At a cardiac rehab (exercise class, carefully monitored by nurses), I met a woman estranged from her bratty daughter. She had terminal (4th stage) inoperable cancer, and had suffered heart attacks as part of the condition. The daughter could see that her mother was dying, and could not bear to watch. This is why she took every opportunity to insult her mother, hoping to drive a wedge between them. She felt that if she hadn't loved her mother so much, watching her die a horrible and painful death would not be as painful. This is why the daughter tried so very hard to be as mean as possible.
The mother, on the other hand, felt that her time on earth was severely shortened, so wanted her daughter with her every moment. But it was boring and painful to watch as her mom went to exercise classes.
I felt like intervening and explaining to the daughter that she should try to be kind to her mother in her final days, but I was not certain what to do.
The urge to die is understandable, if there is no way out but death and death looms in your immediate future.
My new cancer doctor was shocked that the old cancer doctor did nothing for me for 4 month. He didn't even biopsy the cancer to see what we were dealing with. My new cancer doctor told me that if the two inch diameter cancer isn't immediately taken out, it could turn into a higher stage of cancer and kill me. I told a hospital social worker that I would have to kill myself if I got 4th stage cancer because death would be imminent, and I would have nothing in my future but pain and constant operations before dying a horrible death.
Unfortunately, my hospital social worker was a Catholic, and she imposed her will and her God and her bible and her beliefs upon me. In her religion, one doesn't commit suicide. So, she had be locked up.
Since then, following changes in the law in Oregon, where they now have assisted suicide, California also passed a law that people with "certain" terminal illnesses may terminate their own lives.
My life is mine. My decisions about life are my decisions. My religion is mine. No one should have the right to impose their religious views on me. The Constitution guarantees that the government must not allow one religion to dictate to another.
I can understand that some people get temporarily depressed and kill themselves. But, there are a huge number of people who have no choice but to eventually die, and many would like to get it over painlessly.
A horrible scenario is to get so sick that you cannot move out of a hospital bed, and you are a captive patient who would like to kill himself, but cannot get access to the means to commit suicide.
I agree that suicide is a very difficult decision.
I agree that we must consider the feelings of others. The hardest thing that I did was tell my loved ones that I would likely die of cancer (or suicide). The ones who truly loved me burst into tears. It was a wonderful test of those who didn't give a damn. My sister taunted me, and said that I was faking it. Then she heaped upon me a great deal of problems, by telling lies about me and motivating others to hate me. She is a devout theists (but she obviously doesn't understand what God wants).
Once you get to the stage that God is all you have, you then wonder why God wants to torture you. Then you realize that God either doesn't exist, or He isn't the loving God that everyone thinks. Now you don't even have God. It is you against the world, and death is imminent.
Some die without realizing that the end is near.
Others have time to prepare. We could buy a cheap casket, make instructions about burial or cremation, we could make wills or trusts (and hope that crazy judges in today's mixed up world don't take away our ability to make wills and trusts). We could type letters to the court explaining that we are not crazy, we are just dying, and our wills should stand as legal documents, and courts should not have the right to alter the terms of our wills and trusts. We have time, when we know that we are dying, to tell our loved ones that we love them. But, some wonder if it is better to die without letting others know, because it will only upset them.
Some are leaving a financial burden as they die. Hospitals might keep us alive with heart-lung machines even if there is no chance of us living (or not being mentallly retarded or paralyzed). Some want to die to keep hospitals from draining our entire estates. We are enough of a burden to our loved ones without sapping out the last of our assets (house, bank) as we pay hospital bills.
Our crazy probate courts allow conservators to destroy our estates. In Orange County, a probate case was heard that did exactly that. They did it to a former probate judge. In her old age, after her husband died, she had a sizable estate, a house all paid off, a sizable bank account, and was going to be happily married to a man many years younger than she was. She said that she didn't want to just rot away in old age, but wanted someone to be with, and wanted to travel the world and see the sights. The court saw it differently, since she chose her new husband rather quickly. The courts had appointed a conservator to handle her money. The conservator bled her dry of money. The conservator was supposed to be paid $600 to stand in her house when a new refrigerator arrived. She didn't bother. Instead, she had the delivery company deliver the new refrigerator, and she kept the $600 fee for doing nothing at all. Soon, this retired probate judge's estate was mired deeply in debt, and she was institutionalized, unable to escape and unable to access any of her vast and dwindling estate.
The government is like a crazy nanny, it tells us what to do, though we are perfectly sane and capable of handling our own affairs. The government doesn't really care about us, so, though they see that unscrupulous felons are ripping off estates of the elderly (with the authority of the courts), they do nothing to stop them.
He knows I would take care of him at home until he dies, that I would never abandon him, but he would rather go to hospice and live the remaining time he has left with complete strangers. 
