Discussion What to say in suicide note

[Poodle]

I've planned my ctb (chosen a date, booked a hotel, ordered what I need). I'm going to have a fun final weekend spending my "emergency fund".

Now I'm drafting a note to my family. It's not so much a "this is why I wanted to die note" but a "this is what you need to do now that I'm dead" note. So far I've got a list of friends that need to be contacted, a list of professionals that need to be contacted, how to use my facebook and email, what to do with my possessions, what I want at my funeral, a list of debts and assets, membership numbers such as for social welfare and the tax department.
What else would you put in? I just want to make it easier for them (well, as easy as it can be after losing a daughter to suicide).
Thanks in advance

 

[Lookingforabus]

That sounds like a will.

Drafting up an actual will (or paying a lawyer to do it for you) would make it much easier on them than going through probate court with a piece of paper that isn't legally binding, and you could leave them with that and a more traditional suicide note that focuses on answering their questions and addressing their emotional state.

 

[Taki]

I think it's good to keep it practical. The survivors get no consolation from notes because the notes can't answer their questions. Some people think others will learn something about them in a note, but the shock and bafflement of a suicide always erases that. You can't control what people understand after your death, so yes, just write down your passwords.

 

[Poodle]

That sounds like a will.

Drafting up an actual will (or paying a lawyer to do it for you) would make it much easier on them than going through probate court with a piece of paper that isn't legally binding, and you could leave them with that and a more traditional suicide note that focuses on answering their questions and addressing their emotional state.

Great thanks, I have ordered a cheap will kit.

I think it's good to keep it practical. The survivors get no consolation from notes because the notes can't answer their questions. Some people think others will learn something about them in a note, but the shock and bafflement of a suicide always erases that. You can't control what people understand after your death, so yes, just write down your passwords.

Thanks, will keep that in mind. Planning to send all documents by delayed email to family so they can not be read by police.

 

[Aliaiactaest]

I think it's good to keep it practical. The survivors get no consolation from notes because the notes can't answer their questions. Some people think others will learn something about them in a note, but the shock and bafflement of a suicide always erases that. You can't control what people understand after your death, so yes, just write down your passwords.

Can't say my suicide note was practical. 43 pages single spaced typed. It was therapeutic to write and gave me a chance to reflect on my life. In that sense, my note was for myself as much as for anyone else. It is a complex and poetic suicide note with a lot of allusions to poetry and songs. I guess I also wrote it because I want my children to have something tangible to remember me by. My older daughter (23) has been alienated against me by her mother and I've hardly seen much of her in the past 10 years. My younger daughter (13) is too young and I haven't seen so much of her in the last year or two either owing to a second divorce.
After my mom retired she took a course in personal and reflective writing. (She was a non-native speaker of English.) After her death, I found the papers she wrote for that class. Despite the grammatical mistakes from being non-native, she was a very good writer, which I never knew. I learned, from her words, what mattered to her--what she saw and how she felt at what she saw. I'd like my kids to know the same about me. It's hard to imagine your parents as being young once, with dreams and adventures all their own.
I like to write. So, basically, I just sat down to write. You never know what will come out. I wound up reminiscing a lot about the high points of my life.
I've gone out of my way not to be harsh, or at least to tone down certain of my feelings. But, in the end, I had to call people out for certain things. The treatment of my first wife was quite harsh because she was quite psychotically mean to me and poisoned my child against me.

 

[roquentin]

"We are our choices ."