• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

Afraid of death

The older I get, the less my own death bothers me - and I agree with a lot of what others said on this topic, who aren't afraid of death, intellectually or emotionally. Of course, instinctively we are programmed to have a survival instinct, for good reasons.

Two long pieces I wrote about mortality that explain what's shaping my own attitude to it - if anyone wants a long read with a big cup of tea...

Requiem for a Friend

How a friend's death taught me that the most important things never die...and that our individual survival is not the most important thing, and living life well is more important...

And also, from the perspective of living in an ecosystem and dealing with death on a regular basis:

Julian & Friends

Individuals die, but life continues. The individual I mourn is also making the flowers bloom and the birds sing.
 
Faith is a Firefly

Sitting on the porch
its weathered cement
hot water bottle warm

Grandpa's standing
just a little bit behind
as we watch the lights
in the old fir grove

nature's fireworks
begin in earnest
as day slips away

the thought blooms
the words spilled
I couldn't catch them

but I realised
those words

they're true...

faith is a firefly

Grandpa understood
 
My thoughts on death:

There's a distinction between dying and death (being dead). I think most people are afraid of the act of dying because it's something most people (ie those who haven't died and been revived) experience only once and it's an unknown; fear of the unknown. Fear of pain and suffering, etc. Also, some people die horrific deaths from heinous and evil acts. Even a slow death from terminal cancer can be a horrible thing. Those are things anyone is likely to be afraid of possibly happening to them.

Then there's being dead. Past tense. Gone. No more life. Ceasing to exist.

Those who truly believe in an afterlife with all their heart and believe in their "salvation" have nothing to fear about being dead. In fact, if such a person does fear being dead, that's an issue they should explore in further detail. There's something amiss there.

Those who do not believe in an afterlife believe instead that once a person is dead, they cease to exist in any form. They're gone. Done. No more. No awareness. No memory of being alive. Literally nothing. Such a person has nothing to fear about being dead. Why? Once dead they won't exist. Fear dying? Fear up to the point of actually being dead? Sure. Fine. But dead, no fear of that. In fact, if such a person does fear being dead, that's an issue they should explore in further detail. There's something amiss there. My conviction is that an Atheist and/or someone who does not believe in any sort of afterlife should not fear being dead in any way.
 
Last edited:
Life's a fractal we continue living through our decendents. I saw that first hand a few weeks ago at a family get together in the next generation.
 
Almost being murdered by an abuser, and being hospitalized with serious diseases, more than once, has actually increased my fear of death :confused:

Edit: To clarify, I’m afraid of dying, not being dead. I believe in the afterlife and I am trying my best to not end up somewhere bad when I die. I am afraid of being tortured or dying from terminal illness or injury.
 
I've changed in my view of life and of death over the years.

About twenty years ago I was at a silent retreat which was held at a well kept sprawling retreat center. It was bliss being able to be silent for four days while taking frequent solitary walks on the trails and in the fields. This was at a time in my life when I believed that humans have an eternal soul and other living things do not. I stopped and looked down at the ground. I was transfixed by some ants focused on their tasks at hand. I thought about how the ants live their short lives and then they die. They don't live on. They exist, then they don't and that's it. I thought about people. What if there was no afterlife and we just lived, existed and then died and were no more and that was it? I was filled with a deep sense of sadness over the thought. How sad, tragic even, if that was the case?

At this point in my life I have a different viewpoint. Perhaps it comes with living that much longer or it comes with being more connected to the earth than I was twenty years ago. Is the life of a flower sad and tragic? Or a leaf on a tree which starts as a fresh light green colored bud, then vibrant green then a dazzling autumn color before it drops and dies. What about a songbird? Are their lives sad and tragic? They're beautiful. Life is beautiful. The life cycle is beautiful. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It has a finality, a final chapter, a bookend. Is that sad and tragic? Does death overshadow the beauty that life is and can be or is it just part of the cycle and as such, is part of the overall beauty of life? Is life sad and tragic if it doesn't continue past being dead? Or is it like a flower, a leaf, a bird? I don't think it's sad or tragic.
 
Last edited:
Darkkin said:
Faith is a Firefly

Sitting on the porch
its weathered cement
hot water bottle warm

Grandpa's standing
just a little bit behind
as we watch the lights
in the old fir grove

nature's fireworks
begin in earnest
as day slips away

the thought blooms
the words spilled
I couldn't catch them

but I realised
those words

they're true...

faith is a firefly

Grandpa understood
Click to expand...
Nice imagery. I once got to see synchronized fireflies on the black mangroves of the Selangor River. All the fireflies on each tree would flash at once and floating silently in a rowboat one could see waves of light traveling down the river. It was a sublime experience. I knew about them in 1974, but did not get to see them until 1997.
 
I have the opposite view. Aren't we tired of all this?

But I do fear having a very painful death wherein medicine struggles to keep me alive just to suffer.
 
I resonated with @Magna on this, although I think for me, logical thinking about things as he has done, works well to dispel fear, but for some it seems their emotions override or get around logic. I would say, working on our own issues and resilience can help develop our thinking, which is one of our best defences against fears.
 
Life is inseparable from death. Life cannot happen without recycling of molecules.

Life is a process, matter is the building blocks, the individual matter changes, but the process continues indefinitely. Continuous renewal. This is how the universe works.
 
Fear of dying, yes.
Pain, prolonged illness, how will it feel when you stop breathing, heart stops, etc.
It's the unknown.
I've already been through cancer and other illnesses that caused a lot of suffering.
It is that fear of what will it be like that keeps me facing the pain life gives.

I am not soothed by religious beliefs that heaven awaits.
I don't know what awaits. If it is nothingness, like when under general anesthesia, then there will
be no more awareness of pain or mental/emotional anguish.
But, there may be something beyond and stepping into that unknown is also scary.

I don't think about it all the time. But, it is an awareness that is a part of daily life.
There is nothing in life worth dying for has always been my philosophy.
If I had never been born, there would never have been fear of the inevitable.
A little late for that now.
 
It's most definitely innately terrifying to almost anyone that comes into contact with it. There's a lot of cognition walls we can build to lessen the fear and especially to try avoid an obsession but I'm not sure of any steps that can be taken to do this process very deliberately. If you don't stumble into it with full belief in your own logic it's not exactly a wall and more like a curtain.
I'm scared of death, but of living too. I'm scared of a great many things that don't hurt at all and are only painful in the fact that they scare me. But I wouldn't choose immortality. And if it's not forever, it has to end at some point. And if you can accept it has to end at some point, you can accept it ending when it does.
 
Im Agnostic not a Atheist, do suspect if an after life exists it exists it is in the form of information that the universe retains universe to eternity. Every thought every action is retained humans are not special, whether the information can be reassembled, I will leave to peoples faith. I suspect an eternal omnipotent, benevolent being could this do at will. I"ll stick with science until death, I'm told you so will then will have no meaning. a working hypothesis until then satisfies me.
 
Have never been afraid of death. I was more afraid of not living. Wasting a life with worry, anxiety, and doubt.

I think this is because Western cultures' concept of death is steeped in dread and fear (an "end all" viewpoint) whereas Eastern cultures it's just an everyday part of life and it isn't hidden away from us (transient viewpoint). Here, when someone dies, the body is immediately taken away from family view until the funeral, whereas in many Eastern cultures, the body is kept and taken care of at home for ceremonies performed by the family.

Differences in religion is a main culprit for this which translates to culture as well, with Eastern being more interdependent and communal so there's always large support networks.

My current belief is that death is just a transient state to another state of being. So the fear mostly focuses on loved ones being left behind, not my own suffering and pain.
 
Last edited:
Just watched the second to last episode of This Is Us, with Rebecca in her death bed and William made a very poignant speech about death:

"The way I see it, if something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been pretty wonderful when it was happening. Truth be told, I always felt it a bit lazy to just think of the world as sad, because so much of it is. Because everything ends. Everything dies. But if you step back, if you step back and look at the whole picture, if you're brave enough to allow yourself the gift of a really wide perspective, if you do that, you'll see that the end is not sad, Rebecca. It's just the start of the next incredibly beautiful thing."
 
Fino said:
I have the opposite view. Aren't we tired of all this?

But I do fear having a very painful death wherein medicine struggles to keep me alive just to suffer.
Click to expand...

Ironically, shortly after posting this, I had one of the most painful experiences of my life. My medication caused gastritis, and I didn't realize it so I took a handful of medication as usual, on an empty stomach, and had to go to the emergency room where I wanted to die for the next 48-72 hours.
 
Fino said:
Ironically, shortly after posting this, I had one of the most painful experiences of my life. My medication caused gastritis, and I didn't realize it so I took a handful of medication as usual, on an empty stomach, and had to go to the emergency room where I wanted to die for the next 48-72 hours.
Click to expand...
OUCH! I remember the sensation of wanting to tear my innards out just to escape the pain.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New Threads

Top Bottom