I think I'm in total agreement with Lucius Annaeus Seneca on this, who so aptly deals with death throughout his epistles (which I'm slightly over halfway through), and who himself committed suicide when his end by the hands of Emperor Nero was beginning to appear inevitable:
"How much more cruel, then, do you suppose it really is to have lost a portion of your life, than to have lost your right to end that life?" (Epistle LVIII)
And from LXX ("On the Proper Time to Slip the Cable"):
"No general statement can be made, therefore, with regard to the question whether, when a power beyond our control threatens us with death, we should anticipate death, or await it. For there are many arguments to pull us in either direction. If one death is accompanied by torture, and the other is simple and easy, why not snatch the latter? Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage or my house when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about to depart from life... Every man ought to make his life acceptable to others besides himself, but his death to himself alone. The best form of death is the one we like... You can find men who have gone so far as to profess wisdom and yet maintain that one should not offer violence to one's own life, and hold it accursed for a man to be the means of his own destruction; we should wait, say they, for the end decreed by nature. But one who says this does not see that he is shutting off the path to freedom. The best thing which eternal law ever ordained was that it allowed to us one entrance into life, but many exits."
"How much more cruel, then, do you suppose it really is to have lost a portion of your life, than to have lost your right to end that life?" (Epistle LVIII)
And from LXX ("On the Proper Time to Slip the Cable"):
"No general statement can be made, therefore, with regard to the question whether, when a power beyond our control threatens us with death, we should anticipate death, or await it. For there are many arguments to pull us in either direction. If one death is accompanied by torture, and the other is simple and easy, why not snatch the latter? Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage or my house when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about to depart from life... Every man ought to make his life acceptable to others besides himself, but his death to himself alone. The best form of death is the one we like... You can find men who have gone so far as to profess wisdom and yet maintain that one should not offer violence to one's own life, and hold it accursed for a man to be the means of his own destruction; we should wait, say they, for the end decreed by nature. But one who says this does not see that he is shutting off the path to freedom. The best thing which eternal law ever ordained was that it allowed to us one entrance into life, but many exits."
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
