How often do you think about dying?

[justcheckingreally]

NC for this as. Just to make it clear, I am not depressed, I live quite a happy, fulfilled life. Obviously have stresses that more money could fix but don't we all. I was chatting with my cousin and we were both saying that actually we wouldn't really care if we died. Obv I don't want to and possibly if it came to it I would be petrified. But in the sort of die in your sleep way. Life is super stressful, housing, work etc its a never ending story and I really wouldn't care. I sometimes think it would actually be quite peaceful. I would never ever think about hurting myself or anything and I am quite aware of the pain left behind due to personal losses but am I normal in having thoughts like this? Or am I kidding myself me and my cousin are in fact suicidal depressed women.

I had a cardiac arrest 2 years ago so to all intents and purposes I have been dead. And I went from being there to oblivion, so I am not afraid of that.

Given we’re all going to die I would quite like to drop dead when it’s time.

If I am diagnosed with anything like dementia, mnd or similar I will be going on a trip to Switzerland while I still can.

[quote justcheckingreally]@hamstersarse your username 😂😂 I love it. Ironically I am very religious and actually feel like I do have a purpose here and actively engage in it. I also have a very very strong belief of what will be happening next and most times I just want to skip to that part! Hence me bring somewhat comfortable with quite morbid conversations. I struggle to imagine how people without this faith manage day to day. Life is brutal.[/quote]
Lol seriously you don't need to struggle. I have no religious beliefs. I don't believe in heaven or hell and quite content when I die that will be it.

[quote justcheckingreally]@LostThings I don't know if you're religious or belibe in the Bible, but if it makes you feel any better, the idea of hell is a false doctrine that doesn't actually exist in the Bible so don't worry about that 😉.[/quote]
That's interesting OP, could you please expand on that (Another who fears hell here.)?

I don't worry about death/dying itself in terms of myself, but am petrified about something happening to me because of how it would impact my 2 young children. I can't bear the thought of them having to deal with that bereavement, and having to live their lives without mummy. Possibly I worry excessively about this as a friend passed away not that long since leaving young children.

Thinking about dying prematurely does also make me incredibly sad about the fact that I would miss seeing them grow up.

[quote justcheckingreally]@hamstersarse your username 😂😂 I love it. Ironically I am very religious and actually feel like I do have a purpose here and actively engage in it. I also have a very very strong belief of what will be happening next and most times I just want to skip to that part! Hence me bring somewhat comfortable with quite morbid conversations. I struggle to imagine how people without this faith manage day to day. Life is brutal.[/quote]
Skipping to 'that part' (if you believe in it)? That's like leaving what could be the best bits of the film in favour of watching the end titles - and potentially finding out in the after credits that the hero hasn't actually escaped to a better place, they've just sailed/flown into somewhere populated by Zombie Sentient Nazi Apes and the entire world is fucked.

Concentrate on the living part and making it better. It's the one bit we're guaranteed (more or less) and can influence.

I was very ill at one stage and thought I was going to die. I got to a stage where I didn't care anymore and accepted what was to come. Lived though!
I have had the thoughts of wishing I could go to sleep and never wake up when things have gone wrong in my life.

3 or 4 times a week I get a cold sweat and seriously panic about during. The thought of not existing is truly terrifying. I would trade almost everything to live forever.

I think about it all the time and I’m absolutely fucking terrified. The idea of nothingness and non existence sends me spiralling into panic. I’m even panicking writing this thinking how quickly it will come and I’ll be powerless to stop it.

@Audo

www.dignityindying.org.uk/about-us/

I recommend

Thank you for that link, Audo.

I think about death periodically, I have a chronic illness, it doesn't limit me at the moment but it probably will soon. I am furious that people do not have legal recourse to a dignified death in the UK.

I want to donate my brain and spinal chord - and my other organs too. Because of that, I wouldn't be able to go to Switzerland if I wanted to. That's my choice then - either be altruistic and endure to the end in order to give organs, research matter - or go earlier to Switzerland than I could leave it, just to make sure I can get there.

It's really shocking that so much still needs to be done to tackle this one.

I'm sad to read the posts from those who are terrified, it must be a horrible feeling.

@73kittycat73 ok, I don't want to be a Bible basher here so I apologise to all the Bible non believers, please don't continue reading.

If you look up Ecclesiastes 9:5,10 this scripture explains that the living know of nothing. A lot of the problems lie in the translations of the Bible. The Hebrew she’ohlʹ and its Greek equivalent haiʹdes, which refer, not to an individual burial place, but to the common grave of dead mankind are often translated as hell. The word hell is what you get when you directly translate those words from the alphabet, not the actual word.
Job 14:13 mentions Job praying that God protect him in hell. Why would someone god saw as righteous be going to hell. Because that was the word used for grave and Job was so miserable he wanted to just die.
It gets more complicated when you go into revelations and that is where a lot of Catholicism took their idea of permanent misery from. For example Revelation 20:13,14 mentions the lake of fire. It doesn't say hell is the lake of fire, it says will be cast into the lake of fire. Eternal destruction and fire is used often to symbolise eternal death. This is death in gehenna, not Haides. Even death in gehenna is not an eternal pit of misery and time and time again like in Ecclesiastes, the Bible says that the dead know of nothing at all.
In Jer 7:31 the Apostate Judeans created an altar to burn their sons and daughters. God was disgusted by this and it even says he did not command them to do this and that that wouldn't even come up into his heart. If he was so disgusted by this on such a small scale, why would he do it on such a large scale as the teaching of hellfire implies.
It also brings the question, why on earth would a seemingly loving God torment people. The belief doesn't line up with the context of the Bible and is the fault of many years of bad translations and lies to scare people into blind belief.

I don't want to turn this into a biblical thread so if you want anymore verses you can DM me 😂

Sorry again to the atheists..

Sorry! The dead know of nothing, not the living 😂

I think about it a lot. I'm not scared of the "nothingness" after I die, as it will be exactly the same as before I was born. But I'm terrified of the process of dying...will I know it's happening and how will that feel?
It also really freaks me out that people who once existed (my dad, grandparents, great aunts) and had thoughts, feelings and personalities are now just skeletons lying in a grave, and that that will one day be me.
I don't want to die but so wouldn't want to live forever either.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write that all out for me. I really appreciate it.

I think about death a lot. I work with people with cancer many terminally ill so it's a topic that is discussed a lot with people.
I find life stressful and like you it wouldn't bother me too much if I died as I sometimes feel like everyday is a struggle to get through and it is only going to get worse as I get older. it would worry me enormously not to be around for my kids and dogs though .

@73kittycat73 no probs. No hell for you I'm afraid 😂

Brilliant description of the reasons behind hell not existing OP.
I completely agree. It's been used to scare too many people.

Ironically I am very religious and actually feel like I do have a purpose here and actively engage in it. I also have a very very strong belief of what will be happening next and most times I just want to skip to that part! Hence me bring somewhat comfortable with quite morbid conversations. I struggle to imagine how people without this faith manage day to day. Life is brutal. it’s not something they think about. We came from nothing and when we die there won’t be anything. You won’t even know you’re dead.

I’m not remotely religious and while I sort of talk about how I will see my dogs and cats and what not when I’m gone I know that the reality is that I won’t. But that’s ok because I won’t know about it.

FWIW to the poster who said that she is afraid whether she will know she’s dying, from my own experience I would say no. Although I was revived, cardiac arrest does mean clinical death, and they very much reached a point where they thought they had lost me. But I literally went from the consultant standing over me, and starting the compressions which I also remember vividly, to waking up the next day, my heart having stopped 3 times, having been taken down and a temporary pacemaker fitted, and been placed on a ventilator overnight, and I knew absolutely nothing about any of it. If I’d died that nothing would simply have continued and I would never have known about it.

[quote justcheckingreally]@LostThings I don't know if you're religious or belibe in the Bible, but if it makes you feel any better, the idea of hell is a false doctrine that doesn't actually exist in the Bible so don't worry about that 😉.[/quote]
That's not true. Hell is in the Old Testament, its just not translated with that word.

@AlternativePerspective wow, how incredible. I may not know you but I am really happy you're alive and well. Those doctors are incredible.
As a person that is religious, these sort of stories do help my faith in that this is exactly what the Bible says happens. Whether it's cardiac arrest or anaesthesia, there really is nothing after death. There is a lot of creativity in beliefs as people really desperately want to hold onto something. But I think there is a lot of comfort in this nothingness.
I personally believe there is a future God has planned for us but I completely understand how a lot of people are happy to stop at the point of nothingness if that makes sense.

@AlternativePerspective That's really interesting. Thank you for sharing your story. I hope your health is better now. I guess you hear all these stories of people who have clinically died (but then been revived) who say they had all these out of body experiences and hallucinations. That would be really scary.

It says in the old testament that the day of our death is better than the day of our birth. That makes me stop and think, especially considering how much we celebrate the birth of a child. Imagine approaching death like that. Beautiful

Never! In fact I don't plan on dying at all. I haven't got time! Too busy!

I'm glad this thread stayed OP it's been really interesting. Thanks for the Bible info too.

Whoever mentioned about their degree and the pointless of life. Yes! I feel that! I'm in the middle of a project but when it's done I'm planning to give serious thought to how I spend my downtime. I've often thought humans complicated things too much. Survival, reproduction, good deeds, avoid harmful actions. Beyond that, it won't matter one little bit what we did with our lives once we're dead. I'm sure we accidentally stress ourselves out far more than we need to, trying to find a purpose when the truth is there isn't one.

If anyone is interested in the concept mentioned by a PP about "dying twice", the second time when people forget us, and if you're a reader then you might like the novel A Place Called Here (can't remember who it's by, sorry) about something similar. "Here" is where all the missing things end up, from that second sock that never came back out of the washing machine to people who went out and never came home. The people aren't dead, but they're not in the world of the living either. IIRC it has a happy ending.

Also this is where animals have the advantage, they dont think about it !