Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Financially Motivated Murder-Suicides Trumpet Silent Suffering
Twice in the past week, those of us who live in the metro Washington, D.C. – Baltimore corridor have seen reports about murder-suicides that had at least some component of causation related to the dead families’ money problems. In one instance, a single mother who was also a psychologist killed her young teenaged son before killing herself; in another incident, a husband killed his wife and her two children – his step-children. In both cases, recent financial stresses were cited as potential triggers. And in both cases, grieving neighbors and loved ones either denied the seriousness of the problems or seemed not to know.
These instances are on the rise during these hard economic times – we all may know that and not need much additional explanation or much of an imagination to glean why. But rather than become sound bites about our shock and disbelief in local news reports about dead neighbors, it might be wiser for us all to truly consider honestly that some of our own are troubled to the point that a tipping point to a horrific act isn’t far off.
First, the stories I referenced above can be found discussed here.
Let me say at the outset that this will not be the most cheerful piece I have written, and I know the subject generates great controversy even among those who deal with suicide prevention or family interventions on a professional level. But I won’t pull any punches about what I felt and still sometimes feel when I look back at and forward to a life of financial struggle. We cannot reach into our communities to do much helping or healing if we continue to force ourselves and our neighbors to suffer in shame and in silence. And financial problems create great big heaping loads of both.
While we espouse a belief that there is nothing wrong with being working class or poor, most Americans are indoctrinated very early on that our cultural worship of the almighty dollar and everything it affords us is what is truly sacred. The stuff of wealth is the stuff of power and influence. We say we honor those who do an honest day’s work but then we make sure those same people know full well what their rank is in our social circles, in our communities and well beyond. I was taught to care for the poor; I was also taught to aspire to wealth. The unspoken and direct pressure of that aspiration-demand was every bit as powerful as the Christian messaging to love my neighbor as myself – even if that neighbor was poor or working class.
Fast forward to adulthood when I worked hard and tried to make good all that was expected of me financially. In good times, the pressure to maintain and increase those good times often drowned out the cries for what I really wanted to do with my life. I longed to love and cherish my children more directly and to spend more time with them. Often, I worked long hours and when I was home I was crabby and distant rather than being the mom I always thought I would be. That created depression and anger for me. Sometimes I thought of suicide.
In the bad times, when I was not working a great job or when my machinist-husband was struggling to work (whether for health reasons or shifts in the economy and the need for his trade) or when I had cancer, the strain of dealing with financial obligations taken on responsibly in good times but unmanageable in bad ones became horribly pressure-filled. I couldn’t simply back off, change my lifestyle, move and satisfy creditors. The calls don’t stop from the collection agencies. Moving takes money. Employers don’t cotton to employees with weaknesses like financial, family or health troubles.
The world closes in quickly. Depression must be hidden, but it is felt. Suicide is considered. I know I considered it. The thoughts of ending it all are hard to fight off – and it was only the thought about those left behind and the costs they would have to cover that stopped me (and I suspect others) from carrying out gruesome plans considered in the dark, wee hours when the collection calls cannot come and others are sleeping. Mental health help seems a joke at those times – even with health insurance, out-of-pocket counseling costs are high and good counselors are hard to find. The time to get help takes away from the time to work and earn money. It compounds the problem causing the depression to seek help.
Oh, say some of you, what about friends and family? Think about how we all often judge those in our own families with money trouble or job trouble or health trouble. Suffice to say, from the condescending behavior of those in the more well-heeled classes around us to the judgment of those in our own families, working class and poor people stand not only alone but often harshly condemned unless they can act to all the world as though nothing at all is wrong until that horrific moment when those who judged exclaim they had no idea about our suffering. I also believe there are persons in our society responsible for so much suffering and economic pain that they are accomplices to these awful acts and should be held criminally responsible, but that’s probably a bridge too far for many.
I used to hear people say that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but in my deepest and darkest moments, I knew that the stain of having gone broke in America was very close indeed to a permanent problem. Going broke often means – as it has meant for me and millions of others – losing the love and physical closeness of people we fought to protect. It isn’t that we cannot adapt to less stuff, and it’s more the crushing pain that we cannot adapt to less love and no support.
America has a whole lot of people hurting very deeply. From the poor among us to the working class and those who are hiding all manner of financial strain in this difficult economy, few options seem viable or potentially helpful. I was pulled from the wreckage of my silent reverie (thanks, Sarah, for that gorgeous line) by the dignity of having my story told in Michael Moore’s SiCKO and finding out, finally, that it was not my fault. And the nurses offer, always, that refuge for their patients – and now for those who are suffering in an America that has strayed a long way off course for millions of people. Join the nurses. Tell them where it hurts. Let’s heal America.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
45 Comments so far
Show AllThanks for another eloquent, if bleak, commentary, Donna.
I commend your courageous determination to express the grim truth that sets us free, rather than indulge the popular denial mechanism of reflexive or hysterical optimism.
Pasteurized, processed false positives, rationalized and justified as necessary to fend off paralyzing despair and apathy, are the equivalent of junk food: McHappy Meals.
Amerikan humorist Kin Hubbard observed long ago, "It ain't no disgrace to be poor-- but it might as well be."
One can as easily observe, "It ain't no crime to be poor-- but it might as well be."
"I just spent sixty days in the jailhouse
For the crime of havin' no dough
Now here I am back out on the street
For the crime of havin' nowhere to go.
Save your neck, or save your brother
Looks like it's one or the other
Oh, you don't know the shape I'm in."
-- "The Shape I'm In", Robbie Robertson/The Band (1970)
Hey, Obedient.
"It ain't no crime to be poor-- but it might as well be."
As Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out in yesterday's article, it is in many ways a crime to be poor.
I agree-- I mean, I read Ehrenreich's article and am well aware that the traditional top-down, reactionary criminalization of poverty is metastasizing.
That's what made me think of that verse from "The Shape I'm In", which addresses the point, albeit obliquely.
The prison industry thriving in the Amerikan Imperium's authoritarian Hollow State feeds on the economic underclass. The wider the net cast by top-down proponents and agents of draconian "law and order", the more established, expansive, and indispensable it becomes.
For the overclass, criminalizing everything but their own and their servants' behavior is a win-win arrangement-- for themselves, their professional jailers, and their vision of "civilized society".
To paraphrase Bart Simpson, there must be a down side they're not seeing.
I am especially fond of the contrast between calling someone in the "underclass" guilty of criminal activity for some check-writing behaviors that corporations for years have known as "managing the float." Lives and families have been ruined over relatively small sums while huge bonuses have been paid on the corporate side even when the float wasn't managed without taxpayer funds from the rest of us. It is indeed a system Bart Simpson can find ample ways to love.
Thank you for always being out there, O.S.
Until the Banksters start emulating their 1929 predecessors and start leaping out of Wall Street windows (which would be a small measure of atoning for the havoc those rapacious cruds have caused), the sad state of affairs elucidated in the piece will continue.
Are you sure you aren't related to my husband somehow? He has made this point to me many times. Thanks for reading and commenting.
The problem is that in 1929 the bankers lost everything. Today, they have everything, so there is no reason for them to jump out of windows.
Since 1929 the banksters and their descendents have been buying politicians in the US and abroad to assure that banksters and other corporations are taken care of (and then some) at everybody else's expense whenever the proverbial feces hits the proverbial fan.
Whereas Hoover let the banksters' chips fall where they might, and FDR regulated the banksters to keep them under control for 50 years, Team Dubya and Team Obama have committed every dollar in the US Treasury and guaranteed unlimited additional funds borrowed or otherwise, to make sure that banksters not only survive, but enjoy record profits whenever they derail the economy.
In addition to murder/suicides, many economically destroyed Americans are simply committing suicide by a variety of methods.
Let us also not forget Team Willy Bubba who started the ball rolling by getting rid of Glass/Steagle & passing de-regulatory measures.
Banksters in 29 didn't own enough of Congress, Didn't have the Government safetynet of Too Big To Fail!. Things are so much different than in 1929,, for the Rich anyhow. >^^<
Donna writes, "I also believe there are persons in our society responsible for so much suffering and economic pain that they are accomplices to these awful acts and should be held criminally responsible, but that’s probably a bridge too far for many."
Donna, I think that as a society, we totally need to consider this. Deeply. Now.
yes, this is the key line to her piece, and her salvation...
I am deeply sensitive to the issues of depression and suicide, and know suffering can appear to have varied sources...I would venture that, among them, many of us suffer from a lack of an admirable lifegoal, and that our oppression at the hands of violent thieves and murderers is to blame...
to her credit, she has stated things more clearly in this article than in her previous ones...
her earlier works are much more likely to petition her leaders for economic help, or criticize them for none...only here have I witnessed her beginning to go beyond plea and criticism to the real deal: blame...
now that we have arrived at blame, we can begin to discuss repercussions...
assuming we decide to hang around and fight, rather than just hang...
[I used to hear people say the suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but in my deepest and darkest moments, I knew that the stain of having gone broke in America was very close indeed to a permanent problem.}
Not just in America anymore. I know that I'll eventually take my own life, but that isn't going to stop me from enjoying it while I can.
Me too. My back hurts. But there are still some things I want to do. When I am done, I will be done.
The greatest irony is that although Jack Kavorkian was jailed for pioneering modern assisted suicide, the future of America portends expanding assisted suicide beyond the three states that currently allow it (MT, OR and WA). as a result of unemployment, Obamacare and other issues, it may be necessary to have Kavorkian clinics to provide affordable assisted suicide for the masses.
No, not really. After all, if/when the US cities erupt like the British ones are doing now, your government will declare open season on the terrorists and blood will flow. No need to have suicide booths in the USA.
Great article.... Capitalism is dangerous to health. One of the prejudices that is still socially acceptable is the prejudice against those who are not 'papered' with college degrees. This prejudice is institutionalized to the point that employment can be denied because of it. Some of the most brilliant people I have known were self-educated but poor.
I have known many such people. When the British Admiralty in the eighteenth century offered a prize of what would be millions in today's money, John Harrison, a self educated clock maker make a clock that neither lost not gained more than a minute in an eighteenth month voyage.
What? the Admiralty cried (like the Burgesses in 'The Pied piper of Hamelin') A commoner? Unthinkable!
Harrison finally collected his prize just before his death after fighting for it most of his life.
I agree. And many are self-educated but rich. Or somewhere in the middle.
Neither expertise nor excellence have much to do with degrees. But the prejudice toward degrees drove a homeopath and a chinese herbologist I know to get M.D.s in a medicine they have little use for, knowing that if they didn't, they wouldn't get any patients. That's an extreme, but real, example.
Too many kids nowadays go through their bachelors with barely an interest in a single class, just for that piece of paper. Then they find they're in massive debt and there are no jobs. Often I suggest to students that if they have no interest in learning anything, maybe they should consider a way to make a living that doesn't require a degree. Or at least drop out for a few years and think about what the hell they're doing.
"I also believe there are persons in our society responsible for so much suffering and economic pain that they are accomplices to these awful acts and should be held criminally responsible, but that’s probably a bridge too far for many."
It is not a bridge too far for me.
Just after the S & P's downgrade of the US credit rating, I watched the local news just to see if there was a report on this historic milestone. Indeed there was one. In fact, it was the lead story of the entire newscast at 11pm. It lasted all of a minute or so before they quickly moved to "news" of a murder/suicide in a suburban home.
While providing zero commentary on the speculative effects of the downgrade, and nothing as to the reason for the murder/suicide, this jarring juxtaposition unintentionally led me to ask: Are they connected?
The purpose of the media is to keep things disconnected, don't ya know? .
Thank you Donna for this article....and that bridge is not far for more people than might be given a voice in the media or recognition in any polls.
I too have considered that non-existence might be preferable to the seemingly endless financial struggles of existence for those of us not in the club...outside the elite classes that call the shots and are forcing global austerity on all non-members.
Even so, I am a usually happy face in the ranks of the poor and disenfranshised...happy and thankful I am not one of the elite if membership rendered me blind to any suffering, coldly indifferent or critical of those whose only reason for financial hardship is a presumed inability to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". As if that is how the power-elite made their obscene levels of wealth.
For years I've believed my abilities as a musician and composer would secure a more stable financial entrance into my sixties....that is seeming less and less likely as time goes and my own health declines in ways that will very likely make regular employment almost impossible. And, while I could probably qualify for disability, the fact that I can still do what I do as a musician would totally disqualify me...even though I can not keep any of what I do up for eight hours or more a day/five or more days per week. And that is probably not an uncommon plight for any worker who has worn down his or her body doing physically demanding work for decades.
Anyway...having worked hard, played by the rules, paid my taxes and been a good consumer...the insane state of the world and my little spot on it is definitely taxing my ability to remain positive and hopeful that I will not someday...way sooner than my retirement age of sixty-eight (I am fifty-six now and was notified of the age being upped from sixty-five to sixty-eight about seven or so years ago) find myself homeless, hungry, in poor health and so far down in the beaurocratic cracks that I will become as invisible to society as if I did take my own life.
Perhaps, that is the hope.......so many of us will be so far out of sight and out of mind as to not even exist at all...at least those of us no longer of any real use as corporate laborers or free-spending consumers.
You are never invisible to me. Sappy as that sounds. Thank you for reading and commenting.
Well, even with a three-year job search (that ended after Easter this year), I still have some tactics for bill collectors: I disabled my voice mail, and I don't answer calls on caller ID I can't recognize (it's not against the law to not answer one's phone) and I don't fetch registered letters from the post office. I'm making less than I did three years ago, but the job I hold has benefits (that's still difficult to fathom) and is an awesome place to work. I still maintain that "parttimenobenefits" is now one word.
All are priceless unto the least and beginning there.
All are unique and there is no other one like them.
All are wise at the heart of the within.
Thank you Leland Mellott...I know all this to be true and hold it out for others to see and use but rarely apply it to myself...your words came at the right time.
Thanks for your simple and uplifting words, Donna...they are truly appreciated...and I like sappy!
My retirement is crushed. My health is crushed. My life is crushed. That's a strong statement, but not unrealistic. Yesterday was a fantasy-smashing example of things to come. I now have no health insurance. I had been paying $79 a month just to see a "primary" doctor; it covered only his visits and part of my xanax (anxiety) and sertraline (depression). I'm approaching age 60, which was the age at which my dad began his series of ailments--or "doctoring," as they call it in the Midwest. He started with high blood pressure. Then he had a stroke, which required extensive rahab. Then he had a bump on one testicle, which required its removal. Then he fell and broke his hip, at about age 70. "I never felt such pain. Sheesh," he told me. For him, that was a strong expressiono of emotion. Then my mother and the wife of my dad for 52 years died quickly of myelofibrosis. My dad then hobbled along in a funk for another two years. "It's so 'blame' quiet in here," he would say. "I keep the TV on all day." Then he visited a relative, but being away from his beloved house likely caused a stroke: he fell straight down and broke a rib on the floor. A few months later, after his 82d b-day, he decided to sell the house. Before that could happen though, he had a major stroke and was paralyzed on one side, losing the gift of speech. The doctor could not get a feeding tube into him, so he starved for 10 days before he could be in a hospice and given morphine. He then died. How am I going to get ALL of this healthcare, let alone PAY for it?? It seems after I reach 60--shortly--I'm in for trouble. And very few people have shown sympathy yet. Least of all my previous two primary doctors, who won't give me xanax prescriptions without $200 payments, plus the cost of xanax. The ER would not either--and they thought xanax was for depression! Ahhhh, the stinging feeling of being isolated without a way out. Yes, I will be happy IF I get a minimum wage job without health insurance--until that first stroke hits. Thank you Ron Reagan. I knew all hell would break loose when you were elected. I didn't think it would take 30 years.
Wow, I am sorry for what you are going thru. I was at a clinic and heard the MA talk to someone in your position on the phone. Person needed a refill on meds but did not have insurance to come in for the exam for the refill. MA hung up and bitched about it wasn't HIS fault the person didn't have the money. No sympathy at all.
Have you looked in to natural remedies instead of prescription meds? Naturalnews.com has some good articles.
Good luck.
For those who say suicide is the cowards way out, i say f-ck you!
I have been there. When you can not see anyway out and there is nothing but despair left, it isn't cowardness.
I was very happy that Ronnie became a drooling idiot. Karma IS a bitch
Yes, I have the same problem with my paid out of pocket doctor, impediment to care, too. I am on 2 routine high blood pressure meds and this credentialed nitwit insists that I pay him a 'doctor visit every 3 months so he can get his share off my chronic condition, or he won't call in the script to the pharmacy in his doled out manner. I hate the guy so much I'm ready to pay more to just get the meds off the internet so I don't have to see his ugly face again and again and again. He is utterly clueless!
garlanddegreeff,
Please check this out. It will help you and save you money.
http://www.documentarywire.com/medicinal-cannabis-human-health
The SEVERAL studies done by the US government confirm that this is truly a wonder plant. Even Nixon was aghast when he commissioned a medical study of experts in order to push the deleterious effects of this plant, only to have the study CONFIRM the medicinal properties and urge it's total legalizition. That's in the video too along with quotes from Jefferson and Washington..
Donna, since you reach a lot of people, I recommend you look this over.
the myth of the self-made man, the rags-to riches story, the Puritan belief that having money is a sign that you are one of the Chosen: our collective psique is built around the wor$hip of Mammon
To me its odvious that you'd have to be "Chosen of God" or at least Skull&Bones
I busted tail for over 20 yrs then my back quit "threw 3 or more disks" just couldn't stand the strain,, So based on the American myth I should be (on top) (well off) (in need of nothing)
B/S I get partial treatment for cronic pain, nothing for depression since it built up over 10yrs being in pain. Gotta love the Capitalist system, today if a kid asks me what to do I point hime toward an Ivy Leauge School wher they'll make connections, Leave humility and humanity behind, take everything offered, and stab the back of anyone in the way. You may not be happy but you will be RICH! >^^<
Donna, never apologize for being truthful - regardless of what the positivity police might say. Also, don't think it is too long a bridge to cross to cite the rich as complicit in both directly and indirectly causing the dealth of the poor (and working class). That is what they do.
Thank you for stating what should be repeated ad infinitum so simply and poignantly.
"Depression must be hidden, but it is felt. " So true , so true. The English had a tradition of criminalizing poverty and I believe its returning to us. The poor were locked away in debtor prisons and turned into indentured servants ( near slaves.) I sense that segments of the Retardican party wants a return of these solutions and would even in some qtrs. sanction a return of certain types of slavery as well.
SEAGLASS,
The "indentured servants" in many cases were in fact actual slaves, especially in the American colonies of the 1600s where Britain sent many of them. They were allowed to be bought and sold, they were whipped and beaten, they were raped at will, they were passed down through wills, and many were physically worked to death. Really the only difference was that after a set amount of time - 7 years being customary, if they actually survived they were set free and given a little bit of money and perhaps some land to get a fresh start. When we hear the words "White Trash" we think that this is some modern slang from maybe 50 or 60 years ago but it actually goes back to at least the late 1600s and most likely originated on the Caribbean sugar plantations in reference to the white indentured servants who were often worked to death.
And it wasn't just the indebted poor, look up the following two words: kidnap and spirits. Kidnap is a joining of Kid for child and the shortened Napper for Thief. Referring to the practice of stealing children (teenagers mostly) from the English and Scottish streets to place into involuntary servitude (slavery) in the growing colonies. Spirits as used here doesn't refer to the supernatural, but the the name given the men who kidnapped (or spirited away) these hapless teens. Booming business in the 16 and 17 hundreds.
If one looks at our colonial past it isn't pretty at all. And yes you're absolutely right that this all stems from England's class system. The poor and near poor have been getting screwed by the upper classes for centuries now. Its only the past 30 or 40 odd years that we here in the U.S. have given up on fighting back.
Twice I thought of the "S" word but drunk myself silly both times;mayhap it was fortunate I'm a lush! Been sober for over 20 yrs.since those tettering times.
A TEAR FALLS
THERE IS A PECULIAR OCCURANCE THAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING AND IT IS A PART OF MY LIFE EMERGING FROM MY EYES ;ONE OR BOTH.
IT IS THERE TO BE WIPED AWAY BY FINGER OR ANY THING ELSE HANDY,MAYBE IT EVEN MAKES IT TO THE SURFACE OF SOMETHING,TABLE,CHAIR,FLOOR.
MY ARMS AND HEART ARE FULL ; THERE IS TENSION IN MY HEART THAT WOULD BE EASY TO FIX BY NOT THINKING OF ANY; AND YET I WONDER AT WHAT COST TO SOUL ?
THE WORLD , AS EXTENDED FAMILY , EVEN THE ANGELS WEEP AT WHAT WE HAVE NOT LEARNED AND THINGS TO DO AND YET ARE LOATH.
YET , EVEN AS THE TEAR FALLS IT MUST DISAPPEAR AND I MUST MOVE ON AND HOPE THAT A PIECE OF MY LIFE WAS NOT LEFT IN VAIN ; TREASURE THE TEAR , STILL , CLOSE IT'S DOOR .
THIS THING WE CALL A BODY THAT IS HOME TO THE SOUL WHILE IT IS HERE ON EARTH CAN MANIFEST IN MANY WAYS WHAT IS GOOD OR BAD WITHIN OR WITHOUT AND A TEAR DID TELL OF MY LIFES ROLE .
SOMETIMES THE HEART GETS A LITTLE FULL
Tony
Thank you. I understand.
Thank you
Donna,
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. I too, have experienced much of the same. I remember when a sister of mine who is a millionaire said many years ago (before I broke all contact with her) that I could solve my economic problems by buying day old bread and the like at supermarkets. This insufferable, arrogant, vowel stretching, multi house owning, three cruise a year POS tested every bit of my civility in that conversation. Since she is the oldest one and is rich, my other siblings followed her lead in generally forgetting I existed. They even got my children from a former marriage into the act. It got really old to have my own daughter remember my birthday about three weeks late each year. Then the wooden "I know I forgot but I really love you dad" repeated each year word for word made me think she had it written in a rolodex someplace. Yeah, being poor is a recipe for ostracism in this sick society with its' dysfunctional families.
But I'll tell you one thing. After you learn who your siblings and children really are now that you are poor as opposed to back when you were pulling down $80,000 a year before everything went to shit, it's kind of liberating. I mourned for a few years but I got over it. Now I live in a paid for manufactured home in a rent control state (Vermont) so my landlord can't jack the rent up on 1/3 acre the home is on above the CPI (I'm sure people like the Koch brothers are working on an ALEC sponsored bill to change that but so far so good). My wife and I live simply with a low carbon footprint and get by. I have no contact with my blood relations and don't miss it. I wish the "Czar's Blessing" on them from the movie Fiddler on the Roof ( May God bless and keep the Czar .... Far, Far away from me).
Good luck to you Donna. You will always be number one in my book.
It breaks my heart to read what folks share here -- we are all more connected and more real with one another than many in our physical environments. Thank you for reading and commenting. I learn so much about our common struggle from each and all of you. And I learn so much about the decency and good there still is in this world. If we could channel and focus our energy on expressing more broadly what we share here, I suspect we'd find millions of brothers and sisters with whom we might actually confront and change things.
best piece i've read in ages...my former boyfriend killed himself four weeks ago...he had physical and mental health problems, was an alcoholic and substance abuser, but had graduated from an Ivy League school and was always able to manage as long as he had work...when he was laid off for the first time ever at the age of 47, he started spiraling downhill rapidly...i believe the last straw for him was that he was completely out of money (two years of unemployment will do that to you--you go through the savings and the 401(k), you sell the house and live off that till it runs out, your unemployment dries up, you've got no health insurance because COBRA is a joke and so you can't get any help for your very real physical and mental health problems. The state was threatening him with jail for failure to pay his child support even though he simply could not pay it, he had no assets and no income. Everybody except me acted shocked when he put a shotgun in his mouth and ended his misery. Obviously, none of these people had been paying attention, because the signs were right there in their faces, but they chose to look away. This must be going on all across America. The shame of having no money (often either the consequence of and/or the cause of having poor health) is simply unbearable for many. The contempt the average American feels for anyone who has fallen on hard times is stunning in its coldness.
death is never the end; so wish him well in whatever way you feel comfortable.
HERE TO THERE
How is this journey mapped out that we call life and how is this life if there is more when the physical reverts to the dust from whence it came? When one leaves the womb and takes that first breath and the sojourn begins are the parameters already set on what one will accomplish during the walk or the run or even the stumbles that are all part of what one usually expects to encounter along the way?
Is it by choice before that first breath that the Soul checks it’s scorecard and determines what it would like to put something positive in this put together dust thingy we call a body? Yea, I think that is so but it would be a rather robotic existence here on this planet if there were no choices to be made, on the run so to speak, while here along that path with all of Mother Nature out there to see and feel and know that you are a part of the whole.
There are so many distractions out there while going from a wee tot to how ever long one will stay and take whatever will push or block or help because the heart, the mind, the body which are all part of the Soul while here and because of choices made before the first breath there is a forgetfulness or the freewill would be meaningless. We do not live in a vacuum and all part of the whole and to do what is possible for another Soul is of the highest order. “Do unto others as you would have do unto you”; This is not a judgment of anyone’s life here and my wish is that all who carry the scars of this untimely departure have peace come to them and that he created something positive and will put it in his life’s journal as such.
Tony