That it’s normally never quick and painless and that it can happen at any time.
You could just be walking down the street and trip and fall into the road or smack your head off something or have a heart attack/stroke/aneurism.
One missed second with hitting the brakes in your car. One misstep. One mistake. Hell you can even be doing everything right and still get caught in something that leads to your death.
Whelp, I’ve got cancer. It’s the second time I’ve had it. About 9 months ago I was told the docs would treat me but I probably wouldn’t make it.
Its been a hell of a time.
It’s a blood cancer so at the moment I look normal from the outside. I’ve changed a lot though, in the sense that I’ve become more me.
I don’t give a shit about anything except for spending time with people I like. I especially don’t care about money or work.
It (death) is taking a lot longer to happen than I thought it would.
The real trip has been seeing other people’s reactions; I accepted it early on but other people have had very different reactions. Mostly I think they just don’t know how to react, or they don’t think it will actually happen, or both.
I don’t think the human mind is capable of understanding the concepts of “eternity” or “oblivion” very well.
I do believe in God but it’s still scary.
Its the everyday things that catch you off guard; the other day I was wondering when the next soccer world cup would be, then I realised I probably wouldn’t be around for it.
I think when I finally die it will be a relief from all the physical pain.
I had to watch my dad’s being and body melt over 12 months dying of Glioblastoma.
And people just don’t get that.
I often think that as my body wastes away it will be a lot harder for the people around me than it will be for me.
They will have to watch it happen knowing they can’t help, whereas once I’m gone I won’t have to deal with the sadness and aftermath.
Sorry you had to deal with that.
4 years ago next week marks my mom’s diagnosis and the 10 months that followed. Watching your loved ones go slowly insane and become unable to speak and move in such a short time (she was mid 50s) when they should be healthy changes you. Everything I look at, everything I think about is now looked at under a different lense. And given my age, there just aren’t a lot of people around me who have any idea what it’s like and assume it’s just handling the pain.
Like… no. I’m different now.
Luckily I have a good therapist.
Who lost his sister to it.
Doesn’t help that my brother also died of a heroin overdose (just 5 months before diagnosis ).
My mom moved away after Dad died to live near her sister… Which I understand. But dam I feel abandoned.
Also sometime in between I got a fibromyalgia diagnosis. So in also grieving my old life/body. Bleh. Hugs 🫂
Damn you’ve had it hard. I hope you find some joy in life, you deserve it.
Sorry you had to go through that. I hope you’ve been able to use that experience to make the most of life.
Damn bro thats rough af. Glad ur spending time with the people u love and hopfully u can set them up for success.
I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this, it sounds like you have as great an attitude about it as possible though. If it’s too personal don’t feel obligated to answer, but I’m genuinely curious how you accepted it? Since my dad passed away several years ago I’ve become intensely afraid of dying. Like to the point I know I need to talk to someone about it. But I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts/ journey there
It’s a tough question to answer, as it has been a very long and winding road, as they say.
I’ve had chronic health issues for most of my life, so thinking about dying isn’t new. Plus I’ve even had cancer before, so I really thought about it then.
I think time is the main factor. Just sitting with the idea, being comfortable with it, not struggling against it, recognising that it happens to us all, some sooner than others, and that’s OK.
When I feel upset or anxious about death I don’t push it away, I focus on my breathing and tell myself that not only is it totally OK to feel this way, but it’s completely normal. I imagine that I’m swimming in the ocean and a wave has lifted me up. I don’t need to do anything, just relax and the wave will pass through me, and I’ll still be there afterwards.
Early on into my relapse I got high (weed) and my brain took me to this place where I imagined life without me in it. Kind of like a ghost, watching everyone react before slowly getting back into their daily lives. I cried a lot that night but since then I’ve been a lot calmer and accepting of it.
Yes, people will be sad but they will ultimately be OK. Everything will continue as normal once I’m gone, and that’s a good thing.
Fucking hell dude, I wish you all the best there is and to enjoy the ride to the fullest while it lasts, which I hope it does for a long time.
Thanks :)
Today is the shitty anniversary of my brothers death from AML. He was sick for 3 years and its was good at times and then really hard.
He was already one of the most philosophical people I knew when he got sick. Social Security allowed him to have the time with his friends and family when he was deemed unable to work which really helped the whole process.
We got to drive across the US for the eclipse which happened during his last spell of better health (it was an upswing after a marrow transplant that ultimately failed). I’m taking my 6 year old and wife wherever we need to too see the eclipse this April. So I can show my son what his uncle and I saw right before he was born.
How to accept and let go of someone. I lost my dad very early in my life. It was sad, and unexpected, and to this day it does feel like I lack a father figure (hope this doesn’t sound weird, English isn’t my first language). But, I realize, there’s no use excessive crying over someone’s death. It’s not like I can change anything about that. I learned quickly it’s better to leave the past and move on.
If you ask me whether I miss him or not, I do miss him. But, really, it’s not something I can control.
Life is random, and meanness and cold. No matter who you are, death comes with no bias. You have to make life worth living in the now because I have seen the regret and pain in the eyes of the dying far too many times. Also be nice to your kids.
Oh, I just had a near death experience! Ran a stop and almost got hit by a bus; would’ve hit me right on the ribs! I’ve had another crash before where a powerline pole fell over my car, right next to my head.
My experience? Life didn’t flash before my eyes. I was just very scared at the moment, and was anxious and upset for a few hours after. It’s definitely going to change how carefully I drive moving forward.
Otherwise, I’ve seen a lot of patients sick, dying or terminally ill, working as a physician. It definitely affected the way I see life; I try to care less about what other people think I should be doing and instead act in a way I think is right. I am happy and satisfied that if I die I will be thought of fondly by most people I’ve interacted with.
This one is macabre.
I am a homestead farmer so I have hundreds of animals most of which I raised like a baby, they all have names, each was hand fed and raised from birth by my wife and I. We are deeply attached to each of them and it is like losing a child when one dies.
Firstly I can tell you that you can get used to your children dying, you can repress it. I’ve spent many hours digging graves over time made all the more painful by the fact that often times I would stay with these animals through the entirety of their ill health. Often they would sleep in the room with my wife and I or even in the bed if the right type. When you read something like charolettes Web or what have you and see some old farmer indifferent to their child who wants to keep their animal friend. That is not from some kind of “depersonisation” or dissonance or even indifference to this animal, it is knowing acceptance from a lifetime of pain watching their friends and children die and being forced to bury them.
I can tell you that if you need cpr I’m your man, I’ve had alot of practice. There’s lots of things cpr won’t fix but that had never stopped me from trying. Maybe just maybe if they can have that extra breath or beat they can beat whatever ails them so I try. Here’s the fucked part; there is a moment where when something dies, it’s easier to see in mammals, there is a moment just before the death rattle, you can see the thing is dead and if you have seen this before you will know what I’m talking about. At this moment of gasping you can “catch” them, like you are catching their escaping souls with your lungs and blowing it back into their mouths. Their eyes get glazed and they do this straining wail and tilt their head, all things in the same way, that is your moment to bring them back and you can see it instantly as their eyes come back to focus and they usually scream in some way.
I’ve only ever saved 2 in this fashion and I have a large grave yard.
There is no God.
Death by massive head injury is not a bad way to go. I remember a sunny morning, heading to the bank a mile from my house to deposit my paycheck, and riding towards work. I merged behind a Jeep Grand Cherokee to pass an idiot that was double parked in the bike lane. It was down hill and I easily topped 35 mph to match speed with the Jeep. That is the last thing I remember. Like it was all totally blank and even worse than anesthesia level blackout.
Three hours later, someone pulled a large piece of glass out of my face that severed major nerve in my lip. That woke me up.
That is how I want to go; a pretty day on a nice bike ride, feeling fantastic, then totally blank.
In reality, I was lucid the whole time apparently, or so I was told. I honestly do not have ANY memory of it whatsoever. If you know of anyone that dies tragically with a major head injury, I want you to think of me. Even if they appeared conscious or aware but disoriented, that wasn’t the last thing they felt or remembered, I promise, I’ve lived it; only barely survived it. I still don’t remember a thing.
Consciousness and memory both require communication between different regions of the brain. It’s entirely possible that you were "alert’ amd responsive while still suffering a brain injury that prevented you from remembering any part of it.
Anesthesia scares me for similar reasons. It halts the communication between different brain regions, and we know that people have no memories while under general Anesthesia, but are they lying there unable to move, suffering extreme agony throughout the surgery, and just unable to remember it afterwards?
A dead body doesn’t look real. The stillness and one’s denial mechanisms combine to make it look like a mannequin.
No matter what, if you love somebody, tell them as often as you can. Say it every time you say goodbye. Don’t let someone walk away when you’ve both said nasty, hurtful things. If you are putting off seeing someone, or calling someone, just do it.
You cant take ANY of that back. And you’ll never forgive yourself.
I haven’t personally died yet, so no first person report. My dad died suddenly when I was 16, gently it seems; and my stepson by suicide, not at all gently. From these experiences I will say PLEASE try not to die before your parents do. It’s sad to lose a parent but we all know it will happen. We recover. Losing a kid? No, I don’t think anyone really recovers from that.
They don’t tend to recover but they do often move forward. It can be quite inspiring but I keep that to myself.
I was in the waiting room for my friend when the surgeon came in and told us he had a week to live. The sound his family began to make was haunting and terrifying. It was a deep groaning and crying that I haven’t heard since. It made my hairs stand up on end and it made me quake. There is nothing heavier than death.
I don’t know if this counts but it’s the closest I’ve been to death.
I had an accidental breakthrough on DMT. I don’t even remember what happened during that 12 minutes except brief things that came to me in daydreams and night dreams afterwards. But before I did it, I was suicidal and ready to die. When my consciousness came back I was no longer the same person. I felt like I had just lived 1,000 years. I immediately felt like the world was no longer on my shoulders, and I involuntary started screaming about how much love there is in the universe. Before that, I had struggled with the concept of unconditional love. I used to have daily suicidal ideation, typically multiple times daily, but I have only experienced ideation a few times since then. Over a decade ago.
At one point in time I was inundated with death. Due to the fentanyl epidemic and other mental health and drug related issues, I’ve watched many friends die. Thankfully I’m in a much better place now, I’m no longer in that place I was hiding from myself before that day. Whatever death is, whatever reality is, I no longer fear it. I fear not being able to provide for my wife and children after I’m gone, but that’s it.
To answer the accidental breakthrough question before it comes up: I was sniffing DMT fumurate (nasally active) at doses around 20-50mg, walking around my house, looking at the static dewwy webs of light, walking over them, under them, trying to hold them. I was so intrigued by the lack of movement of the visuals, where with other psychedelics you can blink or shift your eyes and it goes away. I did a few larger lines in a row and my vision started to bend and fold in on itself and I instinctually laid down in my bed.
I’ve had an absurd amount of death in my life, double digits by the time I was 18. Every one of them I knew personally or was family. From a variety of ways. Accidents, suicides, sickness, drugs.
What I learned from this is that, its gonna happen. Life as a whole isn’t all that special to the world or to the universe. But your experiences and everything you put value in, is.
At this point, death is more like (in my eyes) someone taking a trip and I just gotta say Goodbye and hope they do well because they won’t be able to talk to me anymore. Remember the good stuff and why you liked em, and move on. Because it’s gonna happen to you and others in your life too and if you dwell too long you won’t be able to remember the people around you now and why you liked them too.
Nothing is a bigger regret than trying so hard to cling to someone out of reach that you never held on to those reaching for you
I was in the hospital in January following a heart attack.
I woke up one morning and was on my phone when the nurse came in.
“Were you asleep about an hour ago?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Your heart stopped for 8 seconds.”
“. . . Uh, thanks? I guess? I’m not sure what you want me to do with that information.”
Never knew it happened.
And they’re just checking on you an hour later?! Wow thanks.
letting your hamster ball roll down the stairs isn’t good
