got there you forgot what you were after? Have you ever experienced a flash of insight, but when you went to look it up online, you couldn’t even remember the keyword? You think you forgot it completely. How can it happen so fast? You worry your memory is failing. Are you merely absent-minded? You try to be amused. But maybe you didn’t forget.   Just maybe that flash of insight, clear and present for an instant, was never given in the verbal form, but another type of intelligence you possess, that you use, and that communicates only to you. We are trained to live in a verbal world, where words matter most. Aside from emotions, we are unable to conjure up other, nonverbal, forms of intelligence we primitively, pre-verbally, possess but don’t know how to use. Alas, we live in a world of words, stewing in the alphabet, sleeping under pages of paragraphs, almost ignoring one of