Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

...to ask what happens when you die?

433 replies

TeaAndAMarmiteSandwhich · 11/12/2017 22:58

... or more accurately, what you think happens?

I really really don't want to die (a good thing I guess! As I wasn't too bothered either way as a moody teen, but now I love life most of the time and want to hang around).

It's comforting to think there's a heaven, but I don't believe there is (and I'd probably get bored if I had to stay there for EVER). But when u die - is that it? Game over ? I'm not too keen on that idea either.

What do you think happens? and what would you like to think happens? Hmm

OP posts:
Vitalogy · 13/12/2017 23:07

That's very good @Glosgran

Christmaslights0000 · 13/12/2017 23:34

I have clinically died twice (long story)
But after I wanted to know what I saw and felt was I read two books saved by the light by dannion Brinkley, he died for 30 mins a doctor actually confirmed it and some books by Raymond moody.
What I saw and felt in mine was not scary at all

Barbara1956 · 13/12/2017 23:41

I woke up from a nights sleep at the very moment my granddad died..I didn't want to tell my sister who I shared a room with as I didn't want it to be true, but it was. When my mother died a couple of years later I felt nothing..just the usual emptiness...but as she died she turned her head and said "oh Owen , that's beautiful" . .Owen was my Grandfathers name. I wasn't there whens he died but I believe she was at peace. My own belief is that you reap what you sow ...would like to think a sort of intelligence lives on...

RestingGrinchFace · 13/12/2017 23:44

I don't really believe anything. I just don't know.

runwalkrun · 13/12/2017 23:49

think many people think they will know they are dead and can't bear that though

That's the part that horrified me. The fact you're led in a mortuary with a load if other dead bodies. Then there's the utterly horrifying thought of being laid out in a creepy coffin. Then you have the choice of being put in the damp wrong ground or being shoved in an oven.

The whole process is grim

.

runwalkrun · 13/12/2017 23:50

horrifies not horrified.

runwalkrun · 13/12/2017 23:51

Wrong ground.

MissCommunication · 14/12/2017 00:16

www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk/2013/03/you-want-a-physicist-to-speak-at-your-funeral/

I happen to have a faith but I also think this is amazing irrespective of your beliefs or non-beliefs.

Mummainwonderland · 14/12/2017 00:45

I have died before (and got switched back on, obviously) and it was very calm and relaxed. Felt like floating in a cold black pool. Wasn't stressful or anything and I think that's what you'd feel and then you'd be gone. And that's ok. It's the people you leave behind that find death hard. Don't worry about it, focus on life, it's much more fun Smile

TooSarcastic · 14/12/2017 01:03

Would be completely happy with being thrown on the tip and that being that. Nothing happens, no magic world to transport to, just my time done. Don't believe in souls, but rather personalities of the living.

BulletFox · 14/12/2017 01:11

You just die. I'm sorry but you do. From my experience people just curl up into a ball and focus on dying.

We've all being doing it for centuries, death and taxes

BlackEyedKid · 14/12/2017 01:20

Nothing. You just stop. Daft to think otherwise.

TheDowagerCuntess · 14/12/2017 02:51

I find people providing categoric answers on this quite fascinating.

It's fine for you to think that, and even to be certain that you're absolutely correct.

It doesn't mean you are, though.

We don't know. We have no idea what happens.

Just like we don't know how we all got here, we don't know what happens after death. We can surmise and theorise and have faith and believe X to be true, but we can't know.

Sure, our body dies, and then begins to decompose, and then we're left as nothing more than a skeleton, or more likely, ashes. And that's the end of that.

But what makes us 'us' isn't really our body, it's our personality, our mind. I can feel fairly certain that I know what happens to my body after death, but I can't feel sure I know what happens to my intangible mind.

I wish I did.

GingerbreadMa · 14/12/2017 04:05

We DO know though, its no different to what happens to a carrot that gets forgotten in the back of a fridge, or a nit you nittygritty then squash. Or the cut flowers that have gone droopy. We're made of the same stuff as the rest of the natural world. We decompose and release heat and minerals.

GingerbreadMa · 14/12/2017 04:08

Human behaviour is no higher than in the rest of the animal world. All of our urges and behaviours have biological explainations. The idea that humans are somehow more than just animals makes no sense
There is nothing special about us.

Pensionista · 14/12/2017 07:03

For me I find death incredibly sad, believing I wont ever see those I love again. I wasted so much of the time I've had. Now I live life and don't want it to end so I am doing my best to appreciate every moment. When I was young I did believe in the existance of God, now I don't, life taught me that, but I have to say it was more comforting when I did believe. I find it incredible when some people say God saved me, or God came into my life etc. I think, what made you so special when there are so many in the world suffering. Where is God when little kids are being abused, starving etc. I would rather be cremated than put in a cold dark ground to rot, ill Logical I know, makes no sense. It would be great if the essence of us went into another dimension, maybe that's what some call heaven. Sadly I just think when your gone that's it. Robin Willuams film, "What Dreams May Come" is what I wish was true.

TDHManchester · 14/12/2017 07:57

The thing is,our brains often fool us. When we are young we never consider death. We will live forever. It never crosses our minds. We wander through cemeteries and wonder who all these people were. The women who lived to be 100 and the baby boy who died 2 months old.

Just names on headstones.

But once they were real just likes us.

As you get older you attend more and more funerals.

Sage words are often spoken by ministers and priests...

A few i remember..

"Life is short. Go out and live your lives.."

Another..

"Always keep your lamp lit for you never know when the Lord will call"

ImListening · 14/12/2017 08:32

I had a dream of heaven a few years ago at a particular difficult time in my life. It was the most beautiful place. If that’s what’s waiting for me I have no need to fear death itself. If it isn’t then I’ll never know anyway!

It’s the manner of dying that scares me. Will I die in my old age? Unlikely with all my health conditions? Will I be murdered? (That’s my biggest fear- that & being raped then murdered).

Nothing is certain in this life except for death & taxes.

I have a deep religious belief & that sustains me in my darkest hours.

Littlemissamy · 14/12/2017 08:37

I think that when you die, that’s it. I don’t believe there’s anything after. I’ve always gone by the whole circle of life thing (inspired by the lion kind obviously), so when I die, I will be cremated and my ashes become the grass, the animals eat the grass, people eat the animals. It feels whole and lovely to me.
My partner on the other hand, disagrees completely. He doesn’t believe in God or anything, but coming from a Catholic family, he’s terrified of not going to heaven. He wants our kids christened, not because he believes in God, but “to be on the safe side” if there really is a heaven and hell. I’m not entirely sure if it works like that, but we’ll never know I guess! I’m frightened of dying, of leaving my kids behind, of the pain. But not of death. If there’s an afterlife that’s nice, but I’m hapoy just being in an eternal sleep.

Pensionista · 14/12/2017 08:51

Hmmmmm. I want to know ..why you? ..I used to believe all that stuff but nothing ever happened to me.

liz70 · 14/12/2017 08:57

Nothing happened to me until I was 36, so I could have argued the same up to that point.

Pensionista · 14/12/2017 08:57

Littlemyssami.....who would want to believe in a God that puts terror into you. Your DH has been indoctrinated and brainwashed, that's why I don't like religion. It's more about power.

Pensionista · 14/12/2017 09:00

Liz70......Why you and not the rest of us? Curious to know what did happen to you. Without meaning to be rude, what makes you so special ?

buttercupmeadow · 14/12/2017 09:15

Nothing. You just stop. Daft to think otherwise.
But i think the opposite, daft to think you die and that's it. How the heck can you be sure there's nothing.

liz70 · 14/12/2017 09:17

I don't know why me, and I'm not special. I've never claimed to be special. Confused It's like I said to my DH when we were discussing this a couple of years ago, the accusatory stuff that makes me feel like somehow I've done something wrong, when really I know that I haven't. I didn't ask or make what's happened to me happen, it just is what it is. I have no problem with it - at least I haven't since I came to understand it better (was bloody terrified before). Now I have no fear. But if people want to give me grief about it, there's nothing I can do about that. Confused