Description

Introduction

Ava Kali Simerl committed suicide in December of 2024 at 19 years old.  My daughter’s suicide came as a shock initially because of her general quality of life and the near prospects for improvement.  She just returned home towards the end of October after having spent 3 months traveling the country with her boyfriend.  She saved money from family, and worked jobs through her teen years.  She purchased a van, made modifications to make it more suitable for camping, and they traveled the country fishing, hiking, and observing wildlife and scenery.  After roughly 3 months on the road she still had over $3,000, so it wasn’t as if she spent all her money and then didn’t have money to do what she wanted to do or purchase what she wanted to purchase.  She still worked intermittently for her grandma Jill and her boyfriend’s grandparents.  She lived with her mother and had no responsibilities, no obligations, and no expectations to do anything from anyone who was important to her.  If she wanted to, she could live with her mom indefinitely, and her father and mother wouldn’t have a problem with her decision to do that.  Not that she was interested in that, her and Fern were making plans to move out, but I’m trying to illustrate that she was in a zero pressure environment, aside from whatever pressure she put on herself for various reasons.  She had great relationships with her mother, father, boyfriend, and friends.  She was enrolled in school for phlebotomy, which was a means of establishing an income quickly while she continued to go to school to become a nurse.  

Ava didn’t have any problems, and emotionally she was usually upbeat, at least when I interacted with her she was.  There was no indication from our frequent communication that she had any significant problems in her life.  However, under the influence of alcohol someone did something she didn’t like and she decided to kill herself because of it.  It wasn’t anything that was significant outside what she made of it at that moment.  For me the most unfortunate part of her suicide, is that she wasn’t facing difficult circumstances with no prospect for improvement.  Had her life been unending endurement of torture, had she even perceived it to be that, it makes it easier to support that decision.  If that were the case, loving my daughter more than anything on this earth means I wouldn’t want her to remain somewhere she didn’t want to be for my benefit.  If she didn’t want to be here, and I want her to be here so I can watch her develop, and enjoy interacting with her, that would represent loving me more than loving my daughter.  Either way that isn’t my situation.  

After two months I am better than I expected to be but I’m well aware that I have entered a different world and my happiness will always be tainted by her absence.  In the world with my daughter she is tied to so many things in my life, and now I have entered a different world that she no longer occupies, and now that she is no longer attached to things in my life they take on different meaning.  That’s the best way I can describe my experience losing my daughter, is entering a different world.  

I am better than expected based on my initial feelings, and believe I am probably better emotionally than most fathers who have lost a child.  I didn’t love my daughter any less than any other father, and as most fathers believe about themselves, I believe I loved my daughter more than other fathers.  I believe I am handling it well because of my perception of the event.

What does my daughter’s suicide mean for her?  

There are three categories that beliefs about existence generally fall within.  Nothingness, deity, and ideal.  The first two you know, and the third you do not.   

Nothingness is the belief that the universe spontaneously came into existence to be and then not to be.  While I believe this is unlikely, mainly because it would make more sense for nothing to exist than for something to exist and serve no purpose, if this is the nature of existence what has my daughter lost?  Another day to 70 years to have experiences that serve no purpose outside of the effort of trying to strike a positive balance between positive and negative feelings?  If nothingness is the nature of existence, my daughters suicide doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because the conscious experience leads to nothingness anyway.  

If existence is ideal what does her suicide mean?  Do you know what problem any eternal being has?  Imagine you existed forever in a space where you could create and experience at will.  How long do you think it would take before you created and experienced everything you enjoyed so many times that there was nothing that remained enjoyable?  A billion years?  A trillion times a trillion years?  It doesn’t matter because time is infinite and knowledge is finite.  Eventually existing becomes a burden if there is nothing new to learn and experience.    

The universe began as the building blocks of atoms, and once the universe cooled hydrogen and helium atoms formed.  These atoms formed stars, and through the life cycles of these stars all the other elements in the universe were created.  These elements formed more complex structures like planets, and on at least one planet life came into existence.  Life that is motivated by the production of positive feelings, and survival, that led to the evolution of intelligent life.  Intelligent life capable of learning how to manipulate the matter around it to serve its purposes.  Life capable of producing objects and having experience.  Looking at the universe and what it has done, the universe is the random generator of complexity and objects, beginning as protons, electrons, and neutrons and creating everything we see in random assembly produced through the natural forces.  

If a person believes in an eternal being or beings and an eternal space, they have to acknowledge that these beings have the problem of infinite time and finite knowledge.  The universe is exactly the solution to that problem as the random generator of objects and consciousness.  

The nature of consciousness, human or otherwise is the pursuit of experience that produces positive feelings.  If we believe as seems likely, that the universe exists as the random generator of objects and perhaps the reproductive mechanism of consciousness, we can understand any beings that exist beyond through their interest in object creation, and the expression of desire.  

Morality consists of ideas pertaining to right and wrong.  Right and wrong is either supplied through authority, or it is understood through individual benefit.  Morality functions through self perception.  We avoid acts that we believe are wrong because committing those acts causes us to see ourselves as something we don’t like, which reduces self worth and produces negative feelings.  Morality is either objective or subjective, and the implication is the potential for conscious motion.    

How can morality be objective, or how can right from wrong be known definitively?  The conscious constant is desire.  At all times all beings want to do what they want to do.  If the acts of each do not interfere with the acts of all others, all beings can do as they please which is ideal.  The nature of wrong is imposition, and the nature of right is the absence of imposition because abstaining from imposing acts serves all interests equally and simultaneously.  There’s several categories of imposition that exceed the scope of this article to explain thoroughly, but generally objective morality is understanding that imposing intent is wrong, and unimposing intent is right.  

How do all other moral doctrines fall into the subjective category?  Any moral system that claims an unimposing act is wrong is imposing a subjective value onto others.  A subjective value is something liked or disliked, someone who likes the color blue and doesn’t like the color red, that’s his preference.  In this context we could use someone claiming it’s morally wrong to eat pork, that’s an effort to impose a subjective preference onto others.  It’s an effort to force others to dislike what the authority dislikes, because the act of eating pork doesn’t impose on anyone else.  Any moral system that claims an act that imposes is right, is imposing on others.  Morality is either objective or subjective, and there are innumerable potentials for different subjective moral codes based on the preferences of different authorities.    

In an objectively moral space all the beings are free to do as they please because none of the beings interfere or impose on the others.  This produces the maximum amount of subjective expression, which maximizes the potential for motion, in the creation of objects and experience.  Objective morality advances the general interests of beings who have the problem of infinite time and finite knowledge, and their interest as beings who desire to freely create and experience.  Within a subjectively moral space beings are limited in subjective expression to the preferences of the authority, and/or are imposed on by those who are more powerful, and impose on those who are less powerful.  This does not serve the interests of beings who exist forever because limiting subjective expression reduces objects and experience, and none of these beings want to be imposed on or have others interfere with what they want to do. 

The justification for imposition is to prevent or neutralize imposition, or in the administration of justice.  Which means separate spaces must exist to accommodate the motion produced by different moral applications.  If not, there would be eternal conflict as the propensity of the objectively moral to prevent and neutralize imposition is in conflict with the subjectively moral to impose.  This is the moral duality, but it isn’t reward and punishment and it isn’t necessarily a good and evil duality.  It’s a difference between the desire to create and experience, and the desire to control others.  An objectively moral space benefits more from intelligent species who discover and apply objective morality in greater subjective expression and potentially the survival of consciousness to that space, to be an asset in continued creation and experience.  However, the space still benefits from object creation and some consciousness even when an intelligent species chooses moral subjectivity.  I say this to say, I’m not trying to convert anyone with an explanation of ideal existence.  I’m trying to explain what the potential for ideal existence means to my daughters suicide, and whether an eternal space exists or not, objective morality is ideal for human beings, and any conscious beings capable of moral understanding.     

I believe that consciousness survives death for a number of different reasons that are addressed in the book.  Presumably there is a space for those who will impose on others when they have the ability and desire to do so.  So those beings can continue on within a space with others and compete for control of one another.  There is another space of infinite exploration, creation, and experience that is inhabited by beings who are objectively moral and benefit from the existence of all others through what each individual creates and experiences.  To quote the book “I’d rather my daughter be right with liberty, have the ability to think, and be dead at 19, then for her to have the desire to control others, be led by feelings into self deception, and live to be 100.”  My daughter did not possess the intent to control others, and if existence is ideal as I understand it to be, my daughter is eternally free to explore, create, and experience forever.  And I will see her again.  

The other explanation of existence is that an all powerful deity created the universe to satisfy his desire to control others.  This is a being who experiences positive feelings through the control of others, and the torture of others who refuse to submit themselves to him.  Those who are obedient are rewarded and those who are disobedient are punished.  The monotheistic deity offers eternal servitude or eternal torment, which are actually two sides of the same coin.  The monotheist’s conception of heaven is an objective conception of hell which is eternal servitude because all beings have constant desire that is limited by the preference of the deity.  The deity allegedly knew before hand that some would submit or obey, and others would not, so according to monotheists the universe exists to supply him with beings that he can control or torture.  Both heaven and hell describe a space of subjective morality that is ruled by one being.  The constant of any conscious being is desire.  The deity created human beings to exist in some degree of misery for ever, either as his servants which interferes with desire, or perpetual torture, which needless to say is inherently undesirable.      

This is extremely unlikely, for reasons explained in the book.  If the universe exists to satisfy a deity’s desire to control and torture what does my daughters suicide mean?  It means the postponement of eternal servitude or eternal torture by up to maybe 70 years.  Rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things.  I mean maybe for the first 50 years or so existing in such a situation, but I have to imagine after the first million years with an eternity to go, you’re not looking back like I really messed up missing those potential years I could have been on earth.

If we believe there is an observer or observers, that the universe exists for some purpose, what is the relationship between intelligent life generated by the universe and the observer?  A subjectively moral observer, the monotheistic deity, created beings who are an offense to him because they are incapable of complete obedience.  They owe the deity a debt for existing and satisfy that debt through the pledge of eternal servitude.  The relationship between objectively moral observers and the intelligent life that comes into existence is complete reciprocity.  LIfe comes into existence to perpetuate contentment for the observers.  The observers cannot sustain perpetual existence without the expansion of knowledge which is supplied by the universe, and most significantly by intelligent life.  An equal of exchange of existence (life coming into existence) for existence (observers continued contentment with existence through what new life produces).    

I’m confident in the survival of my daughter’s consciousness to a space of limitless potential inhabited by beings who have an objective understanding and application of morality.  I believe my daughter has begun experiences according to her desires that exceed anything that any of us can imagine.  Not because I want to believe it, but because the explanation makes the most sense to me based on what is, what is not, what can be, and what cannot be, leading me to the conclusion that is the most likely.  

I am confident that my daughter is better off, and I have to be happy for her for that.  My life will never be the same, my happiness always tainted, and I long to converse, correspond, and interact with, hug, and hold my daughter.  I lament not having the opportunity to see how she would develop.  Those are things that I wanted, and apparently these were things she was less interested in at that moment than I was.  I’m comforted by the probability that my daughter has survived to something better.  I accept her decision to get there faster than she otherwise would have.  I don’t mind making the aforementioned sacrifices for her benefit.  Imagine she had an opportunity to have a perfect life but I would never see her again?  Would I want to deny her that opportunity just to satisfy my desire to talk to her, text her, interact with her, and see her development?  If I would make that sacrifice if it was her decision for a better temporary life on earth, why would I have a problem making that sacrifice for her decision to experience so much better for an eternity?             

The following is a brief chapter summary.       

Bad to Worst provides details of being informed that my daughter was in ICU.  It was initially reported to me that she was going to make a full recovery.  The following day I learned that would not be the case.  The chapter provides some of my initial thoughts, feelings, and bewilderment that took place within about the first 30 hours, including the 16 hour drive back to Wisconsin from Texas.  

Why?  Upon meeting Holly (Ava’s mother) at the hospital, and talking to Fern (Ava’s boyfriend), I had a better understanding as to why Ava made the decision she made that led to this outcome.  I explore Ava’s general circumstances as perceived by myself, her mother, and her boyfriend, and more specifically her circumstances and influences on behavior the night of December 2nd when the event occurred.  

The Bigger Picture.  There’s no way to process death and loss without seeing it in the context of what you understand existence to be.  I share the most probable explanation of existence, based on the function of the universe and the problem it solves, as well as ideal according to the conscious experience.  I shared this explanation with Holly and Fern for whatever consolation it could be to them.  

Jill and Jesus.  Wasn’t a huge deal, but I was mildly irritated with something Jill said that comes from her religious beliefs.  This chapter addresses the deficiency in logic and ideal of the Christian doctrine.  

Froedtert.  I spent 3 days with my daughter in the ICU at Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa, WI, to complete the organ donor process.  This chapter chronicles that experience including a review of the staff and the role they played in our experience.  

Ava in Her Own Words.  This is where our text log begins.  It spans a little over 2.5 years, beginning when Ava is 16 and ending about a day before her suicide.  There’s roughly 4 months from when she was 16, all of 17 and 18, and about 2.5 months as a 19 year old.    

What Was She Thinking?  After you’ve had a chance to become acquainted with Ava, I analyze and suggest possible motives for the act based on the information I have about what happened the night of December 2nd, 2024.  The 2nd chapter discusses the general explanation, whereas this chapter goes into specifically what she may have been thinking and feeling that caused her to proceed with the act at that time.  

Conclusion.  This conclusion restates the cause of the act, and speculates that Ava’s consciousness has survived death and what such a space may be like in consideration of ideal.  I answer the question of what she has left, which is more a general assessment of how worthwhile life is in this world and specifically in this country.   

Additional Content.    I provide a link to a google drive folder that contains screenshots to the text log for anyone who wants to verify that these are the texts we exchanged.  Within that folder there is another folder that will be updated with additional content pertaining to Ava.  Pictures, art, crafts etc.