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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be terrified of dying

137 replies

Myheartbelongsto · 06/01/2019 00:24

There is nothing I can do about this but I am petrified!

Anyone else feel the same?

OP posts:
BitOfFun · 06/01/2019 10:16

Fair enough, Crimson- I've done that myself, lots of times. I suppose it feels more sore (if not unexpected) when the question has so much more relevance.

Huntawaymama · 06/01/2019 10:17

I suffer such bad anxiety over this. I google sepsis symptoms all the time because I know how quickly it can kill. I'm terrified I'll have a smear and discover I've got terminal cervical cancer. It breaks my heart reading about 30yo's who get it and quickly die leaving their young kids. For such a long time I've been sure I'll not see my kids grow up.

Truckingonandon · 06/01/2019 10:17

Ironing - in my experience, you cope because you have no choice but you don't move on. I know I haven't and I never will.

I'm terrified of dying. I have witnessed horrific, painful, traumatic deaths and suffer with ptsd as a result. Sadly, not all deaths are peaceful.

Fairylea · 06/01/2019 10:19

This may be an odd thing to post but if it possibly helps someone....

I have nearly died. I lost a huge amount of blood during a c section (undiagnosed placenta prévia, I was having what should have been a normal standard elective c section and it all went crazy). I lost 3 litres of blood and the moments before I “died” (and was brought back from the brink) I had this feeling of complete and utter contentment. I looked at dh who was holding just born ds and thought about what a wonderful father he was going to be, and how lucky dd then aged 6 was to have such a wonderful step dad and new baby brother and I genuinely felt I’d achieved everything I’d wanted to and how wonderful my life had been. I wasn’t in a panic (despite all kinds of alarms going off and dh looking absolutely terrified and everyone rushing about!) it was so surreal!! Of course it might have just been all the drugs and whatever but I can genuinely say I wasn’t frightened at all! Confused So, so odd! And so many people who’ve had similar experiences say the same thing. It was oddly comforting to me and has really changed my fears and feelings about death.

Schmoobarb · 06/01/2019 10:19

BitOfFun Flowers

I know it really irked my husband when people used to say to him after he lost his mum when she was relatively young that they “couldn’t cope” if it happened to them. As he said he wasn’t given a choice. Similarly I know people who have lost children and people have spouted this to them and it’s really added to their pain.

Truckingonandon · 06/01/2019 10:21

Thinking that pain meds are prescribed and no pain will be felt is quite simply naive. Of course it does happen like that for some but not all.

kateandme · 06/01/2019 10:24

If uve liv3d in pain for so long it can be an overwhelming wish to just go.but still absolutely terrifying.

madcatladyforever · 06/01/2019 10:25

I'm an ex nurse and I've attended hundreds of death and there really is nothing to be afraid of. One minute you are there and the next just an empty shell.
It's a perfectly natural and normal event that happens to everyone and everthng, even the stars!
Nobody dies conscious, your brain shuts down before your bodily functions like breathing stop so death occurs in a coma.
Even if you are not religious and are afraid of death being the end, my son who is an atheist puts it like this;
You didn't exist at all for billions of years before you were born and you didn't mind so why are you concerned about not existing afterwards. It makes a weird kind of sense.

DarienGap · 06/01/2019 10:25

Yes it terrifies me. I have health anxiety which makes things 10 times worse.
Every day I tell my dh/dc how much I love them just in case I suddenly die and don't have the chance.
I get a lot of comfort from my faith though and believe that my loved ones and I will be reunited.

Try and stay positive op. I know it's easier said than done though!

treaclesoda · 06/01/2019 10:33

I was brought up in an evangelical church. Try as I might, I have never felt the presence of God speaking to me etc. Consequently it has been drummed into me from an early age that when I die I can look forward to eternity in hell. Its not a very comforting thought. Sad

MintyCedric · 06/01/2019 10:36

I have had phases of health/death anxiety.

My mum is quite the hypochondriac, bless her, and far too many of my school friends lost parents far too young (I think about 5-6 of them had lost a parent by the time we turned 18). At least two people from my school days have died already (from health problems, not accidents) - I'm only 43, and two of my friend's have lost children to cancer...it's hard not to be very aware of it.

I have had some counselling though which helped massively, and it's not something I dwell on really these days. I'm just very grateful to be here and healthy and still have both parents and my DD.

Seeing my parents go downhill as they get older (more re state of mind and quality of life), scares me shitless tbh, but I just remind myself that getting older is probably better than the alternative.

shanks313 · 06/01/2019 10:36

I am scared of dying but of how it would happen and not existing afterwards
My DH passed away very suddenly last year leaving me with our DC.. he went to work and never got to come home.He always panicked about everything but from what I know before he died he was very calm which has gave me some help in grieving.
As for losing someone close I have had no choice but to cope and carry on with life..and I make sure I give my DC adventures and we have fun because life is too short

Schmoobarb · 06/01/2019 10:37

shanks Flowers

70sbaubles · 06/01/2019 10:38

Are you scared of dying or being dead? As in the active process or the fact you won't be here any more?
I'm not scared of dying per se, I am terrified of finding out I'm dying and the anxiety and grief of knowing I'm leaving the kids too soon, my mother did as I was a child and I think now how gut wrenching it must have been for her even though she never showed it or was frightened. She was very religious though.
Being dead is like being asleep forever, you won't know.
I hope though that I live into my 90s and see my children marry and start families. Of course we are all lucky to be here at all and I think it is important to remember that.

Effic · 06/01/2019 10:38

I never used to be. Then my son’s father died and now I’m paranoid. Every cough, every ache .... sends me into a panic because I simply can not bare the thought of leaving him. He’s already crushed by his dad’s death. I’m an only child. No grandparents - he’d be on his own ..... unbearable ☹️

GinTimeAtHome · 06/01/2019 10:39

I find with death it’s the fear of the unknown, no one knows what is going to happen. For example how I will die and what happens after.

I’m not overly bothered anymore - only 2 certain things in life are death and taxes! I know I’m going to die one day, I’d prefer for it not to be for a long time. I suppose after being merely hours from death after contracting sepsis does change my view slightly and I’m grateful for the time I have now.

It also spurred me into making sure my children were looked after. I’ve made arrangements for my children they will be so well looked after (both emotionally and with money)

I have seen a few people die, one was long and slow but not painful, another was peaceful and quite just slipped away, another was painful and I can still hear the cries of agony. (Dh reckon I have PTSD from it)

sparkles212 · 06/01/2019 10:42

YANBU but what ya gonna do.. death comes to us all. Sometimes I think oh shit and other times I just think meh.

redtulip19 · 06/01/2019 10:47

Omg and me and I constantly check myself for signs I'm ill n think about dying everyday!! It can be managed tho mine is part. Of anxiety cc

Herja · 06/01/2019 10:55

Death is life's only true certainty. I have lost my father, a grandparent, my beloved boyfriend, more friends than I care to consider. If you are left behind, you continue because that's all that can happen; it is brutal and cruel and so very painful, but you carry on because there is no other option. It's not a choice.

When I die there will be either the eternal life in which I believe, or the nothing in which my late boyfriend did. Neither of these are scary. If there is nothing, I am also nothing and cannot be aware of it, just like before I was born. I hope that when I die it does not hurt, but if it does it will only be for a short while. I hope I do not die alone; that's all I hope for.

justilou1 · 06/01/2019 10:55

I am utterly shitscared of dying. I have nursed my father through Motor Neurone Disease and my mother through Emphysema and Lung Cancer that eventually moved to her brain. Both took their independence, their quality of life, their dignity, caused pain, fear, helplessness, etc.... They died horribly - and so did my grandparents. I don’t see death as some gentle end. My pets have all suffered MUCH less when they were ready to leave.

LondonElle · 06/01/2019 11:27

I have had this terrible fear more than once and for me it tied into to my postnatal depression.,, it was all consuming and I got myself in a right state pondering the meaning of life. Nowadays I have brief fleeting thoughts about it but I am too busy enjoying life to continually think about it... I appreciate life more and don’t get stressed about status, money and material possessions so my previous fear has helped enrich my life.

Guacamole2506 · 06/01/2019 13:47

It terrifies me too. I go through periods where it’s all I can think about before I go to sleep etc. For me, it’s more the fact that one day I just won’t be here anymore. And I don’t mean that in a selfish ‘the world revolves around me’ way. It’s hard to explain.

Motoko · 06/01/2019 14:28

I think what I feel about it is FOMO! All those things that I'll miss. As well as family, I'd love to see how the world looks in decades to come. Will we be living in a dystopian nightmare, or a world more like the Star Trek universe?

If I could see into the future, I might be glad I won't be there, but equally, I might miss being able to visit other planets, or beam myself somewhere, instead of having to get a bus.

Craft1905 · 06/01/2019 14:50

Ricky Gervais says dying is like being stupid. We know nothing about it ourselves, it's just painful for those who know us.

We are just a form of energy. Energy can never be lost or gained, just converted from one thing to another. Best summed up in this funeral speech:

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. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him/her that 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 like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

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. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly.

NeopreneMermaid · 06/01/2019 15:10

I agree with Toomanygreys about being scared about my children being old and dying and not having me there to comfort them (assuming and hoping they outlive me). I get tearful just thinking about it.

I also, and I kmow this sounds narcissistic, fear being forgotten. When my grandma died, her mother passed out of living memory. In 200 years, no-one will know or care that I existed.

I think about death and dying all the time. I'm probably a goth.