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 find that the big things help with this.

Physics, like that wonderful speech suggested. History, too: that while we may be individually lost, our choices help shape the world we leave behind, and thus we are indelibly stamped on the world forever. Little, tiny things all shape the world. Just by living you are connected to every life past and every life future, not in a woo way, but in a very tangible, historical way.

Having children isn't the only way to keep a legacy alive. You can do it by leaving behind the tangible: even a diary, kept every single day for twenty or thirty years, will be of enormous historical usage and will be read for centuries. Think of Pepys: we never would have remembered some random undersecretary of the navy if not for the fact that he wrote everything down. You can click here https://www.pepysdiary.com and see what this random man was doing 350 years ago today.

You can build a community. Help as you can. Make your echo last, even in your corner of the world.

Or get your comfort from literature. Write something, or read, and realize that human emotions don't go away when we die. To quote Alan Bennett: "“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”

All of this helps me.

if you write names/date on the back of photographs, please write on the edges, as the markings may eventually come through to the printed side and damage the image.

I think it’s quite motivating. Comforting, almost. All that matters is family, and what you do today. It gives me a very carpe diem feeling, and something else, almost a sense of my family being a huddle in a great sea of time.

I am Chrsitian and believe in eternal life. I find it hard to get my head around what eternity actually is, and think life on earth will be a dot in the timeline compared to this.
I'd love everyone that I love and care for (and those I don't/ don't even know) to believe in Jesus.
I enjoy life on the earth but I believe life after I have died will be so wonderful. It would be like being upgraded on a flight or a hotel when you were quite happy with your ticket or room anyway. Probably a bad analogy!

Eternal life sounds too long on the other hand.

@TryingNotToReact9to5 my DD has the same view. Her main concerns being: getting bored for that amount of time and not having the snacks she likes. The worry is real. 😆

I think we push these thoughts down most of the time and every now and again they come. It has reminded me of lying on the bed with my mum when we visited from overseas ( she was terminally ill but we thought we had at least another 6 months at that point). I was so relieved that she had made it to Christmas and that we had all made it over to see her and this had kept me going but when I saw the deep fatigue that I now recognise as cancer eating away at the cells that give you life, I knew she had less time than we were all assuming. I kind of broke down like a little girl (45 at the time) one day on the bed and took hold of her in my arms and just blubbed that I could not face a world without her in it.I put my head on her chest like I did as a little kid and suddenly it was like my 80 year old mum was 40 again and I was 8. She stroked my head and very calmly told me that this was the way of life and I would be lying on the bed as she was, one day, as my daughter faced letting go of me and this was the timeless cycle of life in which we all must take part once we get to live. She also said she was so tired she was looking forward to resting deeply. Now as she got closer to death which was 10 weeks after this point, I saw the fear of death and the fact she was not ready to let go of life but in that moment on the bed she was at peace with death and she helped me be a little more at peace with her impending death with her words which was a real death. My ( (very unsentimental and in denial she was in her final months) dad was annoyed with me for crying on my mum like that but honestly now as time goes on I am glad I was able to express my love to her in that childlike way and my sorrow she would no longer be in the world because it was a bullshit free moment where we were both able to be genuine. I hugged her so hard and cried on her chest for the last time ever and she knew how much she meant to me and how hard I loved her. She was a lovely mum who had quite a hard life and two years on my eyes fill with tears when I think of her and remember she is gone. Lucky me I loved and was loved by a mum like that. I know not everyone is so lucky in the parent lottery of who you are born to.

The Romans- the epicureans wrote a lot to do with accepting death. The truth is that we will all simply go out like flickering malfunctioning lights, and once our light goes out there will be no awareness of death, just as we have no awareness of what it was like not to exist. I take comfort that billions of beings have been through death before me but many more billions never got the chance to exist or they existed short or very hard lives. All these things take off the brutal edge to this kind of thinking.

On the other hand, if you absolutely can't stand your family, it's a lovely thought!
Nice to read this thread though- people are posting very helpful quotes, and explaining the way they look at life / death (It's good when people on MN genuinely try to help other posters and don't just come on to be sarcastic, like on a lot of threads I've read recently).

I am not a Christian and don't believe in heaven. But i dont like to think that people just ... end and then that's it. So i find this poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye soothing when I'm struggling with grief. The world is changed forever for each person having been in it, whether they are remembered or not.

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
(Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die.)

@Gudbrand
I am in a similar situation to you. My mum died last year, I have no partner/siblings/kids or even friends (my mum was my best friend and we did everything together). I still have my dad for now, but he is 84 and not in great health, so we don’t know how many more years he has left. After he has gone I will be alone apart from a few extended family members, who, as you say, have their own lives, although I know they will still look out for me. I completely understand that feeling of being completely alone and how frightening that is. I know it is what worried my mum most about dying (how I would cope) and it worries my dad too, which I have a lot of guilty feelings about.

I had some short term bereavement counselling, which didn’t help a great deal, but am considering trying again and paying privately to have this longer term.

The only thing that has helped a little is going to see our local vicar, who assured me I would see my loved ones again in heaven. She also said she had sat with many people who were dying and felt a presence in the room after they had died. I have also been convinced by reading about other people’s near death experiences etc. that there is something after this life. I know my mum thought there was something too. I am not particularly religious, but feel I have to believe to make the rest of my life bearable. I too just want to fast forward my life until I can be with my mum again, which I also feel guilty about, as I know it is not what she would have wanted.

It was The Flaming Lips "Do you realise" that made me acknowledge that. It is a sad thought but also why I try not to take life too seriously.

I'm not from a big family , and most aunt's / uncles etc are no longer around . I have just a few cousins who I haven't seen in years . But I've recently done one of those DNA tests and you can see matches of others that share ( even a tiny amount ) of your DNA , we are talking 5th - 8th cousins . My mind was blown to see I have over 15,000 fellow humans who share a little on my ancestors dna in them.

This is a lovely thread and I don't have time to read it all at present. I exist now (I think) so nothing can ever take away the fact that I have existed for seventy odd years. When my body dies my mortal life can never be undone, in the same way that smashing a Michelangelo statue can never take away the fact that it was once made.
I think Rupert Brooke used the words 'a pulse in the Eternal Mind' and I think when my body dies I will go back to being that, at least, as will we all.
I once asked a nice vicar if I existed before I was conceived and he said, "Now, there's a question!"

I don't think it's that terrible a thought. We get the wonder of human consciousness for a smattering of years. What a blessing. Then we go back to what we once were.

Life and consciousness is the oddity, not death.

Yes! I have so many distant cousins all over Europe/ America /Aus. Amazing

Some of these replies have been massively comforting, they've really made me see death in a different light.

I'm not a Christian primarily because it's comforting - I'm a Christian because the evidence demands it. In light of the gospel accounts and corroborative documentary evidence, Jesus' from the dead is just plainly undeniable to me, and when viewed in the context of the whole Bible (the Torah, the Prophetic books, wisdom literature etc, all of which clearly point to Jesus) it is far too compelling to dismiss. However, while I'm not a Christian because it's comforting (some aspects of my faith are actually a real challenge, and it would often be "easier" to not be a Christian), this doesn't mean that my Christianity doesn't also provide me with tremendous comfort!
Because of Jesus, I have complete and total forgiveness of sins; I can approach God's throne with confidence; I have certain hope of eternal life with my Saviour; I know I'll meet my Christian friends and family beyond the grave; I have real, meaningful work to do right now that has eternal value in God's kingdom; nothing can separate me from the love of Christ...
And the best thing is, there is nothing "wishful" about these beliefs. The way God saved his people is far too genius to have possibly been invented by a man. It's absolutely rock solid, unlike other manmade beliefs.

Hebrews 12:28
"Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe."

This is a very touching thread. 

I had a moment when my son was a tiny baby, and I was sitting in a supermarket car park whilst he was sleeping. A very elderly man slowly walked past my car and I realised that one day that could be my son, so elderly and frail, and I wouldn't be there to look after him. It was the first time I had really pondered my own mortality seriously and it made me feel so sad.

But - similar to what @WoolyMammoth55 posted earlier - I feel the connection of women going back generations, thousands and thousands and thousands of years, to bring me to the joyful day of being a mother myself and it makes my heart sing with joy.

My daughter talks about energy, and how once created it never dies and that to me is a comfort and a wonder. I think of the people I have lost and how my love for them does not disappear, how their love for me still exists, just the physical parts have gone.

@SingingSands

i love that idea of energy never dying - just transferring. I think on a physical level we live on in the soil, worm food for new plant life and the circle of life continues but on a spiritual level I think love keeps something alive. My grandmother fells alive to me in many ways although she is dead.

she was a woman of tremendous faith

*feels

Although she was a very strong woman and probably could have felled anything she wanted🙂

My sons have both gone through the fear of Mum dying phase, the younger is still working it out.

I have told them that i will never quite be gone because the love I give them has changed their very brain wiring for the better, and that will be with them all their lives and it will help them love their own chidren who will pass it on in their turn.

I can speak with authority to them because I know the effects that being neglected and being lived have. I lost my bio. Mum at 6 weeks through adoption, had terrible Foster parents for a time and then went to my adoptive mum. She loved me and taught me in an effective way for 8 years before she got sick and died 3 years later.

All that loss has had a very bad effect lifelong on me. But if Mum had not loved me, then I could never have loved my children the way I do. I can feel both the lovelessness within me from the periods of neglect and at times abuse, and the love and warmth within that comes from having been loved by mum.

So I will die as she did, but the love that came from her and before that from her mother, has formed my brain and me for the better, quite literally, and that will go down to my sons and onwards if they have children.

My name will be lost, but I don't mind that. The love of my mother and myself will carry on making a difference in other peoples' lives for a very long time.

It is incredible you feel like that @Ijsbear . I didn't have any love as a child that I can remember yet some how I love my children and look after them really well. You don't need to have had love to give it. I'm glad you that you had it but so sad you lost both your mums so soon.

What really torments me is that I won't get to see what shape the planet is in 200 years from now!!
Does humanity solve global warming? Will there be enzymes released into the world's oceans to eat through plastic waste? Will people be living in government owned micro flats? Will there still be reliance on petrochemicals and, if not, what replaces them? Will borders still exist? Will vast areas of the planet be rewilded - or turned into deserts? Will robots care for the elderly? Is there an NHS? What does the planet look like with a shrinking population?
I'll never know!

@SunshineCake I'm sorry you didn't get any love at all that you remember. I hope that you have found love now - well, if you have children then you have some, but an adult-to-adult love too. You must be filled with love to be able to love your own children despite not having had it in childhood

I've thought a lot about death and spent time investigating many views on this thread and world religions. Where I got is that Jesus existed because there is so much historical proof he lived. So given that, the question CS Lewis asked was, is he a mad man, a bad man or, who he say he was, the son of God? I believe Jesus was who he said he was and so I became a Christian and it's the best decision I ever made. I’ve tasted a bit of how good life is with the living God and can’t wait for heaven as the bible says God will wipe away ever tear. I just wish all my friend and family believed too so they can come too.