To just not be able to believe it

[CutToChase]

Okay so maybe I had too much wine.
But I'm sitting here thinking I can't believe that me, and all the people I know, my family, the people I love and also just everyone around the world, all those lives that exist and everybody's individual quests... One day none of us who exist right now will exist. All our big feelings and hopes, and all these different bright personalities... We will just disappear, like none of us ever really mattered.

I just cant get my head around it. It seems so unfair.
I'm also listening to this song which is really upping the emotion: m.youtube.com/watch?feature=share&v=LESFuoW-T7I

Alsoz not 80s but Do You Realise by the Flaming Lips is a good song for this theme!

Also, (Sorry, forgot to ad.) I was watching TV the other day (BBC1, Mondays 9pm, Life.) and a man picks up an urn containing his dead wife's ashes. I know it was just a TV prop, but, if you are cremated, that's all that's left. It was hard to get my head round the fact that this once whole, fleshy person, is now just a pile of dust.

Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence" is a great song. It makes me happy and sad at the same time.

I am comforted by my faith in God, tbh. Psalm 139 talks about God's intentional creation of each of us.

@Lougle
One of my favourite songs. You are in for a treat, thank me later:

^ I meant the first Larkin poem - hadn't seen the second before posting, but that too of course!

History of Modern, OMD - I love this, it’s upbeat and you can really embrace that bizarre feeling without feeling too depresssed:

Everything you say, everything you do
All the things you own, all the things you knew
Everyone you love, everyone you hate
All will be erased and replaced
Everything you take, everything you gave
All the things you've found, all the things you've made
Everyone you lost and saved
Nothing will remain, cradle or grave

Everything you say, everything you do
All the things you own, all the things you knew
Everyone you love, everyone you hate
All will be erased and replaced

Everything you take, everything you gave
All the things you've found, all the things you've made
Everyone you lost and saved
Nothing will remain, cradle or grave

Every precious child and every mothers kiss
All that went before and all that follows this
Every moment shared hour of the day
No record will remain, all will fade away

Every dream you had and every battle won
All the hopes and fears, bombs and guns
Fear is the last planet and sun
All is erased another is begun

There will be no song when the final voices gone

Everything you say, everything you do
All the things you own, all the things you knew
Everyone you love, everyone you hate
All will be erased and replaced
Everything you take, everything you gave
All the things you've found, all the things you've made

Everyone you lost and saved
Nothing will remain, cradle or grave
Every dream you had and every battle won
All the hopes and fears, bombs and guns
Fear is the last planet and sun
All is erased another is begun

The idea that one day my kids will be old, and I will be long gone and all the adults that ever nurtured them will be long gone and they will be left alone. The heartbreaking notion of my small, bright eyed, lively (very lively) small children being old and possibly forgotten. Horrid to think of, like poking a bruise.

The thought that all lonely old people not just a grandparent or even parent but were once someone's little child. They are just little children who got old. Not just old people who happened to once be children. Perhaps made all the more poignant by the fact that many elderly dementia patients call for their long dead mothers and fathers.

The Pixar film Coco poker this particular mind bruise painfully well.

Gosh I'm maudlin tonight!
The merlot effect.

Poked not poker.

Another one by an Irish poet, Denis O Driscoll (he died fairly young himself).

Someone
Dennis O'Driscoll

someone is dressing up for death today, a change of skirt or tie
eating a final feast of buttered sliced pan, tea
scarcely having noticed the erection that was his last
shaving his face to marble for the icy laying out
spraying with deodorant her coarse armpit grass
someone today is leaving home on business
saluting, terminally, the neighbours who will join in the cortege
someone is paring his nails for the last time, a precious moment
someone’s waist will not be marked with elastic in the future
someone is putting out milkbottles for a day that will not come
someone’s fresh breath is about to be taken clean away
someone is writing a cheque that will be rejected as ‘drawer deceased’
someone is circling posthumous dates on a calendar
someone is listening to an irrelevant weather forecast
someone is making rash promises to friends
someone’s coffin is being sanded, laminated, shined
who feels this morning quite as well as ever
someone if asked would find nothing remarkable in today’s date
perfume and goodbyes her final will and testament
someone today is seeing the world for the last time
as innocently as he had seen it first

And then there is this one from Tennyson

Who can say
Why today
Tomorrow will be yesterday?
Who can tell
Why to smell
The violet, recalls the dewy prime
Of youth and buried time?
The cause is nowhere found in rhyme.

I often say "where will we all be in 200 years time?", I find it comforting tbh. It means you can't fuck it up that much. And been reading about how to be a good ancestor. Also very comforting and optimistic. I'm happy to be part of the continuum.

@3ormorecharacters. "Do You Realise?" is the perfect antidote to the maudlin. I love it.

But if you want maudlin 80s, you want Cemetery Gates by the Smiths.

I love Forever Autumn, too.

But still though...why did 80s music excel at sounding maudlin while not being maudlin?

Good lord OP. You’re right! I’m going to finish off my tub of Ben and Jerry’s!

@73kittycat73

Also, (Sorry, forgot to ad.) I was watching TV the other day (BBC1, Mondays 9pm, Life.) and a man picks up an urn containing his dead wife's ashes. I know it was just a TV prop, but, if you are cremated, that's all that's left. It was hard to get my head round the fact that this once whole, fleshy person, is now just a pile of dust.

Sorry, I believe it's Tuesdays.

I think it was because it was written by people who had grown up fearing nuclear winter. That and the synths

@CutToChase that's possibly my ultimate favourite Billy Joel song. I've not heard it in years now but by god it reaches out and grabs you by the soul. Billy Joel relates to a certain few years of my life that were very bittersweet and the feelings I get listening to him are tangible.

We all live forever in some way even if it's just the imprint on someone's heart and soul and the story is passed down or used as inspiration for a poem, a song, a novel, a film, a musical. Even if our own lives influence that of another in some way and that influence in turn influences another. Our lives echo through the lives of others.

Going on from your post SistemaAddict I wonder how the internet will affect longevity? I mean, will this post be around for ever?! Will our future generations be able to search for out posts on the net, to get to know us?

*Our, not out

73kittycat73 There's an episode of the Orville that sort of references that, a guy finds a 21st century phone and 'makes' the owner again in the holodeck.

I'm a Catholic so I take comfort in the possibility of something more, especially now I have DC.

this thread is why religion was invented.

@weechange

this thread is why religion was invented.

And why poetry matters so much imo

I think poetry is nearly always about death and love ... but mostly about death.

I read something a long time ago so don't remember all the details, but basically every breath that we take, contain ancient atoms so who knows? The next breath you take could contain an atom from Julius Caesar or Florence Nightingale or your great great great great grandmother. So some of your atoms will live on.

Can't remember where I read it and it may be rubbish but it's an interesting idea.

@weechange

this thread is why religion was invented.

I agree. My oldest at around 4 or 5 was a sensitive child and I avoided telling him the truth about death for some reason, he assumed people lived forever, and I couldnt bear to tell him otherwise. One time he said something and I had to tell him the truth. Im not religious but I found myself telling him about a heaven type place to stop him being upset. I thought to myself that this is why we have religions.