We don't talk about mortality enough

When I was younger, I used to actually sort of test myself, try to imagine how I would react, how my family would react, if, for example, my brother died or my mum died or something. I don't know, until it happens, you really have no way of predicting how it will feel. All I succeeded in doing was winding myself and freaking myself out because I didn't think I had any emotions.

Why is it so awkward to talk about? Because it's so unpredictable how people will react? Because it's the great unknown? I don't know. It is, though.

And yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot, lately for obvious reasons. Though people don't really die in my life, they move away to foreign countries and never come back. So it's easy to think of death as being just like, you know, Singapore, or something.

Not even N bringing up the blue lines to point out where we've talked about this before.

(Not that I'm sure that we have)

mainly i would have hated to die early, mainly i don't want to be a burden on people for dying. you know.. all the hassle and i won't be able to help. and i was scared to die easly because there would have been things i wanted to do but not done, or something.

But now i don't feel like there's a lot more things that i want to do that i want to do so bad before i die. so i don't mind it so much, as long as the death doesn't involve tremendous pain like if i get impaled through falling onto a spike, or something. that kind of things put me off death. jumping off buildings would kill me through a heart attack before i land, i think.

She is 71 and in extraordinarily good health. All of her family on the female side tend to be long-lived, and if her mother and grandmother's lifespans are anything to go by, she could logically go on to a hundred or beyond. Well OK, into her nineties at least.

Nevertheless I now think more and more about what might happen when she goes. In a lot of important ways she's the only surviving link to my past, my dad having gone ten days past his 50th. There's that feeling from childhood that you never quite shake off that your parents are always going to be there to protect you, look after you (this is long before you're anywhere near assimilating the concept of "growing up"). So what happens when, one day, neither is there? Or what happens if the situation is turned around and you end up having to look after them should the worst (Alzheimer's etc.) happen?

I am sorely aware that more and more people I know and love are dying, and that this is the inevitable consequence of growing older. I get a shiver through my spine whenever I read the obituary columns of newspapers and see that someone who was born in, say, 1933 or 1934 - i.e. younger than my mum - has passed on.

But what I'm scared of more than anything is the idea that when my mum's time comes, I will be left completely and entirely alone, even if I'm in my sixties or even my seventies. There will be no one remaining to confirm that I had lived a previous life. Always the egotist, eh? But it's not egotism, it's pure fear and dread.

That's what I really want, if I'm honest with myself when it comes to potential partners. Someone else who's going to be around when that time comes. Someone else who, if I'm brutally honest, will be able to protect and look after me. But I daren't admit it.

and i guess living in a country away from my family has made things more weird to think now.. is my family reduced to nothing but a phone call every other week?

Yeah, Pinx, I do also wonder the same/worry about my close friends and family. I've never been in love, so I don't have that scenario on my mind. Knowing schoolmates and friends who've died young has also played a part.

My maternal grandmother was a as close to a parent (and an awesome one at that) as could be, and in the 8 years since, I've never really gotten over it. I wonder if being raised by her has accounted for the moments when my mother and I have interacted as near-equals. Tis leads me to of course noting the importance of using whatever inspiration or direction the deceased can give you after they've gone. Besides, if you can't affect anyone else's life positively, I don't think life would *matter* so much.

OTOH, being born for the grave makes me question whether any of it matters at all and then cue existential depression/crisis.

All I really know is that it's constant and unexpected at the best of times and that I want to go in my sleep or at least doing/seeing something/one I really love.

I've had two uncles and an aunt die with throat/lung cancer recently. I now smoke more. This may mean something (either 'Fuck You Death' or 'I Am Stupid').

and i guess living in a country away from my family has made things more weird to think now.. is my family reduced to nothing but a phone call every other week?

Yeah, that is what is f*cking with my head about my grandmother's death right now. How can I be upset over a death when she hadn't really *alive* (wrong word, more... *present*) to me in ... well, ever.

My mother had a brain heamoridge about 8 years ago but she is still very much alive, this is also a worry but then again she could live longer than a lot of my other friends and family the way she is going.

Yes I think about it a lot and especially that fact that is *is* going to happen to me one day.

But as Kate said on another thread that I can't be bothered searching for, death isn't scary, it's the dying process. Like almost everyone else, I hope to have a painless and easy death but I expect it'll be either an accident or after an unpleasant illness - and people with unpleasant illnesses frequently die after a crisis leading to hospitalisation. I'm resigned to that - not exactly worst-case scenario, but as likely an unpleasantness as any.

Other people dying - I wonder if I'm ok with staying in one piece in the immediate aftermath of death because I've been used to a fairly steady rate of family deaths over the years. My family is good at articulating emotion together without being hysterical so I'm sure that's been a factor. Coping in the long term with the certain and infinite absence is a bit different. I miss my late friends and relatives so much that I don't want to try and quantify it with superlatives. [what an ugly sentence. sorry] The worst are the suicides. I'm heartened by condolences, however awkward, and by the fact that everyone in the world mourns someone sometime, so I'm not the only person who's felt this bad. But I don't know how I'd cope if my partner died. I think it's difficult to think about that partly because we don't want our imaginations to be capable of coming up with something so unpleasant and partly because we can't force ourselves to feel that kind of pain just like we can't strangle ourselves with our hands. So if we do imagine life after a partner's death, it's without the mourning and entirely about the coping, so we feel guilty for it. Does this sound familiar or is the point where I think everyone's staring in horror at me?

I haven't made a will but I should. I have no dependents - I just would like certain people and organisations to have certain things and amounts.

x-post

my gf's grandfather is 91. he's in relatively good shape for 91, but really, if the slightest thing goes awry, he's done. i don't know what he does all day, either. is there an ilx for nonagenarians? (actually, he's on e-mail but insists on printing everything out, which is cute.)

for some odd reason i find my consideration of my *own* mortality something i think about but can't really talk about.

I haven't sadly. As a child I only thought about this in the summer time - maybe because I had too much time (hah!). Now I think about it even more. Not my own death but also others. But mostly my death. I realize I waste my life thinking about the end. I should give up my morbid thoughts and enjoy life. Being a hypochondriac and atheist doesn't help the situation.

Yeah, but it's a dumb name so I changed it.

Does anyone else get that split second thought at certain times that says "everyone here will be dead one day". I know it sounds morbid but it's sort of more than that, it's a sense of being tiny and insignificant in the face of time. Of a few minutes at a party or in a friend's house being so completely irrelevant or just so fleeting and instantly lost.

For some reason certain things in the paper make me think of death in this way without fail. For example if I'm home in Dublin and I read the local paper there's a section called "county clubbers" which has pics of people in local pubs. It's always like smiling red faced drunk people and like "Pat O'Reilly was out for his friend Darragh O'Neil's 40th at O'Rourkes in Skerries". Every time I see these faces I feel like we aren't even people, we just have a short and trite existence, just dehumanised by our own mortality.

And then today I started reading these stories of kindness on the tube: http://art.tfl.gov.uk/actsofkindness

And it just bleeds the same sentiment. Life is short. Some things happen. I once met a man on the street. Then I died.

Does anyone know what I mean?

d00d it's called getting older

I think about this all the time. Zoom out, and we're all just insignificant animals. Zoom in, and a tiny moment of kindness has the potential to turn someone away from looking at the abyss. It's comforting, I think. Not to get all ~deep thoughts~ or whatever, but you asked.

when my dad died last year there was a memorial day for him at the field centre he'd lived and worked at till his (early, health-related) retirement, where we (his family) had lived as well: lots of people at it from all the various reaches of his and mum's past, including several people i hadn't seen since i was about 10

who i all remember very vividly as young adults about to step out into the world -- all now retired, the whole of the working lives now in their past

it was lovely to see them, but also unnerving: 40-odd years added in what seems like a moment

d00d it's called getting older

ah i've felt it for a long time, i don't think it's that really.

i don't know why things like the stories of kindness on the tube or "county clubbers" make me feel this so intensely, i guess they're just such...details

For anyone who cares to notice, the world teaches us that everything dies. It is an unavoidable lesson, taught constantly, so in case you missed the memo the first time around, it gets sent around daily. What seems more complex and difficult as we grow up is learning how to live, so we spend quite a lot of our youth and young adulthood concentrating on that. Death mostly seems remote, in personal terms, and not much worth bothering about, unless it is thrust under our nose by circumstances. This is a fairly sensible approach and works fairly well.

The problems arise when so little of our attention is devoted to death that we become, as it were, willfully ignorant of it, to the point where we deliberately dismiss thoughts of it when they arise naturally, so that eventually death becomes a part of the unknown, and therefore a thing to be feared. Once that pattern sets in, it is difficult to think clearly about death any more. This can be terribly debilitating as you age and death gets up in your face more and more.

"dehumanised by our own mortality" is an interesting phrase: to me, immortality is a powerfully horrrible idea, but i imagine i'm unusual in this

Immortality is just anillusion anyway. It is just not an option in a world with so much oxygen and consequently so much oxidation.

http://www.coversdaddy.com/cdcovers/neil-young-and-crazy-horse-rust-never-sleeps-1979-music-cd-cover-1862.jpg

^^^paradox!

we will all succumb to the dreaded "CD rot" in the end.

whenever i think about how short life is i can never decide if it's a motivator to self-improvement or completely the opposite.

Ronan is this a reaction to the despairing philosopher thread or to trapattoni?

i didn't read the despairing philosopher thread...so probably trapp.

Aimless otm

Time flies by so fast it's terrifying.

"To learn to be always in a state of meditation means never to let your vital energy wane. You would never allow it to do so if it were certain that you were to die tomorrow. It wanes because you forget about death. Grit your teeth, fix your gaze, and observe death at this moment. You have to feel it so strongly that it seems as if it's attacking you. Fearless energy comes from this. At this moment death is right before your eyes. It's not something you can afford to neglect."

- Suzuki Shosan (1579-1655)

everything dies. It is an unavoidable lesson, taught constantly

It's important to remember that this is not just about someone ceasing to be alive, but on a grander scale the temporal nature of everything in existence. Each thought, each experience, each breath is born and dies. It's so easy to get hung up on something, particularly after the time has passed and it no longer exists, it's just in your mind as a memory. At that point you are not living in current existence, which is - we assume - more 'real' than whatever you are thinking about. You are distracted by this illusion of something that happened in the past, as if it still exists, and thus partly dead to the world that is actually around you.

I was bummed out the other day and one of my friends told me "Quit whining. You exist outside of time." and really, that is the best advice anyone could have given.

i'm pretty down with not existing.

i do struggle, to my chagrin, with society's expectations of ppl like me. certain parts i don't mind, but others sting, and i should really be beyond that and stand for what's important to me. if i knew what that was, i mean.

also i would prefer that the process of mortality not involve my growing weird hairs out of everywhere, jeez

Do you ever stop to consider the fact that one day not only will you be dead and everyone you know will be dead too, but that the planet will probably fall back into the sun and the entire universe w

LG I get the same thought all the time, that "everybody in this room will one day be dead"

It's always like smiling red faced drunk people and like "Pat O'Reilly was out for his friend Darragh O'Neil's 40th at O'Rourkes in Skerries"

lol

kinda want to hear markers' thoughts on mortality

is he not eternally youthful?

I think it helps to watch old movies habitually, where everyone onscreen is long dead

will be doing my annual graveyard visit tomorrow, timely thread

kinda want to hear markers' thoughts on mortality

is he not eternally youthful?

― mookieproof, Sunday, September 4, 2011 9:44 PM

the passage of time bums me out

http://i.imgur.com/HZDjq.gif

the passage of time bums me out

yes but a lack of snax also bums you out

who doesn't like food

everyone likes food -- you like food!

the time of passage out me bum

dig deeper broseph xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIqbdnaPcT8

am dead impressed by people who're cool with mortality. fuck y'all, tho. but well done.

who doesn't like food

― markers, Sunday, September 4, 2011 9:07 PM (1 minute ago)

Lots of people don't like food! Including lots of ILXors -- they have such an adversarial relationship to food -- it pisses them off that they have to deal with it at least once a day.

disappointed in u markers tbh

lol wmc

what do u want from me mookie!

i think change is often shit! the passage of time is garbage! i'm hangin on a moment here w/ u!

i get less nostalgic the older i get. is this a thing?

mortality is prob the best option of a pretty bad bunch nv

Your nostalgia would be for the 90s, right? So I don't blame you. xp

xp

i prefer the one where i never die tbh

sounds awful tbh

guttering needs cleaning every year, for a start

80s, 90s, yeah: point stands.

by the time you hit 250 you'd be getting the prostate examined every week, based on the graphs i've seen

that's some Jonathan Swift piss-take version of immortality but come the fuck on

obv if yr brain was dropping out come 120 you'd prefer death if you could remember what the fuck you were supposd to prefer

on the other hand, staying a nice dessicated miserable 42 for eternity wd be okay imo

i mean it's not like i'd get laid less

braggin

wishin

tbh if i'd the option of stopping the clock at say 21 yeah sound but i'd rather take my chances with reincarnation at this stage

i don't see how condensed milk is gonna help anybody

It's funny that a big disadvantage to living forever that constantly gets trotted out is that you would watch everyone you love grow old and die. You do that anyways!

I mean, not ha-ha funny, but you know...

yeah but i probably dislike a lot more people than i care about tbh

didn't you know, ILX is actually a last-man-standing competition

NO BIG DEAL FOR MARKERS, WHO WILL LIKELY ALWAYS HAVE 7-11s

picturing Ned outfacing eternity atm

NO BIG DEAL FOR MARKERS, WHO WILL LIKELY ALWAYS HAVE 7-11s

― mookieproof, Sunday, September 4, 2011 10:53 PM

knowing that a store is there for you 24/7 no matter what is the greatest comfort we have in the face of an eventual eternity of nonexistence

didn't you know, ILX is actually a last-man-standing competition

― dayo, Monday, 5 September 2011 02:52 (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

any day now rly

rip markers