Well said — both of you.
My mother committed suicide. Three years ago.
I did not feel empathy for her then. For she surely felt none for me, for her grandchildren or her great-grandchildren. Her sister, her brother, nor her nieces, nephews, nor cousins. She turned my late brother into a drug addict when he was only ten years old.
I spent nearly all of my life trying to help her. I became her mother when I was about seven. I suffered things you can never imagine. NEVER imagine. Yet I loved her and tried to carry her weight when she would or could not. She was beautiful, intellectually gifted, depraved and dissipated.
She was never one to TRY, for it was HARD. She had every gift, she had help, she had loving family whom she used and manipulated and humiliated to the point where we could no longer pull a single thread of empathy from our souls for her.
She chose to kill herself. Because living was too hard. That was her reason.
I still feel no empathy or pity. I spent all of that coin. I spent it when I thought it would do some good.