Death

A song that I’ve liked for a while.

I forget when I first hear this song, it was before I started working at the hospital, but I’ve loved it since first hearing it.

And yes, while the song is apparently about bipolar disorder, I think it can easily apply to good ol’ fashioned depression.

I’m fairly certain that I am not bipolar as I don’t get the manias.

I only get stomach turning brain spinning depression.

My father used to call me a “lazy ass” for not getting out of bed in the morning. But between waking up at least once a night with nightmares, and the crushing realization that I didn’t die in my sleep, it was so hard to muster the energy to get out of bed. I still have that to this day. Sure, the nightmares of my father, of P.S., and of all of the other shit from my childhood have faded over the years, but it’s still such a bear to get out of bed in the morning. So much so that I have to have two alarm clocks set for three alarms each as well as automated lights to come on.

Being that my depression is caused by trauma and genetics I don’t think that I will ever be free of this demon.

It’s “A Better Son/Daughter” by Rilo Kiley

Sometimes in the morning I am petrified and can’t move
Awake but cannot open my eyes
And the weight is crushing down on my lungs
I know I can’t breathe
And I hope someone will help me this time
And your mother’s still calling you insane and high
Swearing it’s different this time
And you tell her you give in to the demons that possess her
And that God never blessed her insides
Then you hang up the phone
And feel badly for upsetting things
Crawl back into bed to dream of a time
When your heart was open wide
And you loved things just because
Like the sick and the dying
And sometimes when you’re on
You’re really fucking on
And your friends they sing along
And they love you
But the lows are so extreme
That the good seems fucking cheap
And it teases you for weeks in its absence
But you’ll fight and you’ll make it through
You’ll fake it if you have to
And you’ll show up for work with a smile
And you’ll be better
And you’ll be smarter
And more grown up
And a better daughter or son
And a real good friend
And you’ll be awake
You’ll be alert
You’ll be positive though it hurts
And you’ll laugh and embrace all your friends
And you’ll be a real good listener
You’ll be honest
You’ll be brave
You’ll be handsome and you’ll be beautiful
You’ll be happy

Your ship may be coming in
You’re weak but not giving in
To the cries and the wails of the valley below
And your ship may be coming in
You’re weak but not giving in
And you’ll fight it
You’ll go out fighting all of them

Depression sucks.

Major depression is a killer.

Severe anxiety doesn’t help.

The pills kinda help though.

And I mean the legal pills.

I think that one of the things that has really hindered me so far as receiving treatment for my major depression and CPTDS is that I’ve never self medicated. No booze, no needles, no illegal pills, nothing.

And I think this is what’s kept me from being taken as serious.

As a kid, the doctors and the psychiatrists were telling my father and Captain Terry Totzke that I was having serious problems and that I should be institutionalized. My father didn’t care as he “knew” that it was all an act. Captain Totzke didn’t care as he had his orders.

And now as an adult no one takes me serious because I don’t push a shopping cart up and down the alleys and scream at telephone poles.

Not having anyone “on my team” i.e. friends (I don’t have any), family ( don’t have that either), there’s been no one there to alert my health care professionals or to vouch for what I’ve told my health care professionals.

So here I am at 50. Everyone who knows me and the issues that I am going through and the trauma that I’ve suffered are wandering around telling me to “Don’t worry, be happy”. As if I were to just smile then my life would be all fucking happiness and sunshine and rainbows.

All I can do is reflect upon what was taken from me, what was stolen from me, what was denied to me. This is shit that I’ve never getting back.

Everybody has an easy fix for my life…..

Bobbie, why don’t you find a boyfriend / girlfriend?

Bobbie, why don’t you just go out for drinks with the boys?

Bobbie, why don’t you go to a sportsball game?

Bobbie, why don’t you take trade training?

Bobbie, if you like electronics why don’t you take a course?

None of these things have ever been an interest to me before, and they’re sure not going to be an interest to me now. Especially the drinking. With the way that my father and my paternal grandmother were both raging alcoholics, drinking alcohol is the last thing I need.

“We Can Save You”

I have a feeling that my quest to receive medical assistance in dying is going to turn into a never ending journey of seeking out “treatment”. Not treatments that will do anything for me, but treatments that will make my health care professionals feel better about themselves for trying everything to save my life.

Death and dying are such taboo subjects in North America that it must perplex most doctors when someone comes to them asking for assistance with dying.

Physically my body is okay.

Mentally my brain is damaged.

The technology to “fix” my brain does not exist today and it will not exist in the near short term.

Yes, the escitalopram is “helping”. I use helping in quotes because the escitalopram isn’t fixing anything nor is it undoing any of the damage. It is numbing my emotions, which I guess is fine for a short while. It puts a limit on how low my depressions can go. It has limited my anxiety. But that’s it.

One of the things that will work against me I guess is that fact that I haven’t received much in the way of treatment over the years.

Being caught in the never ending war between my father and Captain Totzke on one side and my civilian social workers and child care workers on the other side left me with a severe distrust of anything to do with the psychiatric profession.

Growing up in the Canadian Armed Forces taught me that psychiatrists and psychologists were not to be trusted and that any outward sign of mental illness was a sign of weakness.

And yes, sure I was only a military dependant, but back in the ’50s through ’80s mental illness was a very taboo subject. And it was well known by the service members that you didn’t ever want to be seen as mentally ill. And that mentality would find its way back into the PMQs.

When I was younger, whenever I’d fall into a depression my father’s response was that if I didn’t smarten up I’d get a back hand or the belt.

And I have no doubt that what was perceived back then as a “temper tantrum” was nothing more than a depressive episode. I’ve come across literature that says that what was often though of back in the good ol’ days as a temper tantrum was more than likely a depressive episode.

Sure, I understand now that lots of things have changed between the early ’80s and now. For example, when my brother had his first grand mal seizure on Canadian Forces Base Downsview my father was adamant that I gave illegal drugs to my brother. He tore my bedroom apart looking for said illegal drugs. But we now know that epilepsy is genetic and that epilepsy is prevalent in the Dagenais genes.

We now know that young traumatized children can suffer from major depression and can suffer from severe anxiety and when these three issues collide in a young brain a tantrum or a fit often result.

So, here I am at age 50.

I have constant flashbacks to the years of 1978 through 1980.

I was seven years old. P.S, the babysitter was 14 for the duration of most of the abuse. When we were caught together in his bedroom he was just weeks shy of his 15th birthday. He was sexually mature, I along with most of the other kids he was molesting didn’t have a single hair between our legs. The only thing I had ever used my penis for up to that time in my life was to pee from. As I said, what P.S. was doing was anything but “childhood curiosity and experimentation”. P.S. was doing to us what Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae was doing to him.

Watching P.S. abuse my younger brother is forever burnt into my brain.

Watching P.S. abuse the other kids is forever burnt into my brain.

Watching P.S. abuse the little 6 year old girl with his fingers is forever burnt into my brain.

There’s still the flashbacks to giving a blowjob to the man in the sauna at the base recreation centre that P.S. provided me to one day.

Probably explains why I find sex to be revolting.

The beatings I received on CFB Namao from the other kids in the aftermath of having been caught in P.S.’s bedroom are still fresh in my memory.

And there are no pills or therapies that will undo that. You can’t undo that. That shit stays with you until the day you die.

The five visits that P.S. took me over to the rectory at the base chapel to see Captain McRae and which always ended with me drinking a tumbler full of wine will always be with me. Sure, I may have been intoxicated and completely out of it, but at some level I know that something happened to me. A military chaplain and his altar boy don’t just go around handing out wine to young children for no reason at all.

There is no Elctro Convulsive Therapy that will erase those memories without destroying other parts of my brain.

And even if they did succeed, then what? I’d have massive holes in my memory that would just leave me asking more and more questions.

I can’t escape my memories of Captain Terry Totzke, of Terry’s conversion therapy, of being caught between my civilian social workers who were trying to get me to open up about what home life was like and Richard and Terry telling me to keep my mouth shut.

When you’re nine years old and someone tells you that they have the military police watching you and that if you step out of line that you’re going to a psychiatric hospital for treatment, that really fucks with your brain.

When you are told as a child that the people whom seem nice (Pat, Wayne, Mrs. Washylesko) are in fact conspiring to steal you away from your father, it fucks you up.

I have always been very guarded with what I say, and I can’t see that about to change anytime soon.

My mind was poisoned against psychiatric professionals by my own father.

I was taught by my own father and Terry that psychiatric professionals were only there to “twist my words” and to use them against me.

I was blamed by my father and by Terry for the abused I endured on CFB Namao.

As Terry would say, the fact that I had been caught having sex with another boy meant that I was mentally ill. Sure, I was only 8 and the other boy was 14 and was my babysitter, but that didn’t seem to matter too much to Terry or my father.

I was blamed by my own father for issues with my brother because I allowed the almost 15 year old babysitter to molest my younger brother when I was 7 to 8 years of age.

As far as my father was concerned, my emotional issues were just me acting up and doing things to get attention.

So no, I’ve never really sought help in the past.

Yes, there have been attempts in the past. But the problem with those is I was never an attention getter. I never made my attempts in plain view. I was always able to get out of the situation with the realization that if I was successful the both P.S. and my father would get away with their lies and I would forever be the filthy homosexual that made the babysitter molest his younger brother.

And if I have to prove to a panel that I’ve tried to receive help, well that’s not going to be possible.

And then we come right back to the start.

Even though I’ve been through hell and have suffered for it, I have to beg to be allowed to die because someone feels that maybe I haven’t suffered enough in life and that I should suffer some more.

I have to suffer because my continued living will make someone feel like they saved a life.

The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service called me a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military”.

Alberta Crown Prosecutor Jon Werbicki stated that is was very significant that I never told anyone in a position of authority about the abuse after P.S. moved away even though military police reports and court martial transcripts exist that show that the military police in 1980 were well aware that P.S. was molesting children on CFB Namao and that it was this abuse that brought Captain Father Angus McRae to the attention of the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit in May of 1980.

This “do-gooder” attitude sucks.

I understand.

Fine.

Sure.

Death is a “bad thing”.

I get it.

But so is sexual abuse.

So is untreated sexual trauma.

So is untreated psychological trauma.

The answer is quite simple if you don’t want people like me making requests to be allowed to die.

Don’t allow us to be sexually abused.

If we are sexually abused, don’t blame us for our abuse.

If we are having psychological issues, don’t hide us away out of fear that your secrets might become public knowledge.

If we are young, don’t blame us for the abuse of our younger siblings, especially if we’re half the age of our abuser.

If we come forward with our tales of abuse, don’t call us “societal malcontents with axes to grind against the Canadian Forces” and don’t conclude that it’s really suspicious that we didn’t tell anyone in a position of authority about our abuse when in fact police reports exist that show that the person we accused was well known by the police to have committed the crimes we accused him of.

Basically don’t shit on us for all our lives and then expect us to change our moods to satisfy you.

I will never get back what was taken from me.

I will never get to experience the opportunities that were removed from my future.

All of that was taken away.

With the right kind of help and care back in the immediate days after CFB Namao things could have been drastically different for me.

Until the day I die I will never understand why P.S. was treated like the victim and the rest of us were shat on by the Canadian Armed Forces. How does the abuser become the victim. Those of us abused by Captain McRae and P.S., shouldn’t we have been looked after better than P.S.? Sure, P.S. had been molested by Captain McRae, but did that give him the right to molest us in turn?

In 2015 P.S. was living at home with his father. His father needed him. His father blamed the Canadian Forces and Captain McRae for his son’s extensive criminal history for abusing children across Canada.

P.S.’s older sister D.S. lied about when the family moved off from CFB Namao as if she was trying to cover for P.S. as this obviously wasn’t the first time that someone from P.S.’s past had come forward.

P.S.’s younger brother covered for his brother as well. Actually the entire family lied about the younger brother saying they didn’t know where to find him, that he had moved to the West Coast years ago and that he never contacted the family. Turns out that he was living 10km away from P.S. and that P.S., J.S., and D.S. were in frequent contact.

My father, what did my father do? He lied to the CFNIS in 2011 and told the CFNIS that we never had a babysitter. He also “forgot” to tell the CFNIS in 2011 that his mother, our grandmother, was living in the house on Canadian Forces Base Namao and had been raising my brother and I as my father was rarely home. He knew it was grandma that hired the babysitter. He knew what the babysitter had done as he had frequently brought it up while berating me for allowing the babysitter to touch my brother. Did he trade his silence for a promotion back in 1980? Did he promise that he would never make a complaint on my behalf in trade for overlooking some of his disciplinary issues? Who knows. But there is no way that he forgot about grandma.

So yeah.

All of the sexual abuse, the physical abuse, the mental abuse, the turmoil, the lies, the neglect, and the subterfuge have left me with a brain that has suffered irreparable damage.

And sometimes the best option is to simply let go.

Where oh where shall I die?

16 months to go, but why leave things until the last minute.

Wasn’t really going to discuss this until closer to March 2023 when I’d know for certain if M.A.i.D. for psychiatric issues was actually going to be passed into law.

Where do I want to die? Where do I wish to undergo M.A.i.D. if I meet the criteria? Where do I wish for my body to go?

I think undergoing the procedure in my own bed would be nice. I’ve lived in the same apartment for 11 years now, which is a record for me. It’s a nice little bachelor apartment. In the months, weeks, and days leading up to my demise I would let everything go so that basically on the day of my death it would only be my bed and a couple of other personal belongings in my apartment. Stuff that could easily be disposed of after I die.

Getting my body out of the apartment wouldn’t be a problem as there is elevator service and the elevator can handle the newer stretchers that allow for patients or bodies to be angled to fit. So that’s covered.

I can’t see the property management company having any concerns as it’s not like my body is going to be rotting away in the apartment. Once I die, the attending physician notes the time of death, the Coroner may or may not have to attend, then my body is taken for disposal. The rent will be paid up for an extra month. And it’s not like my death will be known to the next tenant renting the suite.

Now, what happens if it’s decided that my apartment is not an appropriate place for me to die?

I could receive my M.A.i.D. procedure in a clinical setting such as a hospital. I’m not certain at this time how I would book a room. I’m more than certain that if I were to elect to receive M.A.i.D. in a hospital that the hospital admin staff would insist that I take a private room. As comfortable as I am with my death, I think that it would freak out other patients if I were to undergo M.A.i.D. in a four patient room. I know right now that there will be certain hospitals that I will not be allowed to receive my M.A.i.D. procedure at. Catholic hospitals generally frown upon procedures like this.

All is not lost though, there apparently is another option that might be more widely available in a few years. Today I learnt that MAIDhouseTO is trying to obtain a space that has a room or rooms set up for those wishing to receive M.A.i.D. but who for various reasons can’t undergo the procedure at home and who do not wish to undergo the procedure in a clinical setting such as a hospital.

Of course, prejudices against dying and death seem to be hindering MAIDhouseTO in finding a permanent space that they can fix up to offer quiet peaceful places for persons to undergo M.A.i.D.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/medically-assisted-death-nonprofit-says-fear-is-hampering-its-search-for-permanent-space-1.6230573

I’ve known since last year that select funeral homes in Canada have been revamping some of their private rooms into rooms where a patient can undergo M.A.i.D.. This is an interesting concept. It really is. You can literally walk in under your own power and then be carried out in an ash urn. Or even embalmed and buried on the same day if that’s your choice. And if resomation (alkaline hydrolysis) is available you could walk in and be flushed down the drain all on the same day.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/funeral-homes-pivot-to-offer-rooms-for-medically-assisted-deaths-1.6224353

Then there’s also the option of somewhere scenic. But that comes with a cost. And really, is it worth it? When you’re dead you’re not going to remember the petty scenery. And I’ve never been a fancy romantic.

What do I envision that my last day would look like?

I’d probably go sometime in the morning. No need to delay the procedure.

I think I’d wake up, get showered and get dressed. Wait for the physician to arrive. I haven’t decided at this point if I’d want anyone in attendance. But if someone wanted to be there, I wouldn’t say no. If someone had a legitimate reason to want to film my procedure, and my death, and the disposal of my body, I wouldn’t say no either.

I’d definitely have the windows open, but the curtains closed. They’re translucent curtains. Just don’t want to force my death on the neighbours who might just happen to be looking out their window.

After the physician shows up I might have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea. And then get back into bed.

The physician would then cannulate me and connect me up to the dosing pumps.

Then when I’m ready, I press the button and in under 2 minutes I’m gone and another 4 minutes for my body to be dead.

What happens after that really isn’t of any concern to me.

I do hope that my brain goes for research purposes.

I do hope that my body is either used for medical research, forensic research, or it disposed of via the resomation process.

There’s one person in mind that I would love to be able to give my skull to, but sadly in this country I can’t decide who gets my bones even after they’re cleaned and sterilized.

What I’d really like for my body is for it to be buried in Burns Bog so that in a 1,000 or so years someone can dig it up and see my tattoos.

But really, after the propofol hits my brain I really won’t have any control over what happens with my corpse. And in all honesty it won’t be a concern of my anymore.

Dying.

“If you want to die, how can you be afraid of dying?”

As I’ve said, I don’t fear death.

Once you are dead you are free of the senses, you do not feel pain, you no longer exist.

It’s the dying part that scares me. It always has.

And I don’t mean in the sense of heaven or hell or gods or the such.

What I fear is the pain or the terror that would fill my last minutes, or hours, or even days.

I actually don’t like being inside automobiles due to my father’s penchant for aggressive driving and drunk driving. I don’t relish the idea of dying in an automobile collision. There was a pile-up on the Q.E.W. in Southern Ontario back in the ’90s. A young girl got trapped inside one of the cars and slowly burned to death. That is not a death that I would wish on anyone.

Yeah, I understand that dying by my own hand would only last for so long, but I’ve never been a big fan of panic and terror.

It’s fairly obvious that I’ve never bled to death before, but the idea of slicing an artery and bleeding out doesn’t appeal to me due to the shock and panic that would set in as the volume of blood in my body decreased. The nausea that would come with the shock would be very unpleasant.

Asphyxiation would be the same thing

Asphyxiation, choking, etc…… no thank you.

You hear about the successful cases. What you never hear about are the unsuccessful cases which often lead to permanent brain damage.

Drugs? Yeah, no. There’s just something about ingesting copious amounts of drugs that doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe it’s the vomiting and the retching. Maybe it’s that you actually stand a good chance of inhaling your own vomit and dying a very prolonged and painful death.

Unless you manage to get things right your last moments on Earth will be filled with pain and misery. Sure, eventually everything will be over. But as I said I don’t want to tack on more suffering to the suffering that I’ve already endured.

And I can tell you one thing, you never want to die in a hospital hooked up to a ventilator in the ICU in a drug induced coma. That’s probably the worst way to go that I can think of.

Dying is not an easy thing to do. It’s honestly not as easy as you’d think it would be. It’s definitely not as easy nor as romantic as it’s made out to be in the movies or literature. One part of the brain wants to die while another part of the brain wants to survive.

This is why I am really intrigued with Medical Assistance in Dying.

If the protocol is adhered to and if the proper doses are followed one shouldn’t be aware in the slightest that they have stopped breathing and that their heart has stopped beating. There’s no choking. There’s no gaging. There should be no violent convulsions or spasms. Just a complete loss of consciousness and then nothing.

Sure, the anxiety may be something to contend with in the months, and weeks, and days, and then hours leading up to one’s demise under M.A.i.D.. But I think with the proper mindset that one should be able to make it right to the end without too much of a problem.

I think that one of the things that terrifies most people about death is the lack of control of the where and when. Death typically comes randomly. It follows no schedule. It generally doesn’t take into consideration what your plans are or if your affairs are in order. You could be at work, you could be on the subway, you could be out for a bicycle ride. You death can be quick, or it can be lingering. You could slowly die on the cold pavement while gawkers stare at you. And I think this is what frightens most people about death, the general lack of control around the circumstances of one’s demise.

Everybody does it, and it’s only natural, so why are we so afraid of it?

I have no fear of death.

Dying? Sure.

Death? No.

For obvious reasons I’ve had a lot of opportunities in my life to contemplate death. When I was about 5 years old on CFB Summerside, one of my friends was killed in a tobogganing incident. When I asked Richard if everyone dies he looked at me and said yes, everyone including me would die one day.

In my dysfunctional household the thought of dying and death was always seen as viable escape from Richard or his mother.

Death is one of the phases of life. Rich, poor, young, old, there is no escaping death. Death IS the great leveller.

From the time a human being is born until the time a human being dies the body is experiencing the physical world. Even when we sleep the brain is processing information from our environment. Once we die though, the brain no longer exists. There is nothing left to process information. A dead brain cannot sense. A dead brain cannot feel. A dead brain cannot fear.

I think the main reason that humans are afraid of death is that death is something that the human brain simply cannot comprehend.

Just as the human brain cannot comprehend the existence of time before its birth, the human brain cannot comprehend no longer existing. Ask yourself this, what do you envision happening after you die?

Can you comprehend the size of the universe? Can you comprehend the universe continuously expanding in all directions? Here’s one to ponder, what’s at the edge of the universe and what’s on the other side? If the universe has no edge, does the universe just go on forever? Nothing lasts forever, including nothing. Everything has an end, including nothing.

Can you comprehend that the universe is over 14,000,000,000 years old and that for the vast majority of that time life as we know it did not exist. Or how about the fact that in 5,000,000,000 years the Sun will become a red giant and will have become so large that it will have engulfed the Earth and destroyed it. Can you comprehend that in 10, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years the universe is expected to undergo heat death meaning that there will no longer be any detectable energy in the universe.

The human brain is happy dealing with topics that it can reason with and experience. Music? The human brain is great with rhythm and melody and pitch and scale.

Language? The human brain can learn multiple languages as it can experience the use of language in everyday use.

Combining materials mined from the Earth into computer chips and high capacity batteries? The human brain has the ability to learn and to apply knowledge learnt from previous experiments towards new creations.

How are these advances possible? It is the passing of knowledge from one human to another. The only knowledge that the human brain isn’t able to pass to another human is what happens after death.

I believe that the inability of our brain to understand death is one of the driving reasons behind the existence of religion. The human brain needs to know that it came from somewhere and that it has some place to go after the body dies.

The human brain is extremely curious and inquisitive. The human brain doesn’t like it when it can’t figure something out. It has to have answers. So it creates gods and nymphs and fairies and prophets and witches and warlocks and other mythical creatures. Does the Earth reside on the back of a giant tortoise that swims through the universe? Is the Earth flat? Did Noah create an ark that housed all of the animals in the world including the Kangaroos that hopped on over from Australia or the penguins that swam up from the Antarctic?

Religion and gods served a purpose. They explained things that early humans couldn’t have explained. The drought that caused a massive crop failure? You didn’t pray hard enough, or you prayed to the wrong god. The flood that wiped out a village? Again, you must have done something to upset the appropriate god. Need to justify you war and subjugation of a neighbouring village? God wanted you to do that, the others were heathens worshipping the wrong god.

I realized quite a while ago that human knowledge doesn’t die. The body dies. The brain dies. But the knowledge contained within the brain lives on by passing from one human to the next. Human beings didn’t just learn to speak one day. This feat took hundreds of thousands of years for us to develop. Humans didn’t just start building ships out of steel. The ability for forge steel and make alloys took thousands of years. Same thing for any piece of technology in use these days.

The human brain is programmed to view death in a negative manner. Death is attributed with diseases, and illnesses, and violence. Even when a person passes away peacefully in their sleep, those who find the corpse tend to respond to the corpse with fear.

It’s no doubt that our general fear of death and dead bodies has been somewhat beneficial over the years. Exposure to a rotting corpse exposes the living to all sorts of unpleasant possibilities. Humans know that it is generally a good idea to get rid of a corpse as soon as possible to avoid any diseases that the corpse may harbour. Burying corpses also seems to be a great idea that also prevents the spreading of diseases. Don’t forget, refrigeration wasn’t a thing until rather recently.

When a body dies it goes through various stages before decomposition renders the body to a skeleton.

Pallor Mortis is the first stage after death. This is where the blood recedes from the skin. Lips turn blue and the skin loses its pinkish hue. The resulting change in colour is especially noticeable in people with white skin.
Algor Mortis is the second stage of death. This is where the body, due to the lack of oxygen required to power the cells, starts to cool down as the cells in the body start to die.
Rigor Mortis is the next stage of death. As the body is no longer able to manufacture ATP the muscles in the body are no longer able to relax. They start to become rigid and inflexible. Further, as ADP is release into the muscle fibres, the muscle fibres contract and are unable to relax as the body no longer has the ability to reabsorb the ADP and cannot create new ATP. The muscles only relax after the muscle tissue has started to decompose.
Livor mortis comes next. That’s where the blood and other body fluids are drawn by gravity to the lowest parts of the body. If you die lying down your back will take a on very deep purple bruised complexion. If you were to die sitting up, your legs would become dark purple and swollen.
Finally, putrefaction sets in. This is where the internal organs, the muscles, fat, and skin start to break down and liquify. Bacteria will start to consume the corpse from the inside while insects and small animals will start to consume the corpse from the outside.

At the completion of the five stages you’re typically left with a skeleton.

I find it really sad that I can’t really give my skeleton away. Not even just parts of it. There’s a few people I know of that would love to have my skull. And I have no doubt that they would enjoy it.

Thankfully a person is dead by the time rigour mortis sets in. Can you imagine what a full-body Charlie Horse would feel like. Rigour mortis is a very power force. It can break bones. I’ve seen pictures from early 20th century medical text books that demonstrated the strength of rigour mortis. One picture had a corpse with a saw horse under the neck and a saw horse under the ankles and the body only had a slight bow in the midsection. Another picture had the head of the corpse resting on a chair and the ankles resting on another chair and again the body was so stiff that it barely flexed in the middle.

What do I intend to do with my body?

I’d actually love to have my body placed on a body farm. That’s probably the closets to a natural decomposition one can have these days. Body farms are basically training grounds for law enforcement, pathologists, and coroners to observe and learn how a body decomposes under various circumstances when exposed to the elements. They can dress the corpse up, or leave the corpse naked and exposed, or wrap the corpse up in plastic bags. All to simulate the various conditions that a deceased could expect to be found in. This is to allow police and pathologists and coroners to hone their skills and to learn how to read a corpse in order to figure out how the corpse died and how long the corpse was dead before it was discovered.

There’s actually only one body farm in Canada, and that’s in Quebec.

The next option for my corpse would be to have it go to a medical school. I’ve watched numerous autopsy videos and it always amazes me how much can be learnt from the body be examining the viscera of a body. The human body is often called “The Soft Machine” and what an intricate and intriguing machine the human body is. If medical students can learn something from my corpse, all the better. I honestly believe that everyone should have the opportunity to view at least one autopsy I their life.

In either scenario I’d love for my brain to be sent to one of the various research facilities in Canada that deal with neurological disorders. Even though I’d be dead, and my brain would be completely non-functional, researchers can still tell a lot about a brain and the mental illnesses it suffered from while it was alive. Even though I’d be dead at that point and I wouldn’t benefit from any research carried out on my brain, if researching my brain provided clues to treatments for others suffering from what I’ve suffered from, then it would be worth it.

I really don’t want my corpse to be pumped full of chemicals. I’ve never understood the present day need for embalming. We have modern refrigeration that will slow down the decomposition rate of a corpse while funeral arrangements are being made, so no, no embalming for me. Fancy satin lined coffins, talking headstones, and cement vaults? For what? I don’t get it.

Cremation? What a waste. All that fuel being consumed and all of that pollution being released. Not good.

Alkaline hydrolysis looks fairly interesting. Not sure if it’s legal in BC yet. It is legal in Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec. The process is fairly simple. Water is heated to 177 Celsius. Lye is added to the water. The water is circulated in a stainless steel chamber in which the body has been placed. It takes about 6 hours for the body to completely break down to the point that the only thing left is a bleached and brittle skeleton.

Anyways……. enough about death……

I the next post I will talk about why I’m scared of dying, but not of death.

Or maybe I’ll talk about hobbies or my lack thereof.

Why do I want to die?

I don’t actually want to die. I need to die. There is a difference.

My brain is hopelessly damaged beyond salvage. You may agree with this or you may not agree with this. But it’s only my opinion that matters on this. I’m the one who has lived with this. And I’m the one more than willing to die to end it.

I’ve had no one advocating for my mental health over the years. So it is quite perplexing the number of people that want to suggest ways that I can take care of my mental health.

It wasn’t like my mental health hadn’t been flagged in the aftermath of the CFB Namao fiasco.

It was.

My mental health had deteriorated to the point that I was supposed to have been institutionalized. When you’re nine-years-old and psychiatrists are recommending that you be institutionalized you know that there is something seriously wrong. The fact that I wasn’t institutionalized doesn’t mean that I got better on my own. It just means that my deteriorating mental health was ignored.

Who kept me from receiving the help I required to treat my mental health issues? Was it my father? Was it Captain Terry Totzke? Was it someone else up the chain of command in the Canadian Armed Forces? I don’t know. And due to the loosey-goosey record retention policy of the Canadian Forces I don’t think that we’ll ever know.

And you know damn well that someone in the Canadian Armed Forces hierarchy interfered. On January 26th, 1983 Captain Totzke was told that Alberta Social Services was getting ready to place me into foster care or residential care. On January 28th, 1983 Captain Totzke told Alberta Social Services that my father was withdrawing me from the program and that my father had just receive a posting to Ontario.

And at this point in my life does it really matter?

For just over 42 years I’ve been left to cope with the following:

CPTSD;
Major depression;
Severe anxiety;
Gender identity issues;
Sexual Orientation issues;
Inability to form relationships;
Inability to trust;
Feelings of hopelessness;
Feelings of helplessness;
Feelings of worthlessness;
Vividly reliving the sexual abuse of me, my brother, and all of the other kids I witnessed P.S. molesting;
Grappling with being blamed by my father for allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother;
Grappling with being called a homosexual apparently because I participated in the abuse for as long as I did;
The endless replaying of the man in the sauna;
The abuse at the hands of Earl Ray Stevens;
Existing in a dysfunctional household.

I’ve managed to fall through the cracks for a majority of my life. That’s the double edged sword of being intelligent. The people that I worked for were more than willing to overlook my issues because I brought so much benefit to their organizations. So what if I broke down and cried at random times, or so what if I blew up when I’d get frustrated because my depressed brain wasn’t capable of handling stress, or what if I didn’t come in for days at a time. When I could do electronic repairs, electrical repairs, mechanical repairs, HVAC repairs, the meltdowns and breakdowns were tolerable.

Being highly functional with mental illness is not fair. People just write off your mental illness as being “melodrama”, or “just being an asshole”.

And the sad thing about mental illness is that it doesn’t show up on a blood test, it really doesn’t show up on an MRI.

Mental illness can only be diagnosed by a psychiatrist. But psychiatrists have their own options and biases. So the fact that I’ve never been unemployed or locked-up in psychiatric care, or in trouble with the law means that I can’t really be that ill.

Throw into that the “Just Society” bias that many people have which results in doctors and psychiatrists being of the opinion that if something did happen to me then surely someone would have done something about it, right?

The other side of the “Just Society” bias means that many other people are of the opinion that if the military police didn’t lay charges in 1980 or 2018 that obviously nothing occurred. Because if something did occur, surely somebody would have done something, right?

The only problem is that as the years went by and I learnt to “cope” and “hide” my issues. And as the years went by I could feel the desire to die building inside.

It is so very tiring keeping my “happy” face on while my brain turns into a cancerous tumour full of rot.

There’s no fixing my brain. The damage is done. The damage has had time to set and solidify.

I’m not suddenly going to find a magical counsellor or magical pharmaceuticals that will erase the past, and erase the memories from CFB Namao, and erase all of the other shit that I went through before I turned 16.

My brain is not your “fix-it” project. My emotional well-being is not your hobby.

When I was first interviewed by master corporal Robert Jon Hancock back in 2011, I told him during the interview that I understood that there was not going to be a magical time machine that would send me back and undo all of the things that happened to me.

Life honestly has no joy and offers me no pleasure. It never has.

And this is where things get interesting.

I have had people tell me that my desires to die make them feel uncomfortable. That maybe if I stopped thinking negative thoughts and just thought happy thoughts that everything would be okay.

But that’s not how this works.

Bobbie, you’re such a “warrior”.

No.

You’re a “champion”.

No.

You’re so “brave”.

No.

“You can’t be serious”.

Yes I am.

“You’re just doing this for attention”.

No I am not.

I’m somebody who got caught up in some very bad situations that were far beyond their control.

I came from a dysfunctional home.

I was exposed to adults that were suffering from their own intergenerational traumas.

I was sexually abused for a prolonged period.

The blame for this abuse was placed upon my shoulders like some sort of mantle of shame to wear.

I was then brain fucked by an organization that should have known better than to fuck with a child’s brain.

I didn’t receive the psychological help that I should have received.

In fact, my father’s methods of dealing with my issues were the exact opposite of what I required.

Do I really want to live for another 20 to 30 years?

No.

Sure the escitalopram is doing a great job with my anxiety and my depression. But it hasn’t fixed them. They’re still there. They always will be there. Just like the memories of CFB Namao, of P.S., the visits to the chapel, of the abuse, of Captain Totzke, of Alberta social services, of my father’s anger and temper. Those will be with me until the day I die.

I’m single. I’ve never really been attached to anyone. I have no family to speak of. I have no one dependent on me.

Death, I am not afraid of. It’s the dying that I’m afraid of.

When you’re dead, that’s it. You’re dead. There is no happiness. There is no sadness. There are no memories. There is no regret. There is nothing. You don’t exist anymore. You don’t feel anymore. You don’t think. You don’t contemplate. You sure won’t be aware that you’re dead. And no, you won’t feel your corpse decompose.

Everything that you felt, saw, heard, touched, tasted, learnt, dreamt about, longed for, or cherished dies along with you.

Existing longer than you need to in the hopes that you’ll eventually find some supposed meaning in life is pointless, especially if existing brings pain and not joy.

You don’t get extra bonus points for enduring life longer than you needed to.

I am an atheist. I do not believe in a supreme being, an afterlife, a heaven, a hell, or a purgatory. I do not believe in reincarnation.

Dying is the hard part of death. Transposing from living to dead is often quite painful and traumatic. I’ve seen the end result of vehicle collisions. I’ve been aware of failed suicide attempts. I’ve seen people slowly die from brain injuries and strokes. I’ve known people who have died from incurable disease.

Life itself is not special. There are over 7.5 billion humans on the planet right now.

The value of human life varies depending on the situation. If a car driver makes a right hand turn on a red light and strikes a pedestrian, ooopsie.

If I’m out riding my bicycle and a car driver runs a stop sign and kills me but didn’t have the intention of killing me, ooopsie.

Society seems more than willing to tolerate deaths from motor vehicle collisions as a small price to pay for the convenience of fast travel.

How many lives have been lost in civilian aviation due to bad designs (737MAX) or a cutback in maintenance (Alaska Airlines)?

How many innocent civilian lives were lost in wars since the year 2000 due to bad intelligence and questionable motives?

How many people have died due to simple preventable diseases?

How many people have died from starvation?

Even when it comes to drug users, society seems to have little concern.

There seem to be only two times when a human life is lost that society loses its collective marbles. Murder or Suicide.

When it comes to murder, murder is almost universally reviled. The amount of revulsion shown is a sliding scale that seems to vary depending on who is being murdered and who is doing the murdering.

Suicide on the other hand is often seen as a selfish act perpetrated by someone just acting out for attention. Suicide is often seen as an overreaction to a silly issue. Suicide is rarely seen as the end result of events for which the person committing suicide felt that they had little control over.

My death will not be a suicide. Unlike a suicide, which is often random and unpredicted, my death will be scheduled. My death will be sanctioned by medical professionals, and my death will be overseen by medical professionals even though technically it will be me starting the dosing pumps.

Unlike a suicide, even a suicide with a note, there will be no unanswered questions about my death and why I’ve chosen death as opposed to living.

Everything will be explained along the way. There will be no chance for misinterpretations.

When I go, there will be no loose strings. Everything that needs to be closed off and addressed will be closed off and addressed.

You’re all more than welcome to come along with me on this journey.

Not all of the posts on my blog will be about my death. But I will warn you that a majority of my posts will be. I was hushed up about the child sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao. I will not hush up about my death.

Remember this, all of our journeys end with our own death. Mine will only be different in the sense that I am going to hopefully be able to schedule mine and choose the location.