This is terrible for you.

It seems terrible that I have done this to you.

But my ability to cope is rapidly draining away :

galloping senility, I guess.

 

As you know I am losing things repeatedly :

wallets, passport, bus-pass, money.

I am mislaying things.

I am aware of little lapses of attention.

I have 'gone quiet'.

I am weeping inside.

I have a permanent knot of sadness in my stomach

and a feeling of despair not just at the micro-level

(of one being among billions of similar damaged/mis-evolved beings)

but at the macro-level, too. The world is getting ever more awful.

Other species are disappearing almost before our eyes.

Around half of 'the wildlife' that existed in 1945

has been eradicated by our insane, ever-'progressing' species

and our effects...

and so on, and so forth...

 

I don't think I can face another winter,

another roadworthiness test on a car now over 15 years old

and which could break down anytime, leaving me stranded.

My extreme sense of autonomy ('free will') has left me isolated in so many ways,

and physically here in this rural 'retreat' with no neighbours

and no friends anymore.

An unmodernised rented house with dodgy electrics

that my landlord has refused to maintain in any way

for 25 years - a house of moths, silverfish, beautiful spiders,

mice and the occasional rat, with an inefficient coal fire

and a very old slate roof that will not last much longer.

 

I can't even look after the garden.

I am repeating my mother's end, but much earlier

and more rapidly. She denied and/or hid her senility,

but I, ever calling the spade a spade, must recognise it.

And I must do something about it before it's too late.

 

As for France, the prospect of selling the house

and disposing of all the stuff

simply pulls tighter the knot in my stomach.

I can't face it.

I have retreated into the cave of my oncoming incapacity,

and there is no exit.

I can't even face the journey back

by bus and plane and train...

and a month there on my own without you,

not sharing food and wine and music, colloquy and silences.

 

So I have to end my life before it gets worse

for me - and indeed for you. The longer I agonise miserably

and procrastinate the more difficult it will become.

And the more difficult it will be for me to do the simple thing

with Temazepam and the big plastic bag over my head.

 

The deepest thing that can be said
may be:
What is inexpressible
is inexpressible.

 

I feel that my life

has been mere procrastinated suicide.

 

The logistics are a bit difficult from the point of view

of finding the body. If I do it in my house, it could be days

before you realise that something has gone wrong

and hitch-hike the 16 or so miles to be presented with a stinking corpse.

 

So I have to do it either before someone is due to visit

(which is almost never)

or I do it in your house in the middle of the night.

 

It is a terrible decision, but - since things can only get worse -

it's a sensible one.

I certainly couldn't drive my car off a cliff

(even if there were any cliff roads near here)

and the outcome of that would not be guaranteed.

 

I hope you have a copy of my Will.

I can't find one, and I think I gave it to you.

 

All outcomes are awful !

There is no Good Time to do this,

and doing it now will prevent or ruin

your Meditation Week in England.

I feel terrible for 'failing you' through incapacity.

There is no way you could look after me,

become my 'carer'. The strain would be too much.

 

And I would eventually die in any case,

maybe in a psychiatric or geriatric ward

or in one of those horrible 'Care Homes'

where all autonomy

all personality

is effaced.

 

I am having great difficulty plucking up the courage.

To kill oneself 'in cold blood' after long and cool reflection

requires more courage than I ever thought I,

a born coward,

had within me.