A 92-year-old woman told me last week that she wants to die. This she said in a group of fellow elders to whom I have been speak from time to time about spirituality.

Anna (to call her by a name different from her own) made this announcement with clear conviction. She stated her wish in a firm voice that made us all believe that she meant it. Most of the other group members present nodded sympathetic assent and one or two indicated that they also would welcome death.

At first, I felt taken aback and not quite sure how to respond. Such an announcement carries so much emotional power that it can be disconcerting. So, at first, all I did was listen carefully and make some sympathetic noises. Anna is a person easy to love, such is her quiet sincerity and openness to the experience of other people.

When I did form a response, I told her that I understood how she could feel like that. In telling of her desire for death, she indicated that she had been through enough. Without specifying what troubles she had known, she had hinted at a variety of recent health crises. It is obvious that her hearing has become diminished, and she walks with some difficulty.

I responded further by saying that, even though she would welcome death, it would be difficult for me and for others to suffer her loss. We so value her, I said, that her leaving would be a heavy burden for us to bear. To judge by their body language, others in the group identified with this sentiment.

Anna’s death wish reminded me of the prophet Elijah in the Hebrew Bible. The first book of Kings tells how this prophet, threatened by the evil queen Jezebel, felt that he could go on no further. His travails in carrying out the word spoken to him by the Lord had piled up so much that he could no longer take it.

So he went out into the wilderness, and after a day’s journey sat down under a broom tree. There he asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”

The two situations are obviously different – Elijah and my friend Anna  find themselves at diverse stages of life and have different challenges to contend with. It could also be that Elijah has been overcome by depression, a malady that can afflict all of us and one that needs healing.

But both Elijah and Anna feel worn down by the pressures of the world and feel the need for ultimate relief.

“Ich habe genug” (I have had enough) is the way Johann Sebastian Bach puts it at the beginning of a famous cantata known by that title. And it’s a sentiment that almost everyone can feel at times of severe stress. There are moments when it all seems too much.

For old people like Anna, the burden can feel even heavier. And when you add, as she did, the assurance that her life’s work is basically completed, then the desire for death seems even more reasonable. You have to feel deep sympathy for a person who can look back upon ninety years of carrying out life’s tasks and who now experiences more pain than satisfaction.

And yet, for me and many other people, yielding to these feelings must be seen as a temptation rather than an appropriate reason for putting an end to one’s life. We take inspiration from the Elijah story: it does not end with the prophet’s death. Instead, the Lord appeared to him, gave him food and drink, and “he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.”

One can never predict exactly when the most meaningful moments of one’s life will come. As Kathleen Fischer writes: “We do not know what is our ‘hour,’ the time when events of most significance may occur in our lives. It may in fact be the final years, months, or moments of that life.”

If this approach be trusted and taken, one must consider at least possible that spiritual experiences defining for our lives can take place in extreme old age. Perhaps this confidence is worth hoping and praying for.

Richard Griffin