[Taltarzac725]

Originally Posted by eweissenbach

Very thought provoking quote Tal. I so agree that hope is the thing that keeps people going. Those who have lost hope are often the ones who take their own lives, and tragically, the lives of others. I remember when my father was living with my wife and I in his last years. He would walk outside and walk around his car, sometimes opening the hood to check the oil or antifreeze, sometimes wiping off the windows. He couldn't drive due to many infirmities, but you could tell he was thinking he would get better and once again gain his independence. My wife saw him one day and said "You need to tell your dad that he is never going to be able to drive, and he needs to get that out of his head". I replied, "No, we can't take away his hope, it is all he has. You and I know he will never be able to drive, but he needs to think it is possible."

That's wise. I often felt that all I had left was hope but that did not mean that I stopped trying to come up with some back-up plan. My great uncle committed suicide in AZ in 1992 mainly because he lost all hope because of his debilitating disease and he felt like he did not want to be a burden to anyone else. Plus, he had a lot of very strange habits that would have made him quite hard to live with. I do know he would have done almost anything for a friend as he got banned from Costa Rica- a place he loved-- because he put himself up for bail for a friend and the friend skipped the country. He had to get out of Costa Rica permanently.