I. has had enough and is gonna kill himself

25 august

When we met him, 20 some years ago, we knew that he was going to die. Soon. Few years before he felt a constant pain in one of his arms, eventually diagnosed as the onset of Multiple Sclerosis. Then he could walk still and, actually, was recently married. But MS is a progressive disease, terminal, without cure. Yet there is research, and surely in the last twenty years, a panoplia of treatments have become available. 

So, along the years, he tried whatever medicine had to offer, and then some. Perhaps his MS was delayed, but it was certainly never cured. I. left Utrecht and settled in the french countryside. Few years later he came back to the city, and then to the countryside. The marriage fall appart, but I. has been graced with loving partners again and again. His dry wit and mischievous smile didn’t only conquered us, but a broad set of people that loves him still today. We visited his different houses, less frequently than what we would have liked, missing him more than I acknowledge to myself. Every time we saw him he was a bit worse off, but never too bad. Perhaps that is the cruelty of MS, or at least, the MS that I. suffered. 

It mimics healthy life. 

I am not dying of a terminal disease, and yet I am dying. I might be doing more sport and eating better than at some other moments in my life, but still my body is going slowly downhill. And I don’t like it. Of course I enjoy the many emancipations older age brings. I care less about my dwindling physical limits than when I was 18, yet I am more prepared to test and expand them. I know myself better. I believe, perhaps stupidly, that I still have stuff to do, and I know what that is. But I also know that time is running short. In the end I can say that I am not running, but I do know that it is a race against time what we are all doing. 

I. quit the race. He has have enough. 

We are lucky to live in NL, a civilized place that given psicological stability, allows you to end your own life in a decent manner. We are lucky, that is, until one of your friends tells you that he has got his request granted, and will kill himself soon. So you understand, and visit him, and talk, and agree with him. And at the same time you are cursing inside, cursing this curse of being alive and not wanting to die, but dying anyhow, knowing that somebody, somebody like your dear friend, would be better off dead. What the fuck is all this shit supposed to mean? what the fucking fuck? 

I guess we will never learn. But I am missing Ilja already.