Br’er Lapin, you are a very kind person and must know what it is to experience real anguish. And you also know how beatable depression is.
The older I get, the less fearful dying seems to be. It seems more like an inconvenience now. There are books I haven’t read and piano pieces I want to memorize again. I haven’t been to London yet or seen the Alhambra.
Truthfully, I’m really a Twentieth Century girl. I’m very sentimental for those times. I think the Sixties were a Renaissance – just incomplete and imperfect, but then, we didn’t get everything that we wanted. I treasure the decades like a string of beads – a rosary of sorts.
Each hero that I’ve lost – mostly friends, makes it a little easier to let go. And so do mostly grown grandchildren. My sister and my mother are older and away from me. My step-children have left us alone for years. My husband and I have each other and I have the women at the club. My old college roommate and I get together twice a year to go to the beach and be twenty years old again.
It is a peaceful life except for the absence of family. Maybe I will make it to London yet. One of my friends is going next month and she is ninety!
Still, I miss knowing Sinatra is around. I wish Newman and Redford would make a new film. And Audrey…
Someday I will have my ashes scattered with some dried rose petals from the homeplace. I never got to New York either. Is there someway to have them scattered at Tiffanys & Co.?
I’m not afraid of being dead, or even dying, particularly. I have the usual animal instincts about avoiding it, but contemplating my own demise isn’t especially terrifying. I could die tomorrow and find myself reasonably satisfied with the life I’d lived. I’d be rather irritated about kicking over in the middle of managing an election campaign, but I’m afraid that dying is one of those things that would take precedence.
I don’t particularly care about living – I’m not suicidal, just generally apathetic – but at my high points and low points, not wanting to hurt people has kept me from experimenting with mortality.
The thought of death doesn’t bug me, just a slight curiousity about whether thats it or not. The thought of dying sorta does, though. I would hope that when the time comes, its easy. No being burned alive or locked into a chest full of spiders, or locked into a chest full of burning spiders, etc.
It concerns me that my family might suffer hardship if I die anytime too soon.
Apart from that, not really - it annoys me a lot to think that there will inevitably be an outstanding list of unfinished and undone things left - regardless of how long I live, I know I won’t have finished my stuff.
Dying slowly and painfully is something I’m pretty keen to avoid.
It all depends what mood Im in. If Im feeling really down and depressed I pray something will happen to me - sometimes I find myself crossing the street a little slower and if Im having a good day it can terrify me. Saying that its usually the death of my loved ones I fear more than for myself. Im a great believer in fate and whats for ya wont pass you by so if its my time then so be it. I think its the fear of unknowing that scares most people.
I’m not in the least afraid of death, but I AM afraid of the dying process, especially if it involves a significant loss of cognitive function beforehand.
My best-case scenario is to die in a tragic accident, aged about 105 whilst still having all of my mental faculties (and a decent amount of physical ones) intact.
Worst-case is to lie in a bed in a vegetative state for years before my body finally calls it quits.
My partner’s mum died last week after years in a nursing home merely breathing. It was a blessed relief when she did finally take her last breath, because for all intents and purposes, she ceased living years ago. I really fear going down that path, and have instructed my kids and loved ones to ‘help’ me out before such a situation eventuates.
No fear of death itself though. Hey, I won’t give a shit.
Being some variety of Christian, somewhere in my rather muddled set of beliefs is the one that reassures me that it will all turn out to be much as I have thought, although I expect many surprises. But it is perfectly possible that I am quite wrong and there is no God and no afterlife. I accept that with the equanimity that comes of reasoning that, if the worst comes to the worst, I will not even know that I was wrong. There is no sense worrying about being dead. It will happen to me one day whether I want it to or not.
I’m not afraid of death itself. It’s something you can’t stop from happening, and the great adventure is what awaits on the other side.
That said, I’m terrified of dying. I’ve lost far too many friends and relatives to ugly crap like cancer, and the last thing I want is to lay around for a long time, pain-ridden and a near invalid.
However I go, I want it to be fast and relatively pain free.
I had an experience a few years ago I believed I would not survive. As it was happening, I was just overwhelmed by a sense of disbelief and unfairness. How could I possibly be interrupted in my plans?
Of course, as it turned out, I didn’t die, but I’ve never forgotten that feeling of despair at not getting to finish the things I want to do. Let me get old, let me get to the end…and I hope then I’ll feel more accepting.
