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Dealing with death


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So, as I posted elsewhere, my uncle Dave died this week. I was able to make the trek down to his hometown today with my mom, but because of other commitments I can’t make the funeral on Monday. 
 

I feel really weird, though, because I don’t seem to react like other people do when it comes to death. I cried twice on the day of my dad’s funeral, and never before or since. I don’t feel sad about him dying. I don’t feel sad about my uncle dying. I see other people feeling it, and I can sympathize them, but I just don’t feel it. My brother and sister still get sad about my dad, and that was 9 years ago. 
 

I don’t know. Am I just broken? 

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In my case, both were sudden. But not entirely unexpected, especially my uncle. He was 73, a heavy cigar smoker, and a heavy drinker. My dad was 65 and died suddenly of a heart attack. 

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I wish I were more like you, whatever it is that allows you to process death so cleanly.

My mom has a rare cancer and is opting not to treat it and I am falling apart. And I'm an only child so I can't afford to feel this just yet. I'm barely getting better about my Dad's death four years ago

 

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I am also wondering if your faith plays a role. Some people are more comfortable with death because of their faith and/or the beliefs of the deceased. Leading up to my uncle passing, he was firm that he was unafraid of death because of his faith. He faced it fearlessly and with open arms. His family was still heartbroken but I think it did help somewhat. It was a comfort to me, although I wasn't that inner circle. Also, if you're not afraid of death yourself, I think that also shapes how you mourn.

I mean, you did cry about your dad. Its not like you never shed a single tear.

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I have borderline crippling anxiety about death.  If I watch a countdown, like watching popcorn in the microwave...I think, I am three minutes closer to death.  I am not scared of say, dying in a car crash or whatever, it is death itself--whether I die in a car crash tonight or I live to be 120 is irrelevant.  I believe there is a statistically significant chance that we are an avatar in a matrix, but even if true, even that has an end.  As much as I want to, I can't believe in a supernatural life beyond this. 

My grandpa, whom I owe everything to and named my son after, I cry for him from time to time.  My grandma passed this summer and I cried for her.  In both instances, there wasn't a service.

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19 hours ago, Fozzie said:

So, as I posted elsewhere, my uncle Dave died this week. I was able to make the trek down to his hometown today with my mom, but because of other commitments I can’t make the funeral on Monday. 
 

I feel really weird, though, because I don’t seem to react like other people do when it comes to death. I cried twice on the day of my dad’s funeral, and never before or since. I don’t feel sad about him dying. I don’t feel sad about my uncle dying. I see other people feeling it, and I can sympathize them, but I just don’t feel it. My brother and sister still get sad about my dad, and that was 9 years ago. 
 

I don’t know. Am I just broken? 

When my Mom died in 2013, I held it in for 4 days, then I let loose and cried for like a half hour.   After that, nothing.  My Mom died in her sleep peacefully, so I take comfort in that.   When my Dad died in August of this year, I teared up when I heard, and I am certainly very sad even now, but I have not cried.   I think the difference with my Dad is that he had been sick for years and I had been his main caregiver.  He had many hospital stays since my Mom died so I think in a way, I was used to the crisis part of it.  When my Dad died, he was at a point where he needed health care that he was not willing to consent to.  He was ready to go.  So, I feel like maybe I was used to all the illness he had and when he did die, it was in some way a relief to him. 

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To add to my earlier post, while I didn't cry that much for my parents, they both are constantly on my mind.  I was really depressed for a while when my Mom went.   I think I still am in shock with my Dad's passing, but I haven't had much time to grieve him, either.  Between work, cleaning out my Dad's house to prep for sale, being sick myself for almost 3 weeks, and did I say work sucking, I can't believe its been almost 2 months since my Dad died. 

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I don't cry or grieve much with deaths either. I did cry a lot when my grandfather died, but I was 17 at the time and I think that played a bigger part than my actual grief. 

Of course, I haven't lost a parent, spouse, kid, or sibling, so there's that as well.

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Us guys can be different when it comes to death. A lot of times were trying to protect that we are in control of things by but crying in front of people. That's why we think about it and cry when we're alone. Also mourning a male death affects it as well. Here is an important question. Are you thinking about others or yourself mostly. If you're think about your relatives, you might be trying to be strong for them.

Sorry about your uncle.

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I have struggled a lot with this in recent years, I'm having a continually evolving background existential crisis.

Around four or so years ago, my beloved niece flatlined and technically died on the airlift to the children's hospital.  She eventually made it and is now a nonstop and deafening bundle of mischief, but there was a few days where we thought she was gone and a few months where we thought she'd never be the same again.

Last year was tough too.  I lost my grandpa and my cat of over a decade,  both were normal and had to be expected because they were both old in their own ways.  But another instance that really hurt was a very good friend that was around my age.  It was very much not expected, and it is still an awful situation all around because she had just had a daughter no more than a year before she passed.

Also recently I lost an uncle to COVID.  It's very discouraging and infuriating because he was very much an anti-masker / anti-vaxxer.  I couldn't even bring myself to go to his funeral because that whole side of the family is pretty vocal about their stance on that thing, and I knew if I was there I would end up saying something I couldn't take back.  I just had to do the emotional math and realized that the distance I'd make by not showing up would be less than what I'd make by getting drawn into an argument in that situation.

All of that combined with the mess of the last year and a half can't help but make you question existence.  All of the needless death in that time has taken parents away from kids, split families like mine, so many different things.  I think it's caused me to be a little more nihilistic than I'd like to be.  I've found myself withdrawing from more things and more people and perhaps subconsciously and intentionally making my social circle smaller.  Because what's the point, right?  If anything could take us away at any moment, what's the point of striving for a goal you may never see?  I find myself living in the moment more and not worrying about tomorrow, and I'm still trying to find a better balance for that all the time.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This week I am going to make a Day of the Dead altar to celebrate my Mom and Nan. We  have a little table with a cloth and things that they loved or representing things they loved and a white candle to burn. We'll leave an offering of bread out and light it at night. I can't believe I miss them soooo. They made me nuts sometimes but I want to remember them at their best. 

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On 10/18/2021 at 7:24 AM, D-Ray Kenobi said:

I have struggled a lot with this in recent years, I'm having a continually evolving background existential crisis.

Around four or so years ago, my beloved niece flatlined and technically died on the airlift to the children's hospital.  She eventually made it and is now a nonstop and deafening bundle of mischief, but there was a few days where we thought she was gone and a few months where we thought she'd never be the same again.

Last year was tough too.  I lost my grandpa and my cat of over a decade,  both were normal and had to be expected because they were both old in their own ways.  But another instance that really hurt was a very good friend that was around my age.  It was very much not expected, and it is still an awful situation all around because she had just had a daughter no more than a year before she passed.

Also recently I lost an uncle to COVID.  It's very discouraging and infuriating because he was very much an anti-masker / anti-vaxxer.  I couldn't even bring myself to go to his funeral because that whole side of the family is pretty vocal about their stance on that thing, and I knew if I was there I would end up saying something I couldn't take back.  I just had to do the emotional math and realized that the distance I'd make by not showing up would be less than what I'd make by getting drawn into an argument in that situation.

All of that combined with the mess of the last year and a half can't help but make you question existence.  All of the needless death in that time has taken parents away from kids, split families like mine, so many different things.  I think it's caused me to be a little more nihilistic than I'd like to be.  I've found myself withdrawing from more things and more people and perhaps subconsciously and intentionally making my social circle smaller.  Because what's the point, right?  If anything could take us away at any moment, what's the point of striving for a goal you may never see?  I find myself living in the moment more and not worrying about tomorrow, and I'm still trying to find a better balance for that all the time.

I am pretty much a nihilist.  I wish I believed in some form of never-ending afterlife.  But I can't--but that has nothing to do with the world the way it is now. 

I had a similar experience with my family resulting in the death of my grandma.  It was their decision not to mask and vaccinate which resulted in the death of your grandpa and who knows how many other needless deaths.  Why would anything you say be unable to take back--when their actions resulted in the ultimate "cannot be taken back". 

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I personally think something survives beyond death.  Life is too complex and intricate to believe that nothing happens after life as we know it ends.  I believe firmly that we as humans go on after death, even if in unexpected, or even unknown ways.  But however our demise unfolds, I think we transform into something, even if it is lesser or unknown to our modern science and faith.

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I don't know what I am or what label if any applies to me these days.  I personally think that the universe and just about every law of physics suggest that it's impossible for there not to be some sort of intelligent creator, but the older I get and hopefully the wiser I get, the more that I realize that it's above my pay grade to assume anything about who that might be.  There's bits and pieces of what might be evidence around, but I think years of decontextualization and the warped way that so-called Christians have distorted things recently have made it impossible to lean on some invisible pillar of blind belief.

If I don't even understand all that much about this plane of existence, it's certain that I don't understand much at all about any other one.  So there being some sort of afterlife isn't entirely impossible to me, but there isn't enough independent evidence to say much about it.  Whether there is or isn't, beyond doing right by people, I'm still taking this present existence a lot less seriously.  Maybe what we do in it now might make a small little ripple, but all ripples fade out and are forgotten, no matter how much we try to pretend they turn into waves.

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