For those of you in long-term relationships (or can imagine being in one):
Would you rather die first, or would you rather your partner dies first, or both at the same time?
Theoretically, I’d want us to both go at the same time, so neither has to go through a painful grieving process. The problem, though, is that I’m older by 20 years, and I’d be cheating my partner of 20 years of his life. So I’d rather die first, and hope he gets on with his life and finds a new love.
We actually talk about it from time to time, because my partner is 17 years older than me; his reasonning is the same:
We’ve been together 4 years so far.
I hope I never have a say in the decision… I know a man that lost his wife in a car accident on her way home from work. hit by a drunk driver leaving him to raise 7 children.
Talk about a decision, check this out:
I’d hope we both go together after a very long and happy life.
I’d also hope that it never comes down to choosing one way or the other. Brrr.
My partner dies first. I don’t want to put her through the pain of having to lose me.
Besides, if she goes first, maybe they’ll discover immortality shortly after. Then I can live long enough to work on a cure and reversal for whatever killed her, and I can bring her back to her formerly healthy self!
Or, in a slightly more realistic scenario, I would die (naturally) shortly after she did (hopefully naturally, as well). Dying together smacks of some sort of tragedy that I don’t particularly want to be part of.
Well, getting into another relationship after my husband died forced me to come to terms with the simple fact that it could happen again. I find the idea incredibly painful, since I know just how bad it is, but knowing how bad it is means I don’t really want to inflict it on anyone else either. I know, honestly, that it was both the worst thing that ever happened to me and that I can survive it.
One of my biggest fears for some time has been having to go through life without Mr. Horseshoe. (Watching “Up” made it 100 zillion times worse.) I think I absolutely could not face waking up and knowing I have to get through the day without him. Just thinking about it makes me feel like I might lose my mind. That said, he’s been very honest about his family’s history - the men tend to neither go bald (good) nor live a long time (not good). So barring a car accident or cancer or something like that, he’s frankly unlikely to outlive me. (But we’ve both been eating a lot healthier the past few years than we used to, and building a deck has really whipped him into shape lately.)
I already told my husband that the battle is on. I’m fighting for the last spot. I’m not shuffling off this mortal coil until I can’t fight a second more. I’ll miss him, though. He’s kinda always been there.
I won’t lie. It’s an extraordinarily painful thing to go through. But it’s survivable. It really is.
My late wife was 18 years older than me, and we didn’t get married until I was 31. Pretty much from the start she insisted that I wasn’t allowed to die first. Admittedly, there were practical reasons for this; I was the primary (and after a while, the only) breadwinner, and she was not that good at money management so she would have had a harder time living on her own.
We were together 20 years, and the first few years without her were rough, but I’ve learned to adjust. I will admit that I haven’t been putting a lot of effort into finding a new partner, and part of that is because I’m not sure I could deal with another similar loss. I suppose I could solve that problem by only dating much younger women, but I’m not exactly prime marriage material for women in their late 30s any more.
I would rather he went first. He isn’t very grounded, tends to have his head in the clouds and doesn’t deal well with reality or financial stuff. He’d been in deep crap dealing with that stuff.
Love him, and his company (on most days anyway) so its not that I want to see him go.
If he dies first, I’d get all his money AND be single again!
I don’t plan to die so I only had one option.
My husband of 25 years died 18 months ago (is that all? it seems like forever.). I am much better equipped to deal with his loss and the accompanying mess than he would have been to deal with losing me. It has been a time of growing closer to God, leaning on family and friends and finding them utterly trustworthy, and release from the tensions of caring for a terminal loved one. But oh, how I miss him.
I’m thinking about this a little too much lately because my husband’s been ill, and not taking great care of himself.
My grandparents were happily married for 47 years, and died together in a house fire. Talking about it afterwards several of us concluded that had He outlived Her he’d have died soon after of a broken heart. She would have been able to carry on alone better than he would have, but would definitely become a shell of herself.
I think it would better if he went first. I’m not particularly scared to die; I’m not looking forward to it, certainly, but I think I’m a lot less frightened death than he is, and I’d want to be there to comfort him and help him through it. Also, some of his relatives might try to give him a Catholic funeral, and he is extremely opposed to that, so I’d like to be alive to ensure that his wishes are honored.
The girl I’m chasing is 17 days older than me. I think I can stand the loss of time.
I have a feeling I’ll go first. I know my husband would be strong enough to go on if I went first; if he went before me, I would be a wreck. I don’ think I could handle it.
11 years later and it is still hard for me to talk about, but this actually happened to my parents.
My father died of a heart attack at 7:30 AM. My mother planned the funeral, contacted family and friends and then, on the very same day - at 3:30 PM - my mother also died of a heart attack.
As devastating as this was for us kids and the rest of the extended family, we knew they both dearly loved each other, traveled together extensively and were rarely apart for more than a few hours.
We knew that was how they both would have wanted it to happen - as tragic as it was; together in life and death.
DMark, I can’t even imagine how hard that would have been.