# Slow death or quick one? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 3, 2016, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050 "2016-02-03T12:45:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2016, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050/21 "2016-02-03T19:30:15Z")
I’d like to go quickly and painlessly, but my plan is to live so long that there won’t be anyone around to be devastated one way or the other. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2016, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050/22 "2016-02-03T19:33:13Z")
> [@pianodave](#): > > **Slow death or quick one?** Death!? To quote the Classics… “Very dangerous. …You go first.” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2016, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050/23 "2016-02-03T21:31:02Z")
> [@gytalf2000](#): > > I want to go quickly and painlessly. Don’t want any long-and-drawn-out death, and I don’t want any pain. Totally this. Everybody has to face death in some form, but we don’t absolutely have to suffer through it. Death is necessary, but agony is not. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2016, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050/24 "2016-02-03T22:36:17Z")
Quick. I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want the agony of knowing of how numbered my days are nor putting my family and friends through it. I just want it to be swift and sudden. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2016, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050/25 "2016-02-03T22:42:16Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I would prefer to go quickly. But I think it is harder on the family. A friend lost her 41 year old son to a sudden heart attack and has not gotten over it in 7 years. She just lost her husband to a long illness and, while sad, has accepted it in a way she hasn’t the loss of her son. By contrast, my firstborn son was ill for half his short life (he died at six), and my mother was ill for about the last seven years of hers (she dieed at almost 69). We have plenty of warning that the end was coming in both cases. In neither case was that a blessing. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050/26 "2016-02-05T11:49:35Z")
You know how on a cold wintery day you can be walking across a parking lot or along a path that are lightly covered in snow and suddenly you’re on the ground with no idea how it happened because you didn’t even notice the ice you slipped on? I want it to be like that. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050/27 "2016-02-05T15:49:24Z")
The concept of sudden death just freaks me out. Everything’s fine, you’re planning what you’re going to do tonight, and poof, you’re gone. So, I’m going to pick announced death, in general. But then there are ways to die slowly that really are unpleasant (lingering for months, hooked on machines, unable to move or communicate, like my brother), and I would prefer a quick death over this. For the record, pretty much everybody in my family died suddenly. I buried a large number of older relatives, but only one died from cancer, for instance, and it was a cousin once removed. Mostly everybody else just dropped dead. So, I’ve no real experience with prolonged agony (except with my aforementioned brother, but in his case, death wasn’t a certain outcome almost until the last day, which I think makes a difference). ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050/28 "2016-02-05T17:22:00Z")
Quickly. There isn’t anything important left unsaid with any people I know, and I think a train of folks coming through to be polite would piss me off more than dying. It wouldn’t be long before I’d be like “I know you flew halfway across the country to satisfy social conventions, but I’m trying to read here!” OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration. I have personal experience with both ways. My mother died in a bicycle/car accident. Two hours after I heard about it, she was pronounced dead by the hospital staff. She was not conscious during that time and there was no chance to say any last words. My mother-in-law withered with Parkinsons for years, spending the last two completely dependent on nursing care. The last few weeks were miserable for everyone involved, though some family members felt better about having a chance to reconcile. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050/29 "2016-02-05T17:45:21Z")
If I were on my death be and everyone I ever met knew it, I’d guess may a half dozen might come to visit. So I wouldn’t want to be waiting around in an empty room. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050/30 "2016-02-05T17:50:00Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I’ve read relatively a lot about this. The informed consensus is that quick unexpected death is easier on the deceased but harder on the family. There is an upper limit though, and a truly ghastly lingering years-long nightmare decline and demise is also very hard on the family. > > The typical course of disease before 1900ish was folks continued more or less OK year in and year out, then something weird & scary started. Then they lived a week or a month or two. That was more or less ideal in that folks had the chance to make arrangements, say good-byes, etc. Everybody involved had a chance to get used to the idea before the death finalized things. It depends on how old you are. My father was almost 95 when he died. He was pretty healthy physically but was forgetting stuff. My fear was a lingering death. As it turned out he went to a Seder one night, had a great time, and was dead the following morning. I was ready for it long before that, and it was easier on me than if he had lingered. I hope I go that way. My father-in-law is 100 this month, also in pretty good health, especially mentally, but every time I see him I know it could be the last time. I know he wants to go fast. Now if someone who is young is dying, just enough time to say goodbye, but not too long and no suffering. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2016, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050/31 "2016-02-05T18:09:08Z")
Yeah, this. If you’re having fun up to the last days or hours you’ve won the game. My dad ended up with metastatic cancer in his innards. From the time he knew he was screwed until he was dead (in his late 60s) was about 2 months, and only about the last 3 days were worse than the flu. As cancer deaths go that counts as a well above average experience. As bad as his dying was, we all had some time to get used to the idea. Mom just dropped dead of a heart attack sitting in her car at a traffic light. She was in her mid 70s and up to that moment had had the constitution of a mule. In many ways losing Mom was harder to deal with for us kids, even though we’d already had some practice from dealing with Dad a few years earlier. One of my neighbors had his 98th birthday last spring. Lived on his own in his condo with a part-time helper visiting a couple days a week. He needed a walker but was mentally sharp and could still see & hear OK the last time I saw him. Whenever anyone asked him how he felt he always said “Never better!” with a big smile. Just didn’t wake up one morning a couple months later. As a former combat medic who stormed Omaha beach on D-Day he \*definitely \*won the game compared to his peers. I’ve adopted “Never better!” myself; it seems like a successful attitude to have. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slow-death-or-quick-one/745050.md?page=1)