I've just had the sadest thought...

[Zippidy123]

...that one day my family and I will all be separated, we'll all be dead. Not just 1 or 2 of us but all of us, all of this will be gone forever. I wish I believed in heaven!

I dont know why I've only just thought of that now. I've sometimes thought of individuals dying-my parents are in their 70's now but one day my DH, DB, SIL, PIL, all the DC will all be gone. Its mind blowing really!

I think what comforts me is reading some research years ago (I can’t remember where, but it was in a Proper Book, so the usual MN demand of ‘link please!’ wouldn’t apply) that many people ‘see’ their relatives as they die. They aren’t actually there, but the dying brain conjures them up and it comforts you as you pass into nothingness. It doesn’t matter about an afterlife if in your final moments you think there is one, iyswim. It’s just your brain, easing you into not existing.

I’d be happy to take that.

Like you OP, I find it's a very helpful, albeit morbid, way to put things into perspective.

Just look at the shit posted on this site - how people choose to waste their lives on petty crap which could end at any moment...

It makes me appreciate life so much more.

Wow this is depressing ☹️

I always think of all the people who have already died (100s of years ago) and I just see their lives as short and gone. But they had the same thoughts as this thread and some of their lives were as long as ours now. But I just think of them as living for a few years. Your family isn't one snapshot in time - your kids meet people and branch off the create new familes.

JustLookingAtTractors that's lovely, i hope that's true. I can believe that could happen, certainly more than I can believe in an afterlife. U remember when I was 20 I was staying at a boyfriends house, I woke myself up at 2am shouting out for my mum, it was so weird but thought I must have had a bad dream. In the morning it was reported on the news that there'd been an earth quake at that time in our area. I must have felt it in my sleep and subconsciously called for my mum so I can believe that when you die your brain comfort you by imagining your loved ones like that.

SwedishEdith yeh I've always imagined us all branching off. It's the thought that the snapshot of us all here and now will one day be gone.

Yeah, it's a wierd thought. I have seen old family photos of great great great grandparents etc whose names I have to be told by older relatives. Once they die out so will the knowledge of those pepole. It struck me once that all my own photos of faces I know and love in my own life will one day mean nothing to my descendents and none of us will be known by anyone.

Parenthood involves so much letting go. At some point, we have to say goodbye forever but we are saying goodbye to people who are the next us so we live on in them. I think there is much more carried down in DNA than can be scientifically understood. Our ancestors all live in within us because we are them and our children are us.

But it will be hard to go. Much easier if we can go knowing that our children and loved ones are happy and loved. I do believe we are somehow reunited with our loved ones afterwards in another dimension. I think there is much that we don’t and never will understand about this universe.

A comfort I take from this cheery thread is not one of us escapes this.

CurlyhairedAssassin it's always worth writing on the back of photos, just a name and date. I would imagine people will be forgotten even quicker now that social media has taken over and real photographs don't get put in family albums as much.

My mum put all her old family photos into an album and wrote down under each photo who the people were and what she knew and remembered about them. She said that if she didn’t do it, I wouldn’t know who they were. I am so glad that she did that before she died.

Bit off topic but I heard something recently that really resonated. It was that we die twice, the first time is when we physically cease to exist and the second is when nobody remains who remembers us or anything about us

Ernest Hemingway said “every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal”

Except most of us won’t be immortal, as you say!

My mum died recently.

and looking at some photos, this thought struck me. There was a photo of mum, her mum and dad and her cousin, who she was close to. All gone.

It was quite upsetting. I started cataloging family heirlooms. I have a ring that was my great grandmas, then my Nanas, then mums and it will be my daughters. How long before people forget my great grandmas name? The ring that was my mums? How long before someone forgets where it came from or who the original owner was?

So they are photographed and brief history of each piece accompanies it.

Grieving is hard. But I am struggling with the fact that one day, my mum won’t be remembered.

We're all players.on the board.
From kings, queen's, knights and pawns.
It doesn't matter, we all end up in the same box when the game is over.

It's funny how no-one in the generations above you warn you about such realisations of life. Perhaps it's a great conspiracy amongst them to keep certain things quiet as they're often too sad or awful to contemplate.

I remember being quite shocked when I was about 19 about something my dad said, when his mother died. He hadn't been particularly close to her in an emotional sense I don't think, so I was surprised when he was fairly subdued over the next week or two. He said to us it was because he realised he was now an orphan, and even though he was 60 he felt sad about it. Maybe it starts to trigger feelings that life is quite short, really and we're relatively insignificant beings on this planet.

But you can't be sure you won't get another spin around. I'm looking forward to my next go, I have some corrections to make. ( if I remember, which Im pretty sure I won't)
My dd believes in heaven and she got upset when I told her I didn't. So we chatted about it and I told her she had convinced me. And I agreed that when I die I won't go without her. I'll be in a sort of a cafe at the train station reading my book waiting ( a very long time) for her.

I like it, I like the thought that we are just a shadow in time, it makes my worries seem less big. My worries seem massive but in the ether of history they are meaningless. I like that the stone age, the Egyptians, the Romans, the victorians looked at the same moon and felt as small as I do.

…so just like you all use to be then ?

Why in Gods name did I click on this 😰

I have a son that died. I often think of a speech given by writer and performer Aaron Freeman on NPR News "All Things Considered", excerpts of which are below:

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died.

All the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off you like children, their ways forever changed by you.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time.

According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone. You're just less orderly.

That last sentence - I love it. The whole speech is long, but worth looking up.

Birth, life and death are all part of the same package and they should all be celebrated.

What makes me the most sad is if I die and people mourn me and I can’t tell them to not be sad or that I’m missing out on everyone’s lives.

I guess that makes me quite selfish to be worried about my own death more than others but as a single parent it’s sometimes I think about all of the time.

Reading this it makes me sad that there’s even the option of nothingness after death. I just don’t believe that. It’s fundamentally against my Christian faith, so I don’t think we’ll be separated from our loved ones, we might be united with them.

I always thing of this like ripples in a pond when you throw a stone... the stone (you) will sink but the ripples of a life well lived, well loved and who gave will go on for a while...

I recently did my family tree going back to the 1500s in places. I found about 2000 names. It was so bloody weird to think that those people used to be real people, with thoughts and emotions, hopes and plans just as complicated as mine. And now all they are is a name and a date of birth and death in a record somewhere. Go one or two generations back and it's near enough impossible to find any real, meaningful facts about anyones actual life. In 100 years, my descendants will probably think the same of me. Its very odd.

Its also weird to think that if just one of those marriages or births didn't happen, i wouldn't exist. Mind blowing.