When is good time to end one's life?

I set myself at either 65 or the first time I crap my pants, whichever comes first. I figured 65 due to the fact that it’s a fairly healthy age before any big problems occur, yet long enough to have a full life.

Aging to that point is something that terrifies me to no end.

Aging doesn’t automatically mean losing everything, my own grandma is in her 90s and still goes out to play cards with her friends, volunteers at the local library, and basically lives a normal life with a mind that although not peak anymore is still sharper than that of many people a quarter of her age. (Although she doesn’t drive anymore, that’s mostly eyesight. She does still solve the daily crossword puzzles, which I can’t do.)

The community where she lives (alone, since my grandma died) is full of people like her too.

Just keep using your brain, then you are less likely to lose it. Seriously.

If you are still healthy of mind and body keep going until you drop. Volunteer. Help the grand kids. Fix the kitchen sink. Keep active.
When everything hurts or you can’t remember where the car keys are or if you still have a car, then you may consider checking out.
I know I will resist that choice as long as possible. Who would mow the lawn?

I need to stick around (not that I would choose otherwise) to help take care of my 95+yr.old mother. She is not planning to check out deliberately anytime soon, as far as I can tell. Her plan is to go to sleep one night and wake up dead. (She is not, as @RocketSquid so charmingly put it, “crapping her pants” yet.)

We (my sis and I) joke that we can push her off a bridge without warning, if she likes. She always laughs and says “No.”

@RocketSquid: I will wager you that on the morning of your 65th birthday, you will not decide that it is a good day to die.

The point where you cannot look after yourself any more.

I’ll be ready when I can no longer get in & out of my hot tub by myself lol

I think that most people find that as they lose their capabilities, life still has much to offer them, and so they stick around until it is no longer possible. My mother-in-law stuck around for four years after she was unable to do anything for herself. The last year, she had a stroke which made her unable to move or talk, and since she was deaf, you could tell if she could hear anything when her hearing aid was in. Still, her body kept her alive weeks after the hospice people expected her to pass on.

The urge to live is very powerful in most of us. I doubt very many will attempt to cut their own lives short as long as they can think, and when they stop thinking, it will be too late to try to end it.

I would never purposefully end my life. I’d just live my life like I wasn’t afraid to die. And when the time comes the time comes, who knows? It may happen while I am doing something a bit risky.

I’ll go when God calls me, and not one second before. I refuse to be warehoused. Anyone trying to put me in a “home” is in for 20 miles of extremely rough road!

Hold on and fight to the bitter end. Cling to that last shred of breath like it’s the best thing on earth cause it is. Even if you got full blown dimentia or some crazy diseases, the suffering that you endure in the end of this life will somehow pay dividends in the afterlife. Die like Gia, die like you just sucked a bullet in trench warfare, die like a poet that has run out of words. Go out like Jackson Pollack, an improvised Viking funeral. Go out and experience what we will all experience, death. A true mystery.

When you know It would be the right thing to do

George Eastman, founder of Kodak, ended his life leaving a suicide note that said: “My work is done, why wait?”

I guess when all the laundry is folded, all the wood is split, all the leaves are raked, all the trash is picked up, all the charities are fully staffed, all your email is sent, all the books are read….... Then you can do it with no guilty conscience.