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By Mihar Dias August 2025
A 75-year-old man in Ipoh, ravaged by Stage 4 colon cancer, ended his life recently, with a shotgun. https://newswav.com/A2508_GSj3wX?s=A_2sUL3EC&language=en
Licensed since 1995, the weapon became the state’s most efficient form of palliative care. One bullet, quick and clean. Cheaper than hospital bills, faster than waiting for morphine, and certainly more reliable than Malaysia’s promises of “quality healthcare for all.”
His family lived with him — wife, son, daughter-in-law, grandchild — but when he called his youngest son for help, nobody came in time. https://newswav.com/A2508_GSj3wX?s=A_2sUL3EC&language=en
Maybe they thought he was just “complaining again.” Maybe they were too busy. Maybe, deep down, everyone knows our system has trained us to look away when old people suffer.
The police have filed it neatly as “sudden death.” Neatness matters, because it saves us the trouble of asking messy questions like: Why do the elderly still need to endure endless suffering at home?
Why does “palliative care” in Malaysia mean a prayer mat, some leftover painkillers, and a doctor who visits once in a blue moon — if at all?
We love to boast about “Asian family values.” Politicians wax lyrical about filial piety, about honouring our elders.
Yet in practice, old people are quietly parked in corners, or worse, left alone to negotiate with death themselves. If they’re lucky, they die in their sleep. If not, they improvise.
Hemingway blew his brains out with a shotgun when despair became too heavy.
In Ipoh, an old man followed the same script.
Nietzsche once said, “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” https://medium.com/@sheldonjuliusmac/these-5-quotes-from-friedrich-nietzsche-will-help-you-live-better-c86b3f76453f
But what meaning is left when survival itself becomes the torture?
Beckett offered the darker truth: “The end is in the beginning, and yet you go on.” https://dokumen.pub/beckett-and-decay-9781472542946-9781847062055.html
In Malaysia, we don’t even go on — we just wait for the inevitable, then act surprised when someone refuses to wait.
Here’s the irony: in America, people debate euthanasia. In Switzerland, they legislate assisted dying.
In Malaysia, we just keep issuing firearm licenses and hope the terminally ill figure it out.
Kafka might as well have written our national health policy: endless suffering managed by silence, paperwork, and the occasional fatal shortcut.
We will shake our heads, call it a tragedy, and move on. Until the next old man in the next quiet street finds his own way to stop hurting.
Because let’s be honest — this country has already decided that when it comes to the elderly, suffering is your patriotic duty.
And if you can’t take it? Well, as Lorong Jelapang 13 in Ipoh just taught us, there’s always another way.
Mihar Dias (mihardias@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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