When is a good time to die?

Sorry humptydumpty, can’t resist.....wouldn’t it be...when you fell off a wall! xx

In response to the OP and bearing in mind we are not talking about being desperately ill beforehand ...

Definitely NOT after your children
Hopefully when you feel you have completed / achieved what matters to you in life
When you feel your loved ones would be fine without you.

My poor grandma lost 3 children before she herself died . The first in childbirth then her 2 sons in their early 50's. My mum her daughter and only child left only outlived her by a few months .

Personally speaking my ideal would be Dignitas when I am too old to enjoy my life any more .....but with the UK government failing so far to reach any agreement on our continuing healthcare after 2019 it will probably be sooner rather than later ........both having long term illnesses !!

Failing that, a friend of my husband's played golf in the morning, came home, sat down ...his wife made him coffee ...held it out to him to take .....shook him as she thought he had gone to sleep .....dead, instantly ! no pain no illness ...brain aneurism ....what a fantastic way to go !!!!! I wish ...(not the golf, though ...maybe on a beach in the sun reading a book with a nice drink by my side ....)

juggernaut Yeeeeess, but wouldn’t your young man be about 80? ?

Lona
Do we have a choice? When the time comes unless we opt for euthanasia it will happen. What you want and what you get will not be an option.

Good point sarah - can we make a booking?

A long time forward to now, in the same time as my dear husband.

lemongrove
Oh no, my young man would be obscenely young, maybe about 85 years my junior!!

My mother told us she had "just not been feeling herself" before she went into hospital aged 88 and told me that she didn't mind if she died that night, she'd had such a wonderful life. She also said that she wanted Do Not Resuscitate put on her notes, having seen friends and relatives die a lingering death in hospital! In fact she lived just over a month and had a peaceful and painless death.

Sadly she missed her first great grandchild by just a couple of weeks, but all the way through my DIL's pregnancy she'd said how much she looked forward to seeing the baby "if she lived that long" - though at that time we had no inkling that she was ill. She did know however that it would be a little girl and what she would be called. I do feel so sad that they never met, they would have been such friends.

Now that people are having babies later and later I suppose that many of us will never live to become great grandmothers. If my oldest granddaughter waits until she is 30 to have children I would be 88, like my mother.

There is no "good time" to go. It depends on your mindset. I had a next door neighbour who kept saying she didn't want to be here anymore, she was 93. She wasn't a very pleasant person in general and spent her time moaning and groaning to all around her. So maybe in her case it was a good time to go.

I do not want to outlive my brains or my bowels.

If I can't enjoy life - walking, listening to music, reading, etc, you can put me down. Otherwise, so long as I don't have dementia and not being a burden on others, I'm happy to go when my time is up.

My 102 year old aunt plods on, does the Telegraph crossword in between sleeps, has the occasional game of bridge, still does all her paperwork and sends every relative a birthday card including 24 great nieces and nephews. She is absolutely compos mentis but very frail. Her daily wish is to not wake up in the morning.. She's had her life, travelled the world, outlived all her contemporaries and now just wants out. She wakes up each morning and says 'oh b****r I'm still here'. I'd love to be able to grant her wish and just hope that when my allotted time arrives the law will have changed and the facility to end life will be available. I'm sure many of us would wish to die in comfort and peace in our own beds at the time of our choosing, rather than struggle on in pain and distress?

I would hate to be a burden to my children. I have 3 daughters, two live a little distance from me but one lives practically on my doorstep. She's the one who would have to tax the brunt of any care and although she wouldn't mind, I would. So I hope we go before she has to do that.

Interesting how many of you think you might be a "burden".... so if people get old and ill they are a burden?
If a younger person is ill, they are not a "burden"... in fact anyone who suggested that would be vilified ......
Older people should be cherished by the children they have brought up and cared for , not discarded because they are no longer as useful as they once were.

sarahellenwhitney
"Do we have a choice? When the time comes unless we opt for euthanasia it will happen. What you want and what you get will not be an option."

I didn't say we had a choice. I said what I would like to happen.

My parents died within 23 days of each other, each with lung cancer. It was horrendous for me, an only child but married at the time so I had some support.

I was not planning to pay a penny to a care home- I would like the people and charities who will benefit to get some enjoyment out of the small amount.

I doubt though that the law will change in my life time- so unfair.

When I don't have my facilities or can't get about. Unless, it by your own hand, we don't have a choice, so enjoy the day . Hope it is sudden.

My MIL is 102 next January. When I first met her she was in her mid 50's and told me that she didn't think she'd ever make 70 as she'd had 'a few things removed.'

So, here we are 47 years later and she is still alive and kicking. Deaf and failing eye sight but very much still with it.

The sad fact is that people do feel a burden when not independent, I had my first child at 19, even if she was prepared to, which she's not, to look after me, she could have more problems than me. The extended family, once they have children of their own, have too much to do, everybody seems to work now and it's a juggling act at the best of times. Unless grandchildren live in the same toad, you hardly see them, their lives are so full. We have all heard about how little caring is done by Carers if they come in, by the time they have filled out their time sheets your lucky to get 20 minutes. Care homes, how to you get a good one and at what cost. Far better to go a few years earlier than
Be looked after in my opinion.

Today I've been to the funeral of an old aunt who lived a very happy life then died suddenly in her sleep without any illness. That's the way to go.
A sudden death if the person is quite young is terribly hard on the family.

I want to die while I still have my faculties, my DM had bowel cancer and numerous TIA’s that slowly took her away from us mentally as did the brain tumour my DD died of.