If (or when) I am in your situation, I will live my life to the fullest. I will travel to see everything that I have missed, as long as I am financially able. I will do my best to spread goodwill, even if no one remembers my name afterward. I hope that there is a heaven, but as has already been said, if there is no afterlife I will not know the difference. I hope that you can find inner peace in your final days, because dying in fear is not the way to go. Let yourself go, experience the freedom.
If you assume one universe, sure. If you assume an infinite number, then you will exist somewhere and the chances that you will are 1:1.
I’m sorry to hear your news. I don’t have any real answers for you but I would recommend the book ‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’, ( NOT to be confused with the Tibetan Book of The Dead, that’s a whole different animal!)
It’s wonderfully written and addresses, in some depth, many of the points you’ve raised. I picked it up while nursing someone I loved to their death. It didn’t have all the answers to everything. But it helped to put a lot of my questions into a perspective that helped me to stay positive and moving forward without fear.
I’m not assuming it will do the same for you, just a recommendation is all. And no, you needn’t have so much as a passing knowledge of nor interest in Tibetan Buddhism, to get a great take away from this book!
Again, sorry to hear, you’ll be in my thoughts!
Sorry you got a less-than-average lifespan, but you came close. I hope that as you look back on your 67 years you feel that they were mostly good.
In the five stages of grief, it sounds like you’re at stage 2.
You can extend that as far as you like. I sometimes look at little kids and think about the fact that they are going to grow old and die someday; they (and all of us, really) were given a death sentence the day they were conceived.
I recall a commercial in which a doctor said something to a patient along the lines of “I’m afraid you only have 40-50 years left.” Same deal.
I don’t know what happens to our consciousness after we die, but my strong suspicion is that consciousness is based entirely on the electrical/metabolic activity taking place in our physical brains, and so once that ends, so does consciousness. If I’m right, you won’t have anything to worry about, provided the doctors and nurses can keep you comfortable during the dying process. You know how you go to sleep and have no idea what has transpired around you while you were out? That’s pretty much what I’m expecting.
In the movie Fearless, Jeff Bridge’s character is in a plane that’s going to crash badly, and while the other passengers panic all around him, he is completely at peace with his impending demise; he has accepted the fact that he’s going to die and there’s nothing he can do about it, and he’s completely OK with it. I hope you can find that kind peace before the end.
The only thing to come out of the bible that ever made any sense to me was from Genesis: “. . . for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”, which is a surprisingly scientific analysis to be coming from a book that is largely parables and fairy tales. Basically, from atoms back into atoms, to be reincorporated into other things. Works for me.
No, 5 is terrible. You walk around going “I was THIS close.”
Walk around, hell! I drive around in my fancy new car, park in the fancy driveway of my fancy new house going “I was THIS close to a helipad”.
mrclose, I’m sorry for the situation you have found yourself in. What’s over the hill? No one knows for certain. I am a person of faith, and on that faith alone, I believe there is something not of this earth waiting for us over that hill. Our souls, the energy that makes us unique, can continue, I believe.
I hope you find peace in your last days. If you see the Duke, tell him, that we all miss him back here.
I’d be perfectly happy with 5 numbers. Mind you, 6 would be heavenly, but the second prize would be enough to buy a few nice toys.
You have strength, can type, and wish to be a bit immortal, so why not write an autobiography? Your children and grandchildren will thank you. Further down the road, even historians will thank you. They always have so very little information about the lives of regular people.
And print it out! A hard drive may not last as long as you will.
My dad died from lung cancer 2 weeks ago. It was tough and I wish you an easier time of it. If I was going to suggest anything, I would say get yourself right in this world before you go and you’ll be a little less worried about the next one…
I am sorry to hear you have cancer , I really don’t think doctors really know how much time a person has left . I was a health aide and had not seen one doctor be right about when a person will die. You should try to enjoy what time you do have left and not worry about were you’ll be going . I personally do not believe in after life and have no fear of dying .
You never know what could happen. You could very well find yourself surprised to be kicking around 20 years from now. You’re not dead until you are, so don’t stop living just yet.
To answer your question, I’m an atheist, but I wish more than anything that it could be proven to me that god exists, and there is an afterlife.
I take comfort in the fact that after I’m dead, I won’t really care if there isn’t.
I’m a Christian. I believe in an all powerful, all knowing, just and merciful God who created the whole world and mankind. I believe that God created humans in His likeness, created them perfect and gave them a soul. I believe that mankind sinned, and suddenly we fell short of God’s perfection and Holiness. Therefor we deserve to die, and are condemned to eternal suffering in hell. There is absolutely nothing we can do to to change the fact that we are imperfect; therefore we must all be sent into perpetual torment for what we have done. BUT I believe that God loved us so much, that He gave to us His very own Son. Jesus died for us, and conquered death; spiritually and physically. Now, if we merely accept this gift from God, the gift of salvation through Jesus, we may be saved and join God in heaven after our life here on earth. The Bible tells us that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16. It’s up to you.
The concept of the conservation of matter and energy, where it can’t be destroyed, only transformed provides a strange sense of comfort to me. Whatever you are made of, it cannot be destroyed — only transformed.
But what happens to consciousness…does it stay intact or not?
The logical part of me says not. But there’s another part of me that thinks there’s something more to a living body than just biochemistry. If you’ve ever been with one you’ve loved when they died: one minute alive, the next dead…it’s hard to believe that everything that animates that life comes down to biochemistry. How has the chemistry changed that much in that brief space of time. Or is there something else there?
I don’t believe there’s an eternity of torture, if that’s any comfort.
I hope you find peace in what you are going through.
I’m very sorry that I haven’t been able to respond lately.
Sometimes the chemo leaves me in a state of exhaustion where I can’t get into an upright position.
I don’t have the energy to turn on the pc.
I am dying … we all are.
The difference is my sentence was pronounced and that’s okay with me.
I started this thread with the DYING SUCKS and I guess that I was feelin sorry for myself at the time?
My fears about dying aren’t really about being scared about … what comes next!
My fears are … My mom and my younger brother have already ‘passed on’ and my fears have to do with family.
I say to myself that atheists MUST have a cold, cold heart!
Why?
Because … I just can’t understand why anyone can believe that life is over, we will NEVER see our loved one’s again and that’s ok?
Sure, Christians … as far as many are concerned have an unproven HOPE.
My hope, as as a 'person (No Christian beliefs, one way or another) is that I will see my MOM and Brother again!
You can say that it is a false hope but … That is all a dying man has to hold on to!
I miss my mom.
I miss my brother.
Do Atheists want to really take away the Hope that even us folks who don’t know … hang onto?
I miss mom.
A history: Mom turned thirteen twenty days after I was born.
She was always my best friend.
I’m sorry for the incoherent language.
I am on a morphine drip, I like it (pain) but it makes me sillie!
I will miss this forum.
HOW do you take comfort in knowing that you wont see your loved one’s again?
If you loved your mom and dad, your sisters, your brothers … HOW can you honestly say that you wouldn’t HOPE that you will see them again … maybe in eternity?
Well I’m an atheist but I certainly wish there was an afterlife and I would be with my loved ones, but I don’t believe in my heart that its true.
I am one of those annoying people that both sides of the religion versus science debate hate, because I claim to be that I am “spiritual, but not religious”. I prefer “recovering Catholic”.
Brass tacks. No one knows enough to know definitively that there is an afterlife, and what that afterlife might contain. I am skeptical of the whole heaven versus hell mantra. But, I have seen enough to make me believe that there is something, but what it is, I’m not exactly sure.
For those that will try to throw the old “But, SCIENCE! Blather, blah, blah, blah,” I will retort that I respect science - as my daily life and career absolutely depend upon it - and that science has done very well in proving the existence of chemistry and physics - but science has done virtually nothing in concerning the meta-physics of the before and after.
I can tell you this. If I was given a one-year survival estimate at this time, as I sit here, I would sit down with a financial expert as soon as possible, and I would review my options. I would do whatever they say, making sure that I had enough money and time to survive the next year, and that my immediate loved ones would receive something to minimize the disruption of their lives. I would also set aside enough to do a cross-country road trip to visit all of those in my past to break the news and to say “goodbye”.
I would also not make so much as a manifesto, or suicide note, but I would definitely start penning down some thoughts for future contemplation. Perhaps figure out a way to post it to a blog after my demise.
My condolences. Truly. I saw a report one time of peoples’ personal and anonymous thoughts, and one of the leading ones was, “I wish I was dying of an illness, so that I could get more attention, and enjoy life a little bit more”. That’s easy to say, and very selfish in my opinion, when one is not facing what you are facing.
What you are facing is formidable - and I am embarrassed to even be typing these words right now, because there are not words to describe or even encompass what you are going through.
I can tell you this. If I was imminently facing a firing squad, my thoughts would be this, and in this order:
- I love my mother.
- I regret nothing.
- We are all made of stars.