Ask Virginia Ironside

The one that got away

QA month ago, I started thinking obsessively about a relationship I had with a girl over 50 years ago. It lasted a year and I then married a fabulous woman and we had three children. But now I can’t tear myself away from thoughts of those heady days in the sixties – the songs, the clothes and, to be honest, our wonderful relationship. It’s making me feel really down. Obviously I can’t confide in my wife. Do you think I need therapy or counselling? Name and address supplied

AAbsolutely not. If you’re having a sudden major breakdown, perhaps, but a month of gloom isn’t long enough to merit your seeing a therapist, unless you’re just interested in finding out what makes you tick. It sounds to me as if you’ve never suffered nostalgia or depression before – something that, to be honest, most of us suffer for shorter or longer periods all through our lives. No, you’re suffering, as so many of us are, from the inevitable depression and self-doubt brought about by a year in captivity. It’s extremely unlikely not to affect you – and your dreams of days of freedom and autonomy are being channelled into regret and nostalgia. Once normal life resumes, these agonising pulls down memory lane will fade, I’m sure. Don’t underestimate what power this loss of liberty is having on your mental state.

I want to die

QAfter a year of increased forgetfulness of names, places, people I know and where I put things, I’ve had a CT scan and have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I’m 85, otherwise healthy and extremely lucky still to be enjoying a fulfilling life with a very loving wife and family. But I know, from close experience of watching others with this disease, that there will come a time when there will be nothing left for me to enjoy, while the family will be burdened with care of all kinds, and meanwhile wasting, on me, money that I want them to inherit. That’s when, with the family’s consent, I would like to be able to make my own decision to end my life in a comfortable, organised way, against the outdated and absurd law that calls that a crime, and forces us to die unpleasantly, or kill ourselves even more unpleasantly. Switzerland and Holland won’t do; and somewhere at the back of my forgetful mind is the feeling that you, or another such kindly writer, once mentioned a couple of books that might have the answer I’m going to want, without putting you in danger of aiding and abetting a crime. Is that possible, please?

Name and address supplied

AUnfortunately, the biggest pro-assisted-dying organisation in this country recommends it only in very narrow circumstances. You have to be diagnosed with a terminal illness and have only six months to live. By the time you’d sorted out the paperwork, you’d probably be dead anyway. Buy Dr Colin Brewer’s recent book, O, Let Me Not Get Alzheimer’s, Sweet Heaven! Why many people prefer death or active deliverance to living with dementia (Skyscraper Publications), which gives a lot of information about both Swiss and home-grown options and the likely course of this horrible illness. More dramatic is the constantly updated Peaceful Pill Handbook – published by Exit International US. They also run occasional death workshops around the world. One of the strange things about having the information about how to kill oneself is that it often makes people feel far less like putting it into practice. The more information you have, the more power it gives you and, often, the more it helps you to resolve to live a bit longer.

To jab or not to jab?

QI’m having the COVID vaccine next week but, although on one level I am delighted and know it’ll make my life a lot easier, whenever I think about getting it, I feel sick and unhappy. Just the thought of having it results in a panic attack. I’m not normally this squeamish – I sail through having jabs for holidays without a second thought but, for some reason, this terrifies me.

Philip, by email

AIt’s taken me years to realise that we don’t consist of just one predictable and logical ‘me’. There’s another character inside that has a say: one’s body. Sometimes they’re at war. When people say, ‘Listen to your body,’ they’ve got a point. You may want to exercise every day – but your body doesn’t. Or you may want to die and your body doesn’t. Your body may be horrified and terrified at the idea of being injected with an unknown substance which some people feel hasn’t been tested fully enough. Your body may be right or it may be wrong. Speaking personally, I’ve had the jab. At 77, I don’t care much about possible side-effects or fertility. So the jab generally makes life easier.