You say you fear this question because she hates her life. What could you do to make it not hateful to her? Where can you show her worth where she sees only worthlessness?
I think there is a critical difference between killing someone, a deliberate action, and in not prolonging a life filled with suffering that would end naturally, but for intervention. As such, I do not hold the voluntary declining of treatment to be suicide, nor the following of that decision by a doctor to be homicide.
Unfortunately, the ability of medicine to prolong life in the face of horrible affliction has always outstripped its ability to cure those afflictions. Yet, it is the prolonging of the state that has always led to the knowledge needed to find cures.
You know, if I had had a really long day, and was really worn out by stuff, I could possibly interpret this as you saying I’m creating part of her problem. Like I’m not doing a good enough job.
But I’ll try not to.
I have been racking my brain trying to find something productive for her to do, I’ve been working with our local Braille association to figure out things she might find enjoyable, I read books that she picks out to her, I do my best to be positive and distract her for at least a few hours a day.
She doesn’t want to do anything. Everything I think of she flat turns down. If I try to get her to help think of something she says she won’t do anything until she’s out of there and has her own apartment. She’ll ask for a book, and I’ll go buy a copy to bring in the very next day, and she doesn’t like it anymore by then.
About the only thing that works consistently is just talking about my day and what I happen to be thinking about at the moment, and be satisfied that it will be an entirely one-sided conversation where I try to think up positive things to say for two hours, and hope she won’t yell at me for not getting her out of there immediately right this second.
What would you have me do, oh sage.