When did the concept of death really, truly, sink in?
 

In the spirit of Chiomara's post...

My folks split when I was 2 and I was raised by my mom and grandparents. My grandmother made the wicked witch of the west look like Mary Poppins, and unfortunately back then, my mom was following in her footsteps. I was the only boy in a female dominated environment so me and my Grandfather formed a killer bond as I was growing up. He and I were both brow beaten by his wife and my mom which made it easy to circle our wagons.

He stashed a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes in his detached garage and we would sneak out there. (No he didn't let me smoke or drink - he just let me hang out with him while he was "being bad")

He's the guy that bought me my first electric guitar (a super cheap strat copy) and amp (8" Fender tube combo - there was no SS back then)

Get woken up one morning when I was just 15 years old and mom and me rush to the hospital. He'd had a heart attack at the age of 76.

I'm walking along with the doctor and her and I hear him say, "there's nothing we could do. he's gone."

I just fell to the floor and started crying like a baby while they kept walking. I'll never forget the enormity of that massive gut punch. I was numb for weeks afterwards.

My grandfather died three years ago and I still don't feel the impact of his death. My brain still kind of thinks that I'll see him again. It's dodging reality but that's what I do. I'm sure once my parents, brother, or close friends pass it'll be different but I loved my grandfather and I only remember crying once, at the funeral, but mostly because we all walked up and said goodbye in groups and my father thanked him for being such a wonderful person to me and my brother. Something about the way he said that killed me. I haven't really thought about it deeply since then.

I thought I had accepted it until I read Denial of Death. That book really had a deep impact on me.

My mom wanted to get me out of going to my grandfather's funeral because she knew my hatred for my dad would be problematic. I was about 16 I guess. My dad was sobbing so hard and telling me the important thing was I was there for him when he was alive because after he went senile I was the only one who visited him. The truth was I didn't give a **** about his death and was relieved I didn't have to go the funeral. I didn't feel any sympathy at all for my father's loss. I really ****ing hated him.

I don't know, it's always been with me. It's an easy concept. People die and their consciousness is no longer with us. What happens to their consciousness? I don't ****ing know. Maybe a huge DMT rush enters into the brain and sends it on a seemingly endless trip. Maybe it just stops. It's really kind of pointless to worry too much about it though. Does suck knowing that everybody we ever cared for may leave us tomorrow. Or we will leave giving them the empty spot. I guess that's why so many people cling so hard to religions. They don't like the idea that they probably won't ever see the people they love again. That's my mom. She goes and sees these 'psychics' to talk to my brother and she says he says "he's real" and he was talking about Jesus. Well, according to the bible my brother would have gone to hell. He was a racist junkie. Not that being a racist junkie is actually forbidden in Christianity, but he did actively reject God and the bible does say that one will never EVER be forgiven for doing that. It's the only sin you can't be forgiven for. Maybe my mom is going crazy and getting delusion to deal with the grief. She's totally gonna lose her mind when I kill myself.

You say this a lot.

My father does a lot of video stuff (Directs documentaries and the like), well last year a friend of mine's brother committed suicide. I wasn't really close to the brother, but I thought it would be a good idea to help support my friend. Well turns out my dad was asked to create a tribute video for the family. He asked me to help out. That was probably one of the most crushing experience I have ever gone through. Looking at this kid just living life, having fun and growing up was just heartbreaking knowing what happens at the end of the photo album. Only once we reached the more recent pictures could we see the change in his demeanor. It really made me see the deaths of other family and friends in a whole new light. It helped me learn to appreciate the lives of those around me...

Damn LF

That was funny AND scary.

If we are talking about deaths that really hit us then almost a year ago my friend's Grandma died of cancer. One of the worst days of my life is sitting in that hospital room with the whole family just watching and waiting for her to die. Of all the work and effort she put into helping everybody around her she didn't deserve that. Why couldn't it have been one of her stupid ass kids instead?

Edit: I seriously almost slapped the **** out of the daughter when she started playing her victim card and complained about having to help her mom run errands. Her mom could hardly even stand because of the chemo and she's all like, "she keeps treating me like her n****r". Unappreciative welfare queen ass meth head nazi hoe. I hate most of that family.

Ja, when thinking of a response, I was uncertain of whether or not my sense of accepting or understanding death is accurate. I've certainly dwelt on it, dreamt about it, and discussed it, but that doesn't mean I've reached this goalpoint. What does it really mean to understand or accept death?

I've never had a human death affect me very much, and I'm not sure if I have a cold view of death, if they didn't mean much to me, or if the slow decline of most of those deaths served as a cushion. Seeing other people at wakes who are much more impacted by that person's death makes me sadder than their death itself. When my dog unexpectedly died while I was away from school, that was probably the hardest death I had to deal with I was numb for a while like Chula described.

I can understand a dog's death being more profound that a human's. I've heard a lot of people say that. Dogs are easier to love. People are just so ****ty. It's really hard to love a person.

Come on man......... I'm old enough to have cried like **** over friends who have passed.

When Cindy from back east, who I'd known and loved since we were both 14, finally succumbed to cancer at the age of 50, I was devasted and was basically useless for quite a while.

I have two pictures of her and me on my fridge. One of me and her partying back east during my first trip back after moving, and another when she came out to San Diego for a visit.

EVERY time I see them I kiss my finger, touch her face, and remind her I love her.

I miss her like crazy.

That's you. Different strokes.

I could see my best friend's death as something that could **** me up pretty badly, but this is a good point.

I've never had a dog feed me or give me place to stay. In fact, it's usually the opposite way around. And they never pay rent, and they **** on the floor. And the steal my food. Dogs are ****ing dicks just as much as people are.

"It's really hard to love a person."

Is a good point?

100% ****ed up.

I've never had a stray human try to bite me. They usually ask for money.

Edit: "But dogs are adorable!" So are raver girls and they are also good at giving head. Dogs won't get me drugs.

Yep.

Yep. Still reflects how I feel.

Ooo I'm glad you made this thread!

Periodically I'll wake up in a panic at 3 am and become suddenly, viscerally aware of my own mortality. I feel like in regular daily life, it never really truly sinks in past a certain extent. Whereas when I'm in an in-between state (when I have a high fever, when I'm half-asleep, or having a depersonalization/derealization episode, during which my 'self' feels basically nonexistent and my body faraway) I feel my eventual death more acutely, if that makes any sense. As opposed to simply accepting it and pondering it on an intellectual level. I suspect that the closest one could come to understanding it would be via drug-induced ego death or.. I don't know, meditating in a sensory deprivation tank or something (which I for one would love to do.)

But, anyway, for me it never sank in until my childhood best friend's mom died of brain cancer when we were 13 years old. I adored her, and it took a good few months before her death truly hit me. Before that, it felt like a dream; right after she died everything felt very quiet and faraway and I was more numbed than anything-- her death/death in general still didn't feel real.

Oh, and when I briefly worked at a nursing home I was constantly surrounded by death; death is just in the air in those places (even though no one actually died while I worked there, some of them were close to death. There was this one lady who was so, so sweet; she spoke in a high-pitched raspy voice, and always needed us to rearrange her pillows and stuffed animals 50 times per night while she smiled serenely.) So that occasionally gave me a decent amount of existential unease but not always in a bad way.

Strangely, when my grandmother died I didn't really feel anything, which sounds horrible but there you go. I was more upset when another friend's parent died, because when I'd seen him last, he kept asking me questions about death and god while he chain-smoked in the garage as if he knew on some level he would die soon, and it was heartbreaking to remember it.

Immaturity, snark, and sarcasm reigns supreme once again on this forum with a thread that starts out serious.

Typical modus operandi around here.

Maybe someday............. ah **** it.

Frown, OH, and others come in to snark on me in 5..., 4..., 3..., 2...

Apologies for being honest with how I felt Chula. I accept that my opinion can be sterile and ****ed up. I'd like this to be a serious thread as well, it's a fascinating topic.

So let's get to it because this went unanswered before. What does it mean to understand death? And what does it mean to accept it?

I don't think anybody really understands death and I don't think we ever will. And accepting that mystery is the closest thing to either understand or accepting it.

Nothing scares me more than thinking about how there may not be anything after death. It also fascinates me and there are many sleepless nights where these thoughts invade my mind.

I'll respond in the morning with a day by day account of the slow death of a family member that might add some balance.

Pleasant dreams all. Sleep should always be a good thing.

It'd be much appreciated (both the added perspective and nice dreams).

All of the family members I've known who've passed were all slow deaths. It's a double edged sword. On one hand, you have more time to ready yourself for their death and establish closure on your relationship, but then you have to witness or be left with the thought of their deterioration. Especially with current medical advancements, the death of the person you knew can happen long before they physically die. Nobody should have to endure losing control like that.

Until I was 37, I just walked around an unfeeling psychopath. When I woke up to my new life, I started to understand a lot of things I'd been deaf and blind to before. One of those things was death.

I honestly think it's impossible to really appreciate what death entails until you lose a parent, or a sibling. I'd seen aunts die before and it was harrowing (especially the first one, to whom I was really close) but when my mother passed away it really sunk in. I think the main thing I suddenly realised was that I was on my own - well, we all were - no more Ma there to talk to, discuss things with, laugh with, cry with, make things better. She passed when I was 28 but I still felt like a little kid when it happened: just so numb and unable to understand and lost and bereft. It's a terrible thing to go through, and then for a while you kind of just think of her (well, I did, as I don't really believe in religion or life after death) alone in the earth and my heart would break. Even when I go up to her grave now, I go for Karen, not me: it does nothing for me to stand beside her grave and talk to her. I can do that any time, any where.

Maybe it's easier for those who do firmly believe. Comments? Experiences?

Is it some kind of personal affront to you that I feel differently?

Then your, "Here comes the snark..."

You're the one who said my feelings are, "100% ****ed up."

No one passed any judgements on your feelings.

lol. Maybe so except the "bad as people" part. Dogs aren't perfect either but all I know is how I feel personally. My dog makes me happy and I'm not exactly the cheerful sort.

It is a common opinion that people hold though. People will quickly pull over their car to help a wounded dog on the side of the road than they would a person. A majority of people value animals lives above human lives. As much as I like animals I would still help a random human over an animal.

I first started dating Linda at 19. Her older, and extremly beautiful sister was 22 and already had a 6 year old daughter out of wedlock. I became kind of a surrogate dad to her right off the bat and got extremely close to Lin's sister as a result. To say that the sisters were tight would be the understatement of the century. Lin's dad died in a plane accident when she was 16 and her mom, who re-married and had her second husband drop dead of a heart attack when Lin was 19, became a basket case as a result. So ya, they were really close.

A few years later the cancer stick came knocking. Double mastectomy and a long recovery. Then it came back. Another long battle. Then it came back and she was told that this was it - she didn't have long to live.

She spent 6 of her last 8 weeks living with us under hospice care. Full on hospital bed, oxygen, and twice a day nurse visits. By this point she was in the 5th stage of terminal death - acceptance.

Linda was beyond devastated and was not able to talk with her about it, so I'd spend hours with her, mostly at night while she expressed her feelings about dying and leaving behind her teenage daughter, who I swore I'd take care of forever.

Watching that beautiful woman slowly shrinking away, in an up close and personal way, was the hardest thing I've ever endured.

Finally she ended up in the hospital and Linda stayed with her pretty much 24/7 till the end. She held on longer than the doctors expected. One afternoon Linda came home to take a shower and get some fresh clothes. When she got back to the hospital the nurse told her that Robin had passed shortly after Linda had left.

I was surprised to see her come back home home so soon and went out to see why. She barely made it out of the car before completely losing it in my arms, trembling and balling like a baby for what seemed like forever.

To say the next few days were hard doesn't really cut it. There's still a huge hole over 20 years later that will never be filled.

When Linda's step-sister was in town last week we spent hours sharing old stories about Robin. Lots of laughter but still a ton of sadness.

Respect!

I was on summer break from school I think, and while I'd been an atheist all my life one day the idea of oblivion really hit me like a brick. I was pretty much inconsolable and constantly freaked out for at least a week. Don't know if I ever quite got over it actually. Dying definitely gives me the willies and I have no intention of doing so.

One of the things we talked about a lot was whether it was better, for the people you leave behind, to be hit by a bus or slowly die from a disease.

We never quite settled on an answer.

Death is heavy no matter how you slice it but any sort of immortality myth to me is much more disturbing than reality. I don't want to rush it but it's nice to know it ends.

What about suicide? I want to think well he got what he wanted but mostly I felt like **** he's right this **** sucks.

For the deaths I've known murder may have been the most upsetting.

It's the difference between sudden BANG unexpected death, and knowing that someone is slowly dying.

We did agree that it was nice to be able to hug loved ones and say goodbye, but that it was a bit selfish, since they had to endure weeks, or months of slow anguish right along side you.

I've been through both on numerous occasions and I still haven't settled on a sensible conclusion.

No the question is suicide vs murder.

As much as life sucks and I'm a maladjusted cluster**** the thought of ceasing to exist and losing knowledge of everything I've seen and felt just feels like the most unfair cosmic joke ever. Last night I was thinking about how it's kind of ****ed that I'm forgetting much of my high school life. High school was basically one minor trauma after another that I despised, but it was also an important part of my life, and I kind of mourn for that deranged kid who was sure everything would get better one day. He's dying and many of his experiences and feelings are going to be lost to me forever, and considering just how much he went through during those years it just doesn't seem fair.

And what about the future? I'll probably never know if the human race reaches past our solar system, or if we ever have a unified world government, or if Batman ever marries Catwoman. There's just so much cool **** to know at any given time that the thought of missing out on an infinite stretch of time after I die is galling. What right do you people have to do things if I'm not around to see it?

The good news is you won't care. You won't even won't care.