waltzforvenus

My uncle was just recently diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. It spread from his throat, to his jaw, and down to his lungs and he doesn't have very long to live. It was in one of my daily spaceouts where I actually had a real grasp of my mortality, for the first time the idea of death hit me like a moving freighter.

Death isn't just sleep, it's the absence of thoughts. I don't believe in an afterlife, and the thought of just ending, the loss of my ability to think and comprehend and feel is a downright scary thought. Think about it: everything you are presently, were, achieved, will become, have felt - it's all feels so insignificant.

I just dunno what to do.

ratbastid

Like billions of human beings before you, you could devise some system of post-mortem existence to put your faith in. It's a very comforting thought, however irrational.

Me, I say: Who knows what if anything happens after. All I know is, I am going to die. That's not in question. The only question is: what's it going to be like for me and for those around me between now and then.

spectre

I've almost died more times than I care to remember. After a while, it tends to lose it's scare factor. I don't believe in an afterlife either, and I've always thought of it as a dreamless sleep. If I'm dead, I'm not going to know it, and because I don't know it, I'm not going to care. You just need to hope that you made some sort of impression in someone's life so that someone will remember you. That's the best you can hope for no matter who you are. But really, it's not something you should dwell on because it's something that's totally out of your control, and since it's out of your control, worrying about it doesn't do anything to help you.

All I can suggest is that you do something that makes you feel like you've made a difference. Help out a friend, volunteer, do whatever so that you feel that what you've done has helped someone or made a difference in their life. We all can't be famous for something major, so that's the best any of us can do.

__________________
"Fuck these chains
No goddamn slave
I will be different" ~ Machine Head

noodlebee

I think scared of death or non-existence is just part of our biology. We are animals who struggle for survival.

Personally, I don't mind non-existence or having no memory with other people. The most important is just make a slight improvment on the world even if they don't remember my name.

shesus

You live while you're alive. Sometimes people lose that feeling of living. Life is short and death is inevitable. I guess happiness while you're alive is a goal...at least it's mine.

I've never been scared of death, for me anyway. I don't know what will happen after I die, but I'm not too concerned about it either. If you dwell on your death, you won't enjoy life.

What scares me are people around me dying. I haven't had to deal with many deaths and it frightens me to think of people I care about dying.

__________________
Whatever did happen to your soul?
I heard you sold it

Choose Heaven for the weather and Hell for the company

Sion

It's not the death, or the non-existance that scares me. It's the uncertainty factor. I HATE not knowing what comes next.

__________________
He's the best, of course, of all the worst.
Some wrong been done, he done it first. -fz

I jus' want ta thank you...falettinme...be mice elf...agin...

Invalid Comfort

When my grandmother died this past winter it was the first death I had to deal with. It was difficult, but I wrote her a poem. Poetry and the RIP factor allowed me to get over it. My morality is insubstantial, so I hope to leave a positive remnants.

I think that the "afterlife" consists of what-ever an individual believes in. I emulate slightly with the buhdist(sp?) perspective, with my own personal twist.

I've realized that the oceanic field that we call life, I'm nothing more than a blade of grass. I hope to return to the shade underneath the tree of life.

Might I be able to enjoy the shade now, by-chance? If death is another life, then I'll live it when it comes, until then; this is all I have.

QuasiMondo

I'm more worried about the dying thing than death itself. Rarely is a person's death not without pain and trauma.

__________________
Cameron originally envisioned the Terminator as a small, unremarkable man, giving it the ability to blend in more easily. As a result, his first choice for the part was Lance Henriksen. O. J. Simpson was on the shortlist but Cameron did not think that such a nice guy could be a ruthless killer.

-From the Collector's Edition DVD of The Terminator

bluestars87

I'm scared of dying. I hope there is an afterlife.

__________________
"Every light must fade, every heart return to darkness!"
-San Francisco 49ers: Five Time Super Bowl Champions-

little_tippler

I'm scared of dying only because I don't want to not exist. It just seems so weird. Why am I here in the first place if after there is nothing? And I think there is nothing. It just seems like a waste. Where was I before? I wasn't even an entity, in my view. But I can't remember not existing. It's just scary to not be able to conclude this type of thought about death. And I still feel like I'm never going to die...because nothing makes sense. So why would anything around me even be real? Sometimes life is like being in a dream. Sorry for the rant.

__________________
Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918

rockzilla

As long as someone rememebers me after I'm gone, then I'm still alive.

Invalid Comfort

Have you ever practiced meditation before?

When one questions the reality of death, everything else seems insignificant.

Even though you feel like your never going to die, the reaper says otherwise. The only thing that we are "destined to do" is to die.

Because I don't know what comes after death, I try to live my best now. If I knew what came after, I may not live as hard as I did without that knowledge. Going through life thinking that I'd never die would be the worst lie to tell myself, because it would cause fear of something I shouldn't be afraid of. Fear is a host of so many of my own problems, don't need to add another on top .

Siege

i'm not scared of death. i'm scared of a long, drawn out, painful death.

__________________
"Your name's Geek? Do you know the origin of the term? A geek is someone who bites the heads off chickens at a circus. I would never let you suck my dick with a name like Geek"

--Kevin Smith

This part just makes my posts easier to find

Invalid Comfort

I would ask you this, are you familiar with self-fulfilling prophecies? What if those who die long, painful deaths are the ones who happen to deathly afraid of it?

I will never know, I'll put me foot in my mouth now.

*mumble mumble mumble*

Siege

I am familiar with self fulfilling prophecies. However, i don't think it would really apply in this case. Unless I subconsciously now want to go get hurt really bad or contract some incredibley painful, incurable disease.

__________________
"Your name's Geek? Do you know the origin of the term? A geek is someone who bites the heads off chickens at a circus. I would never let you suck my dick with a name like Geek"

--Kevin Smith

This part just makes my posts easier to find

abaya

I used to believe that I would go to heaven when I died. Later I realized that this meant some people would go to heaven, and some people would go to hell... and eventually, I stopped believing in the whole thing. Didn't seem very fair.

I still don't know what will happen, and probably never will. But in order for me to make the most of my life from moment to moment, I have to believe that nothing will happen when I die. That in one instant I will be alive, the person that I have spent many years becoming, and hopefully surrounded by people whom I love, and who have loved me, in that particular body... and in the next instant, I will become a pile of decaying organic matter. I am afraid of what happens in between those two instants. Not the pain, but the letting go of life. Will I be able to do it? What if I am unconscious, knocked out by morphine or other pain medication (as is often the case with cancer)? What if I don't even realize that I am ceasing to live?

That's what happened to my grandmother. She didn't die in pain, because she was so numb from the morphine. I almost think I would prefer the former, just to be alive and conscious as long as possible. But seeing her dead body laid out in a coffin, and then watching that dead body and coffin being pushed into a warehouse-sized crematory... and come back to us in a jar... well, there is no better metaphor than "ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

Willravel

Death = nonexistence, and I only would regret dying unexpectedly so my family doesn't have some time to say goodbye. If I die, I die. Nothin' to fear about that.