Dead

I started being scared of being dead when I was less than 10. It got so bad I'd try to think of dragons and vampires cos scaredy nightmares were better than the cold black heartlock of knowing I was gonna die. And now, because my brain is a motherfucker, I lie awake at night and know that my beautiful babyfaced children are gonna get old and die one day, alone like everybody else. And I can't sleep and I cry and I drink and I cry and drink and cry. And then I get hungover-drunk and I post on ILX until the pubs open and I can race myself closer to the shit I'm frightened of, because the brain is a motherfucker. So this isn't a "get well dickhead" thread, this is a thread where we can all hold hands together and mumble platitudes about how the people we love aren't gonna be dead and lost to us, soon, alone.

Because nobody dies alone, am I right fellas

Did They Might Be Giants die or something?

Dude, I was just the same when I was a kid and it remained until... well, now. But I only got scared in the summer (when I had nothing better to do, I guess). Still the case: during the day I'm okayish but in the evening I get all scared 'n' shit. If I can't find something to worry about, I scratch my head and keep searching till I find something. Thing is: I'm undecided if this is part of me or if I should get the fuck over it and change my attitude/thinking/personality.

That said, I never think about my kids dying: they still seem so young. Then again the oldest was screaming her ear ached, I put her in the buggy and off I went to the doctor. When she fell asleep, I thought she wasin a coma. Worry, me? Oh god no.

It's different to worry now, tho I agree it mostly comes at night. I see the death in them and I kind of choke and get somewhere between wanting to throw up and run around in a loop. It was wretched when I was just thinking of myself but this is more or less unbearable.

With my kids I rarely if ever have it. I worry that they will get sick or whatever, but death never really comes to mind. Christ, NV, I thought I had it bad.

Thing is, I never realized that my obsessive worrying would fuck up my parenting so much. I worry much more now that I have kids.

I would lie awake at night, terrified of the thought of being dead, pretty often as a kid. The standard problem of trying to figure out just what it would be like to be dead, trying to get your head around the fact that 'it' wouldn't be like anything, there is no 'it' there, etc.

Now grown up ('tho without a kid for another couple of months; we'll see how things will change) I fixate more on other people dying. It always strikes me that we go around as if time's unlimited, as if being with the people we love is the 'normal' state of things, when in fact it's being without them that is 'normal' and being with them was an aberration that's gone and not coming back.

Or something. Pretty sure that's not too clear.

Anyway, probably the saddest thing I've ever heard was when I was at home, sitting with my mother, watching a home movie of the surprise party for my father's 40th birthday (now more than twenty years ago). Sitting there and watching herself and her husband and all of their friends and family having a great time (I was eight and I remember it well) she said, "it seems so long ago; it's almost like it never happened." The video was proof that it happened, but that's all we have. Otherwise it's all in our heads, intangible, untouchable--not here.

(I'm digressing a bit)

Nah, I understand you well enough.

And I hate this shit, the skull beneath the skin bollocks that's got the temerity to take up my days as well. Imaginary looking into other people's heads and praying they're not feeling it too, this huge question that hangs over the way me and my old man speak to each other because I know it's there and he hints as much but nobody wants to bring that thing out and lay it under cold white light cos the screaming do-nothing jibbers wd be there right after.

Apart from the fear/terror/heartlock extending to fearing for your kids that you note above, did having kids change this at all for you? Like for how you feared your own death?

I don't think so. Just that when the old fear kicks in it takes 30 seconds or so to kick into "shit everybody I love is going to be dead forever" too. This is maturity, I guess.

Well, there's different ways of approaching this. I ask my husband how he deals with it all. "I just ignore it." I've been trying the "put it in a drawer" method as well and it sort of helps.

Having kids has worsened my fears a lot. I also worry endlessly that I won't be able to take care of'em. Then I know that's life: a risk. I look at others and see how they go through life without thinking about it and I know it can be done. Or maybe they are better at hiding it from me.

I think that's why I liked vampires so much. Although endless life seems a bit boring.

There's very little you can do about death so stressing over it is ridiculous. Just think about how fantastic a cool breeze feels in the summer, how tremendous the rumple of fabric is against the skin, the sound of laughter, the taste of a crisp apple, a kiss. I mean jeez, talk about unappreciative.

Yeah, I should snap the fuck out of this shit right?

Basically!

haha it is sort of great that the most flippant, insensitive, pig-headed advice about big issues is often the right advice

I don't disagree with Tracer's advice, but then it ain't like it hasn't occurred to me a billion times.

When I was little I would get in that weird zone g00blar describes although I didn't realise I was thinking about death. The way I framed that headspace was that it was a mode of thinking in which I fully realised that I was ME, and not someone else, and that all my experiences and knowledge of life belonged only to me. It's difficult to describe how truly bizarre a feeling it is to enter this zone. From time to time I would consciously try to enter it, and it would usually take a couple of minutes, but usually it would eventually "click" and there I was.

Also what yr missing is think about how fantastic a cool breeze feels in the summer, how tremendous the rumple of fabric is against the skin, the sound of laughter, the taste of a crisp apple, a kiss AND SOON THAT SHIT WILL BE IRREVOCABLY LOST is the summary of the problem, here.

Well yeah. So what?

it's true; and there's no 'solving' that problem xpost

I can't stress enough how odd the zone was.. I haven't entered it for many years now and I'm not sure I'd want to again, but it was like looking into an infinitely reflecting mirror, or having 100 video cameras recording me simultaneously, with the outputs hooked into the inputs or something.

Well, so it irrationally or rationally, depending on yr take, bothers some people. I appreciate that this isn't universal, and that other people may have better coping strategies, of which I think blind ignorance is one. I can sit outside myself and dig the absurdity of this. Sometimes that helps. Still I can't get beyond it or out of this physical distress and no amount of "hey, we're all gonna die" is doing the trick for me.

NV try printing this out, and having a look through it. I'm serious:

http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

I turn to it a lot.

all this changes if you manage to leave your body for a bit. it's like stepping out of and then re-entering a dream (you have no real control over, sadly)

from tracer's link: 14. If you wish your children, and your wife, and your friends to live for ever, you are stupid; for you wish to be in control of things which you cannot, you wish for things that belong to others to be your own.

Yes, that's a key passage but it needs to be read in context of the whole argument.

Been somewhat morbid & fucked in the head of late as a result of losing both parents & 1 in-law as well as an old friend who was like a brother, all very sudden over the last 18mo. Had to ID both parents for the law, and it was tough in both cases, mum, seeing her lying there on the slab, it was pretty hard to bear, dad was all mangled up & barely recognisable. Rarely does a day go by when I don't think about what either person looked like. If I think about either parent, the first image of them that comes to mind is them lying dead. I've never known times as bad as these, I can barely sleep most nights, I wander round in a daze. My business is fucked. I don't give a shit about dying myself, but I dread some fucking cop coming to see me and landing me with some more shitty news. I don't know what the way out of this is.

I'm sure you've heard the zen story where the King asks his advisors "Is there a mantra or suggestion which works in every situation, in every circumstances, in every place and in every time. Something which can help me when none of you is available to advise me. Tell me is there any mantra?" and he finally gets a ring engraved with "This too will pass" which when you realise can be applied to everything is brutal, but also liberating.

I don't want to come back with a bunch of "yes but". I use that phrase way too much in real life. I'm aware of the Stoic mind-set, and what Vic says about wanting to live other people's lives for them is very true and a constant wrinkle of parenthood, to me. Am fully aware of the inevitability/necessity of letting go.

I was looking at a tiny baby on the bus yesterday and I got a real understanding of the theological argument for freedom to live and grow and fuck shit up and die. I got a sense of context, for a minute there.

I aren't this terror and misery all the time.

This truth I hold to be self-evident, tho. Death ought to be terrifying. Not anymore being able to piss yr life away typing on ILX while the sun throws crazy patterns thru the clouds and yr children are living their own sweet lives out there in the city somewhere, without me and unknowable to me, is epic and beautiful but only liveable when people ignore it or fake it or let on that they've got a magic voodoo get-out clause and GAME OVER doesn't mean what it says. It ought to be this massive poke in the brain call to action. It barely ever is. Cos actually taking that poke wd probly mean fucking over all the people I get depressed in the name of anyway.

An additional bother to me is how very quickly, after someone dies, all trace that s/he ever lived disappears. I got interested in one of my great-grandfathers a while back - he emigrated to Australia from Germany in the late nineteenth century and I was interested to know why. But 80 years after his death, there's so little of him remaining. There are two photos of him, his name on a couple of documents, and that's it. Gone. Even his direct descendents know almost nothing about him.

my solution when i get this horrid thought - do some housework

NV I don't understand your last sentence.

BTW being aware of stoicism and what it means is one thing; actually trying to see how the Enchiridion applies to one's own life is another entirely.

Pash I posted that before reading what you'd written. There aren't words proper to offer condolences for something like that, I don't think, but I offer them anyway.

x-posts but to Zelda:

Yes just a few decades after our bodies decompose, 99.8% of us won't be remembered in any way; there will be no traces or memories or echoes. Just think of the trillions of souls that have lives in just the past few thousand years, and how "few" of them grew to be historical figures that are recalled cross cultures

liveD

Yes just a few decades after our bodies decompose, 99.8% of us won't be remembered in any way; there will be no traces or memories or echoes.

RONG cf. the Intarnets. Your memories will live forever in bizarre, suspended data animation! Frankly that disturbs me a lot more.

Trace, my last sentence I think means I really want to run out the door and keep running and running until I drop. I think that idea stuck in my head from Tristram Shandy tho. Usually when I go to bed I have to read until the book drops out of my hand cos sleep being the cousin of death and all I can't walk into it all open-armed.

Thx, NV

Yeah, I get that kind of thought as well, Vic. Like last night, I was playing on my synthesizers, and I have this idea for a piece of music, but then I think WTF is the point, you know? After I die, all this shit (IE my instruments) are just going to be some commodity that's going to get sold and all the music I wrote's just going to vanish & mean nothing, so I picked up my bass guitar and played along with "Firth of Fifth" for the rest of the evening instead.

Well...I'm sure technology will evolve and whatever we are typing on the internet in the 21st century won't really be accessed or of much interest to any but archeologists in the 24th. Maybe I'm wrong and the Nas vs. Jay-Z will become the future Rosetta Stone....but not to derail the conversation, the "future of the Internet and how it will completely consume our daily existences" is probably a whole 'nother topic.

Maybe our bodies can be artificially preserved in some electronic form on here as well

Pash, I really don't know what to say only that I wish I could make it easier for you. Sadly I don't. I... never know what to say to people who grieve as much as you are doing.

But so what if your instruments are going to be sold. It's what you are doing now: enjoy them. It means something NOW.

"This too will pass" which when you realise can be applied to everything is brutal, but also liberating.

This. I often use it now. I know that good things pass but so do bad things.

I think I am just afraid of the unknown. If I have this fear, I try to envision it and how I would handle it. The fear usually goes away after that.

I picked up my bass guitar and played along with "Firth of Fifth" for the rest of the evening instead

I do that except I play Football Manager instead of failing to write shitty novels.

But I'm wrong I think because although I don't buy the idea that what we produce is our afterlife, I still think that what's good about being human is the ideas we share with each other and chucking another half-baked idea into the pot somehow adds to the worth of us as a species or an idea.

Pash - the point is to not to care when you fuck up, since no one is going to be around to remember all your musical mistakes either! I really envy those who can remember the adage of "to live like it's your last day," and apply it but I notice it's usually people who've suffered EXTREME personal loss of one close to them

like death of a child

Hmmm, too many ideas.

A propos of something else, faith I'm sure is a great comfort but I don't believe you can reason your way into it.

Well, but what if there is a God (and afterlife)? I mean, sure we're both atheists and like to say that faith is a comfort... but there could be a God'n'afterlife. Our belief (or disbelief) in it has no relevance of it being (or not being).

Eh, I'm not making much sense.

which is "worse" - death of a spouse, parent or child? it seems like certain people can never "get over" (hate the phrase) the latter, especially women. maybe because something that was directly part of you, your flesh has now died

I can't imagine the loss of a child. I hope to god I never EVER experience it. It would fuck up life forever. I was sitting next to a lady. She was talking about how tragic it was. She had nine kids and one had died. She was just devestated.

An additional bother to me is how very quickly, after someone dies, all trace that s/he ever lived disappears.

One of the saddest things I ever saw - this stall in south shields market a couple of years ago had this collection of wartime photos, looking at it, it was obv that they'd cleared out some old guy's house, he'd flown RAF Hampden bombers, there were pics of him in uniform, lined up among the crew of the machines, all kinds of ephemera. The guy's poss heroic life, stacked up on a market stall. I'd'a bought it all, but I had no money. I went back the next few weeks, but those guys weren't there anymore. I think about this often when I'm feeling morose.

maybe because something that was directly part of you, your flesh has now died

I can't explain why and I don't often enough realise that I feel differently about my children than any other person. It's an indescribable love, it's painful somehow. Or that might be lol hysteria. And yet I'm still frequently a shitty dad, oh the irony.

i think it may have to do with the additional feeling of failure - the primary goal of a parent is to safeguard and protect one's child. if something happens to him and her, you're responsible, in a way you wouldn't be for even a spouse or a parent (until they're very old). so that must be part of why death of children, even when grown, is so devastating - it is against the natural order of things, since everyone expects to go before their own progeny

Pash- it's also creepy, that there are no traces of that person after his family has also passed away. maybe more people should photocopy their journals and leave them here and there every couple of years, but that's egotistical! in regards to those cultures that DO believe in reincarnation/afterlife etc you usually are supposed to feel "indifferent" to this life after it's over, and don't care about such trivial things as being remembered down here

him OR her

I think that the notion of reincarnation without remembering the previous lives is equivalent to death, really. But I think about serious amnesia that way, too. I'm not sure what makes us ourselves except for the memory of what we've been before.

My older child (who's coming up to 5), asks me about death quite a bit, not in an obsessive way or anything, but just cos he always wants to know everything about stuff and it's inevitably what happens to old relatives or animals or the dinosaurs or James Brown or whatever. Those questions are always really tough to field - I don't personally believe in an afterlife and I don't want to cultivate that belief in him. He's quite matter of fact about things though and is usually happy with the explanation that we won't die until we're really, really, really old. In my head though I'm always thinking about how deeply scared of death I was as a kid (still am), and I just don't want him to have the same worries, but I don't know what the fuck I can do to avoid it. That makes me pretty sad.

Also, Pash, dunno what to say really, but shit man, that's awful.

"The 'ending' which we have in view when we speak of death, does not signify Dasein's Being-at-an-end [Zu-Ende-sein] but a Being-towards-the-end [Sein zum Ende] of this entity" (Being and Time, 289).

There's an essay I'd rly like to quote here but my book is at homes, so I'll enlist the help of Ursula LeGuin instead:

"There is no safety, and there is no end. The word must be heard in silence; there must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss."

the way I framed that headspace was that it was a mode of thinking in which I fully realised that I was ME, and not someone else, and that all my experiences and knowledge of life belonged only to me. It's difficult to describe how truly bizarre a feeling it is to enter this zone. From time to time I would consciously try to enter it, and it would usually take a couple of minutes, but usually it would eventually "click" and there I was.

― Tracer Hand

i used to do this a lot as a kid, too! the way i'd describe is like being simultaneously completely aware of your own physical and intellectual/emotional presence whilst being completely outside of yourself... or something. i can still do it now relatively easily, but i try not to because it's such an incredibly bizarro feeling.

i've never really feared my own death (there was one time, but it was long ago and it's a dumb story), but i have consistently worried about others. mostly, for me, it comes down to lol 'abandonment issues'. when i was a kid, at night while i was in bed, i'd hear my mum moving round the house and i would always be convinced she was packing a suitcase and running off without me. over time that transformed into a fear of people around me dying suddenly. my own death scares me far less than the thought of being old and looking back on my life with nothing of interest to note.

i've had a pretty miserable life life so far, so death in a funny way would almost be a relief. i can't really see it turning around now at 27 considering i have no discernable talents or ambition. another 50 years of shitty admin work and mawkish mass-produced entertainment? thanks, life!

as for leaving a legacy or having people remember me... so what? i never assumed anybody would in the first place. that whole idea seems bizarre to me, rock bottom self-esteem has it's upsides i suppose.

if you had a gun to my head i'd still feel that primal, animal terror of death but when i look at it in the cold light of day it doesn't seem so bad.

I have to say that after watching my mom pass away two weeks ago, I feel significantly less ambivalent about being alive and a little more enthused about getting stuff done.

Also, my sister took a cassette of my mom performing her Master's recital at the funeral (Bach and Brahms, mostly) and put it on CDs for everyone in attendance. It was the first time I'd ever heard it, and it might have been the first time I heard my mom play anything other than Rachmaninoff. Now I have it on CD, so yay for modern technology.

Should read: "Also, my sister took a cassette of my mom performing her Master's recital (Bach and Brahms, mostly) and put it on CDs for everyone in attendance at the funeral."

This may just be me, but what rids me of this suffocation the most is watching the Iron Giant. Do you like that movie NV? Like I said, it may be a personal thing. It came out after like three of my friends had died (in this 2.5-year span wherein seven of my friends died), and it was the perfect thing for me, so sweet and gentle and innocent, but sting too. Invincible.

People can be all those things and you can be all those things and obsessing about death is one facet of what makes you a thriving, wonderful human, so do not feel bad ON TOP OF IT for feeling this way, NV. I've got your hand right in mine.

Go read your kids a story you really liked as a kid. Stories get passed on forever.

but sting too

this is meant to say STRONG, not Fields of Gold smugface

The way I framed that headspace was that it was a mode of thinking in which I fully realised that I was ME, and not someone else, and that all my experiences and knowledge of life belonged only to me. It's difficult to describe how truly bizarre a feeling it is to enter this zone. From time to time I would consciously try to enter it, and it would usually take a couple of minutes, but usually it would eventually "click" and there I was -- Tracer Hand

i used to do this a lot as a kid, too! the way i'd describe is like being simultaneously completely aware of your own physical and intellectual/emotional presence whilst being completely outside of yourself... -- Rubyredd

Same thing here. I completely forgot about it, haven't done it since I was in my teens, and then Tracer's post made me spontaneously start to do it just now. I stopped myself - I hate it. It's like having the world collapse in on you.

^^^ i have no idea what any of you are going on about. sounds interesting, tho.

internet person, can i just say - and this WILL sound corny and cliche but it's totally sincere - i felt pretty much the same way as you when i was 27 (i turn 29 in a few weeks)... and then pretty much my whole life changed, for the better. sometimes shit just sneaks up on you when you're not expecting it.

Abbott I never said thank you and I meant to say thank you. Lots. Cheers.

This thing never really goes away but most of the time one learns to be less of a dick about it.

i used to do this a lot as a kid, too! the way i'd describe is like being simultaneously completely aware of your own physical and intellectual/emotional presence whilst being completely outside of yourself... or something. i can still do it now relatively easily, but i try not to because it's such an incredibly bizarro feeling.

I have felt exactly like this, so odd.

When I was in the worst stage of my illness/depression caused by illness over the last few years, I can remember feeling like I was watching myself live my life. I was working in a record store and I'd just robotically be nice to customers, watch myself walking around, doing the job, and this was utterly detached from how I felt.

Then I'd leave work and watch myself going home as the world did whatever it was doing. It's a really strange headspace, when you get very low I guess you find mechanisms to not agonise or obsess about problems.

I can remember almost commenting in my head on my actions "now I'm putting a cd in a case, now I'm handing it to someone, this is all perfectly normal".

Here is the good news. If we are so fortunate as to live long and enter old age, then there is a decent chance that the gradual loss of our health and vigor will pave the way for death, making it seem less of a sacrifice, and the harsh struggle of our final illness will allow us to welcome death as a respite from our pain and bone weariness. Death may come as a natural cessation to a life that cannot be supported any longer.

It is not as easy to contemplate dying while we are still vigorous enough to enjoy life, and that is what makes death seem so awful when we are still young, fit and full of hopes and plans. However, it's well worth working on one's fear of death in one's youth and adulthood, because coming to terms with it (and it will happen) is ultimately pretty liberating.

One byproduct of really coming to grips with the inevitability of my death is that it has made me much more engaged with my life. As I mentioned in the 'turing forty' thread, my life has never "just flown by", as so many people in middle age say happens to them. It is mostly a matter of just facing each day, each hour, each minute squarely. This isn't an act of will or anything. It just seems that, when you stop averting your gaze from death, you get to see and feel more of what is in front of you. It is a wonderful bonus that just happened for me.

21. Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible, be daily before your eyes - but chiefly death - and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.

Been terrified of death since I was a kid. Used to wake up in the middle of the night and run into mum and dad's room crying, "I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die". It still happens to me now, as an adult. Normally only when I'm really stressed out...but it'll pull me right out of sleep, and I'll start crying. I've trained myself to just not think about it, or change the subject...so maybe it's just the repression making it come out unexpectedly. It's completely selfish too..as worried as I am about others dying, my own fear is for myself...I don't want to not exist.

Epictetus would say it's not death that makes you freak out, but your feelings about death. Your feelings are in your own control - even if they feel unmanageable, they belong to you. Death doesn't belong to you, it's not in your control.

http://images25.fotosik.pl/113/2aee9e2ae3db7867.jpg

VegemiteGrrrl, I suspect you are correct to think that the supression of your feelings accounts for their random emergence. The way I figure it, this will only get worse as you get nearer to death, unless you take the bull by the horns (which, when you look past the fog of the cliche is all about doing something that is naturally very terrifying).

I expect that, before you can rid yourself of these feelings, you will need to let them out of their cage, where they can exhaust themselves somewhat, making them easier to manage. You can't reason yourself out of them until you face them.

If you plan to try what I am suggesting, I would counsel you to do it in the company of someone who loves you and won't be freaked out by watching you freak out. That person should maintain an attitude of calm reassurance, reminding you that what you are feeling is not fatal, or even physically harmful (they're just feelings), but should also encourage you to stay with those feelings and not shove them down. This takes a certain amount of courage from both parties, which is why it helps if you love each other.

After a session of feeling actively terrified of death (it may take a fair number of them to really get through this process), talk about some stuff that is really very pleasant to contemplate, especially some things you are looking forward to.

After a while, you should be able to start thinking about death in a calmer and more realistic way, where you can start to develop a new set of feelings about death which will not put you so much at its mercy.

Good luck.

the amount of famous people dying recently makes me click on thread titles of the aged and famous, it's good that godard is still alive but now rivette is dead
there might be a case for some other acronym other than RIP as suffix to titles of the threads about people like godard

I thought that's what the little circles were supposed to signify

(Bare Fucking Mouldering in the Dutt)
(Nuff Fucking Dead)
(N.L.A)
(Ghost)
(some shit spoonerism with Caspar or Hoffa e.g. Colfing with Gaspar)
(dis-cunt(is not)tinued)
(Fucking White Cadaver)
(F.U.D.T)

RIP Dead

Some of my best friends are dead people