My wife passed unexpectedly three years ago, likely sometime in the morning after I left for work. She was fast asleep when I left for work and was in the same position when I found her in bed later that evening.
There are so many things I would like to have said to her before she went away- so many lost opportunities to tell her how important she was to me, how much I loved her. Having lost two family members to cancer in the past, I contrasted the way I felt about losing my wife to losing them since with my family members we knew the time was coming soon and I was able to have conversations with them about what they had meant to me and how much I appreciated their presence in my life. With my wife the end was sudden and unexpected that so many things were left unsaid.
A few months after I lost my wife, I did a service for a very tragic case. A grandmother had been walking across the street with her grandchildren following a church Christmas performance and was struck by an inebriated driver along with a groud of other churchgoers. In the end 4 people- including young children - were killed and 9 severely injured. At the funeral service, outside of the church was a ever-growing ad hoc memorial with flowers, cards and photographs. It occurred to me while looking at the memorial that compared to my client’s grandmother who’s last moments of life were spent in fear, shock and severe pain, my wife suffered no fear or pain having passed in her sleep. Perhaps in a way my wife was very fortunate.
I have since struggled with the concept of my own inevitable death. Would I prefer to unexpectedly albeit peacefully die in bed (hopefully after a good meal, several glasses of wine and some awesomely great sex)? Or would I prefer to know that the end was near due to a long term health issue so that I would have the time to speak with my family and prepare for the inevitable? Of course for purely selfish reasons I would prefer the former, however I believe it might actually be easier on my loved ones if they expected my death- not in some esoteric “everybody dies someday” kind of way, but in an immediate real way, such as due to a terminal disease.
I have yet to make up my mind though if I should make it past 80 I will consciously live and behave as though I am going to die (because I will eventually) and will endeavor to have all those important conversations, make my own desires and requests known to my loved ones and in a general sense try my best to live every day as if it was going to be my last
“It will happen to all of that at some point you’ll be tapped on the shoulder and told, not just that the party is over, but slightly worse: the party’s going on but you have to leave.” (Christopher Hitchens)
Maybe you haven’t seen the misery of people who are living with intractable pain or debilitating illness. People who are likely to die soon anyway. If you know you only have a few weeks or months left, and they’re likely to be miserable, why not bail early? Standingwave’s Hitchens quote is relevant: the party will go on without you, but if it’s a crummy party, why would you feel any reluctance about leaving?
Keep in mind that plenty of people believe in (and/or hope for) an afterlife that’s better than this one.
I do think you’re onto something here: that curiosity is one of the things that makes life worth living, and that maintaining a healthy curiosity about the world is one of the things that can motivate people to stick around.
Thanks, all, for indulging in a rather macabre idea of mine.
Please don’t take my reply as being at all dismissive of this belief. To the contrary, I envy it.
But this just doesn’t make any sense to me. When you say “I”, do you mean the same person who exists today, who carries around memories of childhood? When you are in God’s presence, is it a physical presence? Can you look down and see your hands and feet? And are you alone? Are you one of billions of people nudging to get to the center of the room? The actual manifestation of this (common)belief is something I can’t get my mind around.
Never mind the “forever” part. That’s a really, really long time. Even blessedness can get boring if it’s never ending. That was the reason I abandoned the idea of heaven as a kid - I could never grasp the concept of billions, or trillions, of years of just “existing”.
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…Mostly, I cannot conceive of not existing - I understand it, but can’t wrap my head around the end of thoughts, memory and learning, the end to sensory input and seemingly to me, linear time…
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Have you ever had a deep sleep, where you were “dead to the world”? Hours passed, people were out and about, and it passed like a snap of the fingers to you. That’s what I imagine it is like.
Strange, I can think of many worse things than the end of personal existence. What is so important about the self? Why are you so attached to it, is it really because you want to know about the heat death of the universe? Or is it just because self is a conceptual framework you need for living. What is so bloody important about you (or me)? If death bothers you so much are you afraid of sleep too? Sure, you expect to wake up again when you fall asleep, but you would never know the fucking difference if you did not wake up.
I have seen enough suffering and misery around me in my life, all you have to do is look around. Life can be fucking hell. Nature is animals eating each other alive for frickin breakfast. Chronic pain, dementia, trauma, mental illness are all things that can quickly make some abstract curiosity like the heat death of the universe into completely meaningless bullshit. Dying itself is often a horrible painful experience. Yes the world is beautiful and there is much to celebrate and experience but that does not mean that the end of your existence is the most horrible thing. At some point it is time to let go of it, all the beauty, all the pain, all the wonder. It can go on just fine without you.
Also, there is brain activity in sleep. In death, not so much. Nothing similar at all. It’s like the difference between turning down the volume on a radio and cutting the power cord off.
Seem like we have more than a hunch that that is the way it is. And it depends, surely you wouldn’t want the biblical god to be the actual one in charge, would ya?
Best to concentrate on the things we can change, sort of like the serenity prayer, but obviously leave God out of the equation. Doesn’t concern me in the least if I turned out to be wrong, if there ever was an omnibenevolent God in charge, he’d forgive us all because that’s his job. But could we ever forgive him? I couldn’t, unless I became a drone.
I sincerely and truly have no fear of death. Dying, OTOH, gives me some concern, not a whole lot, but some scenarios are obviously preferred over others.
I have it on good authority that, after you come into and insubstantial existence 3 million years in the future with a shiny “H” on your forehead, you will well know that death is like being on a holiday with a bunch of Germans.