I don’t deal with it well at all. The idea of dying terrifies me. Sometimes, if I think about it too much, I can’t get to sleep at night because I’m scared I’m going to die in my sleep. I don’t deal with death in others well either. I’m lucky to be well into my 30s and have never had anyone I know die. But it’s the most awful thing I can imagine. Just thinking about the idea of my parents or gramma dying is enough to start me crying intensely and edge towards a panic attack. Hell, I’m getting teary-eyed writing out this post.
Yes, it’s one of the weird things I think about when thinking about suicide. I will never know I succeeded, but I will have stopped existing, no more ‘horribleness’, no more being here.
I’m OK with that.
I just turned 66 a couple of days ago and like artemis I try to get in all I can.
I find myself thinking more about my end than I used to. Being dead doesn’t bother me as I won’t care or even be aware that I’m dead. The process of dying does give me pause after watching both of my parents spend years at it, rather painful years.
Went kayaking today for instance. It was my third time out and I stepped up to a little harder river, the Truckee coming into Reno. Did well for about 3-4 miles and a couple of pretty goo rapids until I got dumped and spent the next hour and a half trying to run down the kayak. I did finally manage to run it down. The next step is replacing all the stuff in my wallet that now lives somewhere in the river. Also there’s a new phone in my immediate future. Maybe I’ll step back a bit and master a couple of techniques before trying the Truckee again.
All of January and February was spent on our long winter vacation with the 5th wheel in Arizona and Texas.
The first of June it’s off backpacking in Idaho with a couple of friends for two weeks.
End of June Ms Hook and I are off on our long summer trip. We’re pulling the 5th wheel back east to visit friends and family for a couple of month.
In October it’s off to Europe for a month. Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, and Poland.
We might be going to Australia and New Zealand in January 2014.
I make a number of several day rides on my motorcycle every year. This will be the first year since 2004 that I haven’t made a cross country trip. Just not enough time to work it in.
We do genealogy.
We bird and take two or three week long trips for that every year.
And if Ms Hook will ever let me I’ll be going back to Burning Man. Seems a long shot though.
I dread the day when I can’t do the things I want to do.
Right on.
I get it…my therapist gets it.
Think about this:
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If you truly have nobody, blah blah blah, there you go…buy a rope…don’t end up this way my friend. Even after you croak people will harsh you.
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Suck it up. Life sucks…go to a park and find your peace. I am the most negative **** in the world, but something about playing with a pup brightens my day.
Best of luck buddy, you are your own enemy.
I don’t “cope” with it, the closest I come to having a problem with it is stuff like occasionally realizing that if I happened to die “right now” there is some event coming I’d hate to miss, or some people for whom I’d be causing a lot of problems (I’ve tried to minimize these by giving my family instructions to, if I die abroad or simply far from home and it’s legally acceptable wherever, just donate the body; if I die locally the family grave is paid for).
It doesn’t really bother me, any more than gravity does. It is what it is.
A mixture of ignoring it and being Catholic.
I embrace disenchantment. If I die right now, will I really miss anything? Ehh, not so much. It’s like kicking myself for not waking up early in the morning; academically, I know it doesn’t really make a difference.
So the single people are fucked… as usual. 
What mortality? I’m making plans to return as a ghost after I die. I think that will be a massive hoot. If I get to be invisible and be able to walk through walls, I think I’ll be hanging out in girls soccer locker rooms a lot. And tickle the girls’ armpits in the shower. I’ll be the perv poltergeist (pervo-geist?). Oh yeah. I have it all worked out.
Real answer? It keeps me up at night. I worry and agonize. I think what bothers me the most isn’t the idea of oblivion, but the one-in-a-gajillion chance that one of the major religions by some fluke actually got the idea about the afterlife right, in which case I’ll probably be heading either down below or to be reborn as a slug…
There are a variety of phases, or periods in your life that you pass through. Some are large and encompass smaller ones, some small and are lined up end-to-end. Childhood, high-school, college, adulthood, worker, parent, retiree, etc. For me, I’ve always relished reaching the end of each phase and moving on to the next, because I’m usually burned out and ready for the change. At the end of high-school, I was ready to move on. I remember being thrilled to finish college and move on to the career portion of my life. Now retirement is on the horizon, and I’m ready and looking forward to it. Our oldest child is about to move out, and I’m happy to start the empty-nest phase.
In short, I usually welcome the end of each phase, large or small. Life itself is a phase that will end as well. After watching aging relatives struggle with growing really old, I assume I’ll reach a point where I’ll be ready for the end of the final phase.
I’m at the age where although I can’t see it yet, my personal stop sign is somewhere over the next few hills. I don’t know or worry about which hill it’s on, I’m just enjoying the hike.
I try to philosophically rationalize that the matter and energy that make up who I am will still exist. The intent, that makes life different from non-life, will not be there, but perhaps infinitesimal pieces of intent will travel with that matter and energy, because, after all, life comes when certain arrangements of matter and energy happen.
Then I try to distract myself because I really don’t want to die.
Basically, I just ignore it. One day, I won’t be and that is the end. No point in obsessing on it. What pains me is the loss of capabilities along the way. Two days ago I walked four miles to my office, something I did regularly before and I was exhausted when I got there. And I walk at least three miles at least 6 days every week, so that is not the explanation. I find it harder and harder to read mathematics and harder to do research in it. When I was in Hawaii a few weeks ago, I found exiting from a beach chair very hard. That’s the sort of thing that I hate. And two things I greatly fear are dementia and actual physical disability, not being able to keep walking. I am 76, BTW
When I’m worrying late at night in bed about my eventual non-existence, I console myself that at least I am not being awoken by a loud sound. Loud sounds at night instill even more terror in me if they are loud enough and screechy enough than the existential fear of non existence.
I also tell myself to not dwell on this, because even if I do, it will not change anything. All of your fears and worrying will not matter because death is most likely inevitable.
A third way I console myself is that there is a chance that we will achieve the Singularity in my lifetime and it will come with a benevolent artificial intelligence that will allow us to merge with it. Then, while the inevitable destruction of the Collective would most likely still be inevitable, at least the Collective may be able to just not care about it.
Unfortunately, while I think the Singularity has a decent chance of occuring in my lifetime, the chances of it being benevolent and being able to assimilate the populace is much smaller (rough chance of Singulariry = low single digit percentage. rough chance of a benevolent borg even given the singularity = pretty damn small.)
Having come to parenthood late in the game, while the thought of death doesn’t bother me, the knowledge that I will miss most of my son’s journey through life does. Thank goodness I’m in good shape and in a family with good longevity, but I’m 53 years older than he is, so while I’ve got a decent chance of being around for his 40th birthday, the odds get longer rapidly after that.
And I worry more about loss of capabilities than anything else, though as long as my mind is all there, and I don’t need someone else’s help to take a bath or wipe my butt, I think I’ll be OK with that.
Its something I’m procrastinating about. Don’t worry, I’ll get around to it in due time.
I also try to take some advice from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Immortality is not meant for human beings. The best you can do is to embrace your wife, play with your children, and go build some motherfucking huge city walls.
By having seen a lot of my own relatives die at a relatively young age, some right in front of me. Paternal grandfather at 13, grandmother at 16, mother at 17, maternal grandfather at 21, grandmother at 27. Now that I’m in my late 30s, I’m about to hit a second wave of die-offs as my uncles and aunts kick it.
When I was a kid we hunted and kept livestock. I saw that we weren’t all that different from the animals I killed. I went through a period of being afraid of death, to the point where I didn’t want to go to sleep and would have screaming nightmares in the middle of the night, when I was old enough to realize I was going to die someday.
Guess what? You get used to the idea. Confronted with the wasting stinking agony of cancer (which is what got most of my family) you learn that there are worse things than death.
We die. Big fucking deal. I’m not dead yet. I will be someday. I plan on living until I’m not any more. Then it’s someone else’s [del]rotting corpse[/del] problem to deal with.
So far so good.
But yes, the eternal dirt nap does freak me the fuck out. Even as a kid, I’d see those old black and white pictures of the early explorers or gold miners or soldiers of a long past war…and it bothered me…some random person…back then…now gone…
cue infomercial voice
BUT WAIT!
IT GETS WORSE!
I"ll die no doubt (hopefully without too much misery in the process). But other folks will live on. But even humanity will die out at some point. Yeah, it might change into something bigger and better. But even that will end. Apparently at some point even the FUCKING UNIVERSE will cease to exist. Kinda hard to get around that little problem.
Have a happy day!
I’m gonna come out with apparently the least suppported coping mechanism on this board (certainly in this thread!) and say my religious beliefs help me immensely. They give ultimate meaning to my existance and hope for afterward. Without that, I honestly don’t know how anyone doesn’t freak out.
I place this thought, and a few others, into a tiny little section of my brain that I access very infrequently.
It’s working for now.