When women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey was just eight years old, she lost her father, Ron, to suicide. Ron had been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder sometime earlier, and was given the grim prospect of spending what few remaining years he had left paralyzed and in constant need of assistance. Not wanting to become both an emotional and financial burden to his family, he chose to end his life with his memory intact.
Ron’s decision was one of the only forms of suicide that to even the most close-minded of us can empathize with, perhaps because of how selfless an act it is in cases like his.