Context is everything, and you’ve omitted all of it.
OK, dammit. My dad’s old man was fairly stroked out and disabled for over a decade before he finally met a clot he couldn’t beat. I remember where I was when I got the news. I was in a hotel room in El Paso, on my way to spend a few months in San Angelo, TX. Army business. He was in St. Louis. I had a week before I had to be where I was going, there was nothing keeping me from his funeral. Except, he was a terrible person. Crazy, when I look back on the stuff he did to his 5 kids, but a terrible person and not one I was particularly sympathetic with. His wife attended the disposal of his remains. NONE of his kids showed up, nor his grands. Just his dutiful wife (who was also a terrible person).
I remember drinking a few quiet beers that night, trying to decide whether to go be with friends in San Angelo, or with a bunch of uncomfortable family and a dead grandpa in St. Louis. I reckon I was not truly alone in my dilemma that night. “Eh, fuck him” I remember thinking. And then I cried. Not for him, but for the prospect of being as unmourned as he was. I hope I’m not, when my time comes.
It means I “won”! I’ve outlived everyone I know!
Another scenario that wasn’t mentioned is dying under circumstances such that no one knows that you died (at least not right away). Like in Into the Wild or if that 127 hours guy couldn’t managed to cut his arm off and escape that rock. Or being murdered by a serial killer or mob hit or something (although, technically that’s not “alone”). To me, that seems like it would suck to just sort of “disappear”.
For me; this. I’ve known a few of those personally (near places I lived) and I think that is my greatest fear. Being dead for a couple days I could accept; being unfound for a month is my definition of alone.
Agree. Death is letting go of who and what I love here, and joining the stream. It is living to the end alone that I hope, and I think most of us hope, doesn’t happen to us.
My definition of “dying alone” is the one where someone has no close companionship in the years/decades leading up to death. I have very little family that’s growing smaller by the year, so I’m afraid this is what will happen to me. As for the actual dying, I don’t really know, but it doesn’t bother me so much. Nor does not being found for a long time. I’m dead, what would it matter to me? However, it would be terrible for someone to find so I’ll certainly work to avoid it.
As someone who lives with this (though not really a fear since it’s by far the most likely,
All of the above. I recently decided to put my landlady as my emergency contact number at work. If they call my sister in Dallas, she or the police would have to track her down anyway.
I have, thanks. 
Without getting into a lot of theological and/or philosophical matters I will simply state that I find it to be incomprehensible that I will in fact be alone at such time as I make the transition from this life to the next. That is my statement, and I invite no discussion, but I will also state it as a firm belief that “alone” and “lonely” are in no way equivalent or even synonymous terms.
Might there be no other human in attendance? That seems likely, as I live alone, and no one in all the world has keys to my house except the ones in my possession. Will other humans be nearby? That also seems likely, as I live in a metropolitan area with a goodish population density. I might be out in the country at a very private shooting range, or on a highway with 50,000 people within a fairly small radius, or in a place of business. However it comes to be, from my point of view, it is of no particular concern to me.
I think when people say they don’t want to die alone, they are neither talking about being alone at the actual moment of death nor about not having a companion in their life when they die. They’re afraid of being lonely in the months and years leading up to death - the person in the nursing home who never has visitors. Or of being like one of my former supervisors- he never married , wasn’t in a relationship for the the three years i knew him, had no sibling and his parents were gone. He retired only because they would have fired him if he didn’t, and in one of his “chats” with his direct reports, he told us he was annoyed that his pension/SS checks had to be direct deposited because he would miss the social interaction of depositing them in person. He wasn’t kidding.
You don’t have to be married or have an SO or kids to avoid being lonely - but I suspect there are a lot of people who don’t really socialize for much of their lives. They chit -chat with some coworkers or neighbors , they spoke to other parents at school events but those superficial relationships ended when the “thing in common” changed . When their spouse dies and their kids have moved away, they don’t have any friends. Or really any acquaintances either. And it’s really hard to try to make new friends at 60 or 70 or 80 when you haven’t needed to in years , because those superficial relationships were good enough when the spouse and/or kids were around.
I have never thought it meant this exactly literally, that your family and friends had to be sitting immediately bedside when your heart stopped. I assumed it meant there would be family there to comfort you most of the times during the days leading up to death. If my wife happens to be in the bathroom or down in the lobby getting a coffee when I technically expire, that’s not “dying alone” in the sense I understood that phrase to mean. (Or, for that matter, if I am alone in the car and crash it or something.)
The idea of my family not being in the room when I die is not big deal. The idea of having no family in the last year or so of my life is profoundly saddening.
This is my feeling, exactly.
I don’t understand how this can happen. Our home was a foreclosure, and we had to jump through several hoops to get it. Once our bid was accepted there was a mandatory inspection so we couldn’t claim there were hidden flaws. The inspection report had photos of pretty much every square inch of the house. Even a dead mouse would have shown up.
You probably bought a good quality valuable house and the seller wanted the best price they could get and your mortgage bank wanted to make sure it was worth it. A lot of foreclosures are in bad shape, the seller is glad to get rid of it, and it’s paid for in cash or a non-mortgage loan.
I don’t know how often this happens, but it does.
This is going to sound really weird, but: if fear of death really impairs your quality of life… go for a trial run. Really. Go to an ayahuasca retreat, and go on an ayahuasca journey. Scientist say many ( not all) people on an ayahuasca journey have experiences very similar to a NDE, or near death experience. Both NDE’s and profound experiences with psychedelics are known to greatly reduce the fear of death. Both in the person self, and because he/she is ore at peace with it, her loved ones.
Nope. It was cheap and run down. The previous owners had come close to trashing the place. It was sold as is, and the inspection was required so we couldn’t claim that we weren’t informed about the condition of the house.
We almost could have paid cash, and our mortgage was small enough that they didn’t require us to escrow the insurance and property tax. We paid it off in less than 3 years.
This makes sense and it resonates with my own definiton. Yet it seems to me that the lovesick often don’t count family when they express fears about “dying alone”. At least not family they haven’t created themselves. Like, if I were trying to make someone who was afraid of dying alone feel better, I don’t think I would assure them that their younger siblings and niblings will check in on them and invite them to Thanksgiving and stuff like that. Because that doesn’t paint the most comforting image.
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