When parent says they wish they were dead as they've had enough of life...

I have heard many older people express their wish to not be alive any more.
Why doesn't your Mum stop taking her medication unless she feels a direct benefit from ie painkillers and sleeping tablets? Is that something you could discuss with her?

i think every old person thinks this eventually. It’s normal and not necessarily depression but a realistic asessment of things

Agree - yep I can see why you feel like that mum. Assuming you do.
but as we can’t take you to the vet and have you put down I’m here to make sure we have some little sparkly pockets of fun - what would you like ? ( places to go , things to watch / listen to , food or drink ? My mum had a wee drop of baileys in her terminal 2 days at home and giggled like a kid. I also brought a weak g&t into hospital in a water bottle - it wasn’t the alcohol it was the naughtiness that sparked her 😁)

mum whilst we are thinking of this sort of thing I think we need to set down your wishes as to how you want to be looked after. She needs an advanced care plan /RESPECT form or what ever they are called round your way. Gp or nurse or what ever can do - it’s pretty clear mum wants to be allowed to pass peacefully when she does and no k e try to drag her back withCPR for instance - make sure that’s explicit - but also how interventionist would she like people to be if she gets a chest infection etc most people thinK and decide no hospital for chest infection but if I break a leg I’ll have that sorted type of thing.

hugs. It’s really hard but actually you can help your mum to have the kindest death in a way she wants.

I also think that by the time elderly people are voicing it to their relatives, which will be very hard for many of them, they may well have been feeling this way for significantly longer.

This is very true - my elderly ma veers from saying she has had enough (when feeling poorly) to recently telling me she wants to live to be 100…It is nice that she feels positive - I would not want her quality of life (she is frail, inactive and in supported living) and TBH I view the future with misgiving as she is steadily declining, but that is just the way it goes…

And the brutal truth is that the whole 'becoming a burden' thing has an element of truth. I love my mum dearly, and I certainly don't begrudge any of the support she needs, but it's undeniably true that our interactions have already shifted from a laugh over a glass of wine or a game of scrabble and a nice Sunday lunch, to long (frequently repeated) conversations about her health and her worries. The love hasn't gone out of our time together, but if I'm honest then a lot of the joy has.

DM was in pretty good health for a 92 year old, but she had gone I to a home to keep her very poorly husband company, and couldn't mentally cope on her own even with a live in carer.

Most of her friends had died, my dad had died 39 years ago, she had remarried and now her second husband was in a terrible state. She had a living will for no treatment, she needed a stent, but declined. She was taken into hospital a few times by ambulance crew and self discharged.

Finally she decided against COVID vaccines. In the end she caught COVID before the roll out, and died on the same day as her husband. It was a blessed relief for her, and I am probably one of the very few who is glad that she didn't get treatment, or go into hospital, but was allowed to die with dignity in her care home, with her husband.

Working in palliative care, I see people who have had enough all the time.

It is often interpreted by families as the person having 'given up' and that if only we could improve their mood things would be better.

Having done this job for many many years, my experience is that the overwhelming majority of times the person is just aware of their body and knows that things are going very very wrong and expressing reality. It's hard for someone without advanced cancer to picture how bloody awful it makes you feel, even if you aren't in pain. And of course families don't want to lose their loved one. But it's actually rare to see someone who has 'given up' ahead of time.

My dad started saying this in his mid-80s. He had polio as a boy and it's still affecting him. His legs don't work any more and he's gradually losing the use of his arms. He's in pain most of the time and he's had enough. He still has a good appetite and enjoys music, so that's something, but I can perfectly understand why he says he's lived long enough.

I've had quite a few elderly people tell me they don't want to live any more. One woman, wracked with osteoporosis, told me 'I'm just trying to stay sane until the end' and that's stayed with me. Not much you can say to that, really.

I think this is much more common than is expressed tbh, people come to a point where they feel they have little quality of life, are in pain, Ill, feel vulnerable, frustrated and a burden to the people they love. My dad has dementia, he's still physically well and mentally well enough to enjoy life but has told us very, very clearly that once he's just "a burden" then he no longer wishes to be alive. It's heartbreaking for the people left behind so the temptation is to cling onto them and push for life-prolonging measures at any cost but I do wonder whether there needs to be a real shift in thinking so that we start allowing people to in these circumstances to have painless and dignified end of life treatment.
Then on the other hand I look at that last sentence and think it sounds a bit chillingly dystopian so I'm in two minds about it all really.
It's all incredibly hard though OP, sending your way.

My mum hasn't explicitly said this, but she's said similar things. To be honest, I can see her point. She's got a variety of health problems which mean that she's often in pain or feels rubbish and can't walk far. She may have early dementia, which she's aware of, and her anxiety and apathy mean she never wants to go anywhere or do anything very much. She does still take pleasure in her grandchildren, but as they grow up, there's less opportunity for her to really be involved in their lives. She spends most of the time sitting at home, oing nothing, fretting about her health problems and various other anxieties, and becoming irritable.

In her case though, she's only 76. None of her health problems are life threatening (apart from the possible dementia, and that's not definite). She could live another 10 or 15 years quite easily (possibly longer). She has nothing to look forward to except her mobility getting her worse, her grip on reality getting weaker, and her world continuing to shrink - and i suspect she lives in fear of losing her (much fitter but also slightly older) husband, which would render her immediately much more vulnerable. She could sign a DNR etc, but unless she becomes really ill or has an accident, that wouldn't make any difference - and to be honest, I'm not sure she'd want to anyway - it would make her so anxious to think about it.

I totally understand how she feels when she says that everyone lives too long these days, and there's really nothing I can do except sympathise.

I suspect my Mum will say the same soon. In her 70 with multiple co morbidities and as result of a fall is currently bed bound, in pain and doubly incontentient. This is unlikely to change. I’ve been laying awake thinking I’m going to sort out my own advanced medical planning. If it was me I wouldn’t want things like uti/chest infections treated, I would like to slip into spesis and die.

Personally, my ideal life plan is to live the coming 20 years to the full, then wake up dead one day in my mid/late 80s. I’m already feeling changes at 65 that are a very mild warning of what’s to come, and the PIL in their late 80s have a quality of life that I don’t want thanks.

However, I am all too aware I’d be very lucky to die suddenly and current healthcare and health practices, along with our irrational innate desire to stay alive, mean I’m likely to have a long slow (expensive painful depressing) descent to a longed-for death. I hope I have the strength to minimise the prolonging of my life when the time comes. I do have an Advance Decision in place to cover the worst eventualities.

No one in my family has had anything close to resembling quality of life after 75, with significant struggles before that as well. I know my parents have no intention of showing themselves to suffer or others to suffer because of them in the same way we all have my grandparents, and I totally respect that choice.

It's sad but I think it's more common than people realise and more rational than people want to acknowledge. My mum is a similar age and she looked after my nan who lived to 99, in good physical health but she outlived her husband by about 20 years, outlived all her friends and all her in the last few years didn't recognise even her closest family. She was miserable, said so frequently and at times her dementia meant that she really took out her misery on those closest to her as well.

Mum's still got a good quality of life but I know she's dreading that potential outcome. She'd far rather die peacefully in her 80s than liver miserably to 100.

I think someon in their 80s, in pain and ill has every right to say and think this. We don;t live forever. Death is natural and inevitable. If her good life is behind her, where she was well enough to live fully, and all she has now is debilitating illness, then acknowledge her right to feel this way.

I'd say, "I understand mum. I love you and i am so sorry you have to put up with this." Then try to help make her comfortable and take her mind off it. Reminisce. Ask questions about her youth and old photographs, play music she loves and offer her food she enjoys and treats.

No please don't try and inflict counselling on these poor folks who likely are absolutely right to want to be dead. Acknowledge their feelings honestly. Tell them that what is happening to them is rubbish. The fact that you might want them to live forever is neither here nor there. When my parents are saying this consistently I would love to think I'd have the courage to help them on their way, but I probably won't.

My Dad (85) has said this a few times. He’s outlived two wives, has mobility and various other health issues-he’s not quite ready to go yet, but he’s perfectly entitled to feel this way when he’s having a bad day. Tbh, I’m not sure that I want to live past my 80’s unless I have remarkably good health.

You don’t need to react to your Mum’s comments, OP, just respect her wishes if she doesn’t wish to be resuscitated, for example.

I have a couple of elderly (90s) and frail family members and I hope this doesn't sound weird, but I'm glad that they want to die. They have both said they've lived a good life but now it's time to go... of course it's sad that we're going to lose them but they're ready. Isn't that the best way to be? A life well lived.

MIL sometimes says this kind of thing. Advanced mixed dementia, zero quality of life, can't eat solid food or remember what she did 5 seconds ago. Usually feels a bit shit with all the aches and pains of an 80-something body with too much hard graft on the clock. No pleasure in anything. I don't blame her for saying it. She certainly means it at the time.

My Mum had pancreatic cancer and died at 86 weighing just 6 stone 8 lbs. She couldn't eat with the cancer so was starved to death. My sister's and I cared for her in her home and a McMillan nurse came every day. So many days in her last month she told me she didn't want to wake up. She loved us but her DH was dead, every single one of her friends was dead, she was the oldest of her generation in the area she lived as and she'd just had enough of life. She said she'd had a good life and that she'd been happy most of her life and now she wanted to sleep and not wake up in pain. She was on morphine for pain at the end. One day she got her wish and didn't wake up. Although I was terribly sad to lose my Mum I couldn't be sorry she'd gone because she was wasting away every day in front of us in pain. Sometimes they know best. I can't help thinking we wouldn't let a cat or dog suffer in that way but humans are made too. She slept a lot in her last week of life.

I don't think there is anything wrong with saying that, she's just being honest

@MissMarplesNiece GPs like that may need a bit of a conversation. Has she had a proper discussion about what matters more to your mum, living as long as possible or quality of life and comfort? What are the meds that mean she can’t have anti anxiety medication, what are the risks of having them, what’s the benefit of those to your mum at her age, and which would your mum rather have? It may be that a grown up discussion would result in a better solution for your mum.

It’s so sad but there isn’t much you can do about this, you can’t jolly people out of this state of mind and I am not sure we should even try.

People just can’t live forever as much as we might want them to :( I can definitely imagine a point where I’d just had enough and i absolutely love life, my family, and friends so much.

I’m sorry you’re going through this, though, it is very hard to deal with, particularly when we want them to live because we love them so much.

I think this is quite common - and rational , really. I can readily think of three people who express/expressed this wish as they lost their independence, sight, mobility etc. It is so hard to hear, and even harder not to argue with. But I think pps who are saying hear, acknowledge, I guess with words like 'this must be so hard for you' 'I can see why you feel like that' etc, are probably giving good advice. I am not sure counselling can talk her out of what seems to me a perfectly rational response to an unalterably shitty situation but I could be wrong. Either way,💐 to you and your Mum.

My dad says this, and it comes from a place of intelligence and sound logic. He is in a nursing home, catheterised, wears a pad, very uncomfortable out of bed and can no longer do the things he enjoyed the most. He’s happy that the family is all doing well. Everything possible is done to enrich his life but it’s not what he wants. His best friends are gone, his savings are dwindling and he wants out.