Romantic thought? Or sick AF?

Gene Hackman and Betsey Arakawa's sad demise was, I assumed, linked to co-dependency; that she did not want to live if he was dead? Assumptions tell us more about the assumption-maker than the facts.

Suttee: practice, a chiefly historical one, in which Hindu widow burns alive on deceased husband's funeral pyre either voluntarily, by coercion, or by a perception of the lack of satisfactory options for continuing to live. Source

Popular Hindu usage lent it the additional meaning of a 'virtuous woman'. Source

All sorts of things could have happened, an accident, some misadventure or other, carbon monoxide, an ill-advised wild mushroom risotto. Perhaps she killed him. Perhaps he killed her. Perhaps God did it. All the conjecture is just seedy. But conject I did. I assumed it was some kind of a/ lovers suicide pact, or b/ her taking her life so she could join him in death. It’s very sad, three precious lives being taken in one go does seem a tad excessive. I felt sad for them all, especially the lady who was not much older than me, and the dog who had no say it the matter.

Yup, I sure did jump to a conclusion when I read about the death of Gene Hackman, 95 (ten years older than my Granny) and Betsy Arakawa, his wife, 65 (ten years older than me). I made an assumption that I realise was a pretty inappropriate thing to do given I knew nothing other than they and one of their dogs were all dead. An assumption is something that one takes as fact, despite having no proof. When we make assumptions we draw on our own experience of the world. So, when I hear a contemporary has had a heart attack I’ll often say, “Were they are caner?” I assume class A stimulants are involved in a way, say, the Pope probably wouldn’t. The Pope, were he not on a ventilator, would probably say, “Had he turned his back on the everlasting Father?”

Despite our collective apostasy round the coffee table of eternal chat and glee and gloom, when the first of our lot start dropping we will never think God took him, we will say, “Twas bugle ‘t did it.”

We speak what we know.

I jumped to the conclusion that it was a romantic thing, and that they wanted to die together. More pointedly, that she, young-ish, could not, as Harry Nilsson sang, “live if living is without you”. So I wrote something distasteful. Sorry about that. It was not professional or considered, or, indeed, based on much fact.

I’ll probably still be offending a few people still now. I guess that’s why we have the paywall.