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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:
oliveinacampervan · 12/12/2017 00:37

@liz70

We return to our non physical spirit form, just as we were before.

Pretty much this.

A few people have said (including someone on this thread, and an old man I saw on tv last week who was medically 'dead' for 88 minutes,) that they 'died,' but saw nothing when they 'died..' no big light, or God, or old dead relatives, and so there is obviously nothing. after death!'

I disagree. Basically they didn't 'die.' If they had, they would be dead!

Obvious thing to say I know, but there are conditions that mimic being dead, when you are just in a super deep coma, so you are not dead! If you were, (properly full-on actually dead) you wouldn't come back to life. Something in your brain and body was keeping you alive.

@verbena37

I believe a few things. Maybe we move on to a parallel world.

Maybe our body just dies and the memories and knowledge (goes back into the universe) and becomes something/someone’s else.There are two neuroscientists who I’ve forgotten the names of but their work basically says the information inside the tubules of your brain cannot just disappear. It cannot die and therefore must go somewhere. Beyond interesting I always think.

I don’t believe in a God but I do believe in life after death and in angels and ghosts.

Great post. Agree with a lot of it.

What fucks me right off is how people who believe you die and that is it and there is nothing else, tend to poo-poo, and laugh at people who believe in spirits and ghosts and the afterlife. It's fucking ignorant and nasty; us people who DO believe, don't bash them for their pessimism and negativity. It's always the same kind of people too! Hmm

Haggisfish · 12/12/2017 00:40

I totally agree that our energy lives on, as energy can be neither created or destroyed. I think it’s just the manner in which that energy manifests itself is the bit I disagree with ghosts etc. I think we live on in chemical energy in plants etc, and dna. There could be spirits etc but I haven’t yet seen anything to convince me of that.

hollowtree · 12/12/2017 00:44

I like to think it's infinite knowledge. Think 'Hitchhikers Guide' style understanding of life, the Universe and everything. I also believe you find the answers to ridiculous questions you always had (how many glasses of wine have I drank in my entire lifetime?) And serious ones (if I had been in xyz position, would I really have been any better/worse?)

I like to believe it's absolutely peace. To recall any memory without anxiety or uncertainty and absolute understanding of all things 'you'. Forgiveness, understanding and fulfillment.

elisaveta · 12/12/2017 00:47

I'm convinced there's more. I've lost two friends I really loved and both times, when I was feeling really low, I suddenly felt a sensation of physical peace, like a hand being placed on my head, though there was no hand. It was only one time for each of them, but I've always thought it was somehow their goodness living on and a gift that they were sending. Sometimes I get quite excited about seeing everyone again, so I really hope it's not wishful thinking.

littlepoppett · 12/12/2017 00:48

I wish I hadn’t read this thread! It makes me feel so strange to think about dying and then ‘nothing’. It freaks me out and I get overcome with a strange emotion.

ohtheholidays · 12/12/2017 01:00

I believe you go to Heaven and you get to see the one's that you loved and lost,I also believe in reincarnation and I belive that once your in Heaven you get a choice you can either stay in Heaven or you can be reincarnated.

I have died a couple of times,whilst in hospital and for me there was a right time to go,it was very calm and I did see all of the happy things that had happened in my life and it would have been easy to give into it and then there's the wrong time,I had flashes of my life but it was all of the wrong things that had happened to me and it was fast and not pleasent and that was easy to walk away from.

Before that had happened to me I'd always just presumed that if your dying it's the right time for you to go,the experiences for me made things alot clearer and took away alot of the fear.

Skittlesandbeer · 12/12/2017 01:49

I am 100% card-carrying atheist (and scientist) and most of the time I dont mind the idea of being ‘compost’ after I die. In its own way, compost leads to new life, and means I’ll be part of a new cycle. Fine.

At the same time, I acknowledge that having an image/story/idea about an afterlife can be handy and comforting (especially for kids, or when I’m anxious or grieving) but I don’t think it needs to be connected to a whole religion or lifestyle. We’re all allowed to find death scary, and have little fantasies that mitigate that feeling, in my view.

I remember my (non-religious) granny at 96 telling me with a soft twinkly smile that she was looking forward to being reunited with her husband (who’d died 20 years earlier). She told me how it went in her mind. She’d walk down a meadow to a lake. He would be sitting on a bench, in the dappled sun, under a blossom tree, feeding the ducks. She would sit next to him, take his hand and they’d keep feeding the ducks together.

When I think of her, this is the picture in my mind. In fact I think I’ve populated a whole imaginary ‘mind palace with gardens’ to include everyone I know who’s died. They are all doing something calm, that they are enjoying. My dad is fishing, my friend is watching the sunset with a g&t in his hand.

I don’t need it to be any more ‘real’ than that. It calms me, so I can get on with living the short life I have.

As for my body, I’d like to be buried but with none of those airlock/chemical caskets. Woodland burial (in wicker) if I can organise it, with a sapling on top. Somewhere friends and family can visit, and talk to my tree!

Just because I’m an atheist, doesn’t mean my ‘end’ can’t include some ritual and poetry, right?

teaandtoast · 12/12/2017 02:33

That's lovely Skittles.

Rollmopsrule · 12/12/2017 04:22

I nearly died. It was an unusual situation after surgery, I was bought round in recovery room then the seriousness of the situation became apparent and I had to be put back to sleep to go back to theatre so I knew there was a possibility I wouldn't wake up. I occasionally reflect on how I felt before they put me back to sleep.....I did a kind of mental shrug. If I wake up then great if not then so be it. Maybe the brain process to keep me calm kicked in or it was the anesthetic drugs but i just knew that would be it - no afterlife. I'm someone that always believed in something after death so I'm a bit pissed off at how final it all felt!
Good news is I made it GrinGrin

araiwa · 12/12/2017 04:30

Youre dead

Game over

mogulfield · 12/12/2017 04:32

I think similar to lady since I had a general anaesthetic. I do believe in God, so I do think there is something after. I wouldn’t say death particularly scares me, probably because of this.

FindoGask · 12/12/2017 05:08

I used to be terrified of death ever since I first realised what it was - or more accurately, the idea of eternal non-existence. I was very young, maybe only 7 or so, and I was lying in bed thinking really hard about what 'forever' means, when I had what felt like a moment of absolute understanding which was so awful and terrifying that I sprang out of bed and ran screaming to my parents' room. After that I had those episodes maybe once or twice a month for much of the rest of my childhood and then less frequently as an adult. Now I'm quite a bit older I can honestly say that they don't happen to me now, I do think that I am reconciled with the idea of my own death at least but I still do get terrified about my children or my husband dying.

I do mostly believe we just stop when we die, and I always have really, but when I think of people I love who have died, I still struggle with the finality of it. It still blows my mind that someone can be present, living and breathing one second and then nowhere the next.

TheHodgeHeg · 12/12/2017 05:28

@MrsTerryPrachett that is a beautiful passage, thank you so much for posting it.

I don't know what happens after we die and don't hold any beliefs one way or the other. I'll wait and see. Or not, as the case may be.

namechange2222 · 12/12/2017 06:15

I believe your physical body is no longer of use and dies. The soul leaves the body at death and it is the soul that lives on in heaven.
Simples

TrojansAreSmegheads · 12/12/2017 06:23

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Fosterdog123 · 12/12/2017 06:32

Justilou - my dad had MND too and his death was horrific. Having watched both my parents die though, the moment of death was like a light switch being flicked off. There was just nothing there anymore.

tittysprinkles · 12/12/2017 06:33

A friend of mine died earlier this year and had a natural burial at this place. It was honestly the most moving experience ever, in the meadow surrounded by flowers, birds, trees. There are no grave markers, if you want to visit a grave, they use GPS to take you to the site and you can sow wildflowers etc. Once all the burial plots are full the land will be left to nature and presumably end up as a woodland.

I don't know what happens after you die (a state of nothingness presumably) but I thought this was a great send off and a way to have a lasting impact after death by protecting the land for nature. I find old graveyards really strange, all those stones for people who died years ago, most untended, the people there no longer even a memory.

Omgineedanamechange · 12/12/2017 06:38

Matter and energy are interchangeable, but cannot be created or destroyed, therefore the energy that is you must go somewhere, possibly to another life. I don’t believe that you will be in any way aware of this though.

buttercupmeadow · 12/12/2017 06:38

I believe in God, we'll go back to our Maker.

Codlet · 12/12/2017 06:54

I think that’s it. Game over. I don’t believe in any form of afterlife.

I’m not scared or worried about it though. Just happy to be alive right now!

Bearsinmotion · 12/12/2017 07:22

Love that passage MrsTerryPratchett

I am oddly heartened to see so many non religious and yet positive views. My lovely DGM died a few years ago. In life she was a very intelligent, amusingly cynical lady, but in her last year she had a touch of dementia. She was in a home and increasingly saw her DDad and DH who both died nearly 40 years before her. She never believed in an after life before the dementia, as it progressed she became increasingly convinced she would be back with her DH and DDAd soon. It was lovely in its own way.

BarrowInFurnessBusDepot · 12/12/2017 07:27

People need to worry less about what happens after death and more about the process of dying which is routinely mismanaged by those who are charged to care for us.

HighwayDragon1 · 12/12/2017 07:28

That's it,our remains decay, we complete the circle of life.

CuppaSarah · 12/12/2017 07:34

What I feel happens, is that our energy goes back into the pot as it were and we continue our existence in another way. Maybe that energy becomes a plant, maybe it becomes a blast in space that moves an asteroid a bit.

But all energy in the universe is connected and we're all different facets of it, like how the leaves on a tree are all connected through the trunk.

Bearsinmotion · 12/12/2017 07:38

Also agree with the comments about dying being worse than being dead. Although My other DGM though was found dead in her armchair. Apparently she got up as usual one morning, went downstairs, took the cover off the budgie cage. We think she felt a bit dizzy, sat down and just passed quietly away. I want to go like that too!