I apologise for this seemingly morbid topic.
At 46 many people might start thinking about dying... I don't mean considering doing it, I mean thinking that they are getting older and that they are mortal, and that we won't be here forever.
Nobody said this to me, but in the newspaper report of our crash I red that my injuries were 'initially thought to be life threatening'. I thought about this and wondered what it would have been like to die, given that I was so drugged up on morphine there are bits I can't really remember clearly. I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't really have known about it and that it would have been my family and friends who would have had all the suffering.
I was thinking about it the other day, and realised that although I am scared of getting old and infirm and losing my mental abilities; and of suffering and pain for both myself and my loved ones, I'm not afraid of dying itself.
It's not that I believe in an afterlife or heaven/hell, I just feel that it will be a long and very peaceful sleep (hopefully not involving strange dreams that involve having to hide the duvet).
Having discovered a lump when I was in my early teens, I've thought about death a great deal. I'm not scared of death as I have a faith, but I'm very scared of dying.
ReplyDeleteJoey,
ReplyDeleteI don't think you have to have a faith to not be afraid of death (maybe I'll change my mind when I'm 80!). Although right now I can't honestly say whether I have a faith or not.
I suppose where I say 'dying' I mean 'death'. Of course I am scared of a painful dying process, but that is not what I'm referring to.
J.
"Seemingly morbid"? Maybe, but I suspect a lot of us think about it quite a lot, especially as we get older...
ReplyDeleteI came to the same conclusion as you have, after nursing someone I loved very much through the last months of bowel cancer. He died a peaceful, dignified death, and the whole experience left me no longer afraid of dying.
A
I think it's a normal place to find yourself given the experiences and the trauma involved.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't find it morbid--I find it common ground for all human beings.
We awaken to mortality......sometimes we do that gracefully, sometimes notsomuch--but we get to visit it, one way or another.
I don't think it's morbid either...actually, I think it's quite healthy to talk about these things.
ReplyDeleteLike you I am not religious and like you I am not afraid of death but the process of dying worries me. I think it comes from spending a lot of time with people and their carers at the end of their life and some of the stories I have heard about the care they received have left me reeling. I have given it some thought and when I get a bit older (am only 37) I plan to create my own 'death plan' which will detail what I want to happen (I figure if you can have a 'birth plan' then you can have a death one) and it will leave my family in no doubt about my wishes.
C x
Carol, I wouldn't know where to start with doing that... Do you think it would make it easier or more difficult for your family? I would also be wondering what care situation we will all be living in by the time we are old (I am 46 so hopefully still a long way off this too..). I am dreading my parents getting to the stage of needing care, the thought of trying to find the right person/place fills me with dread.
ReplyDeleteOn a separate but partly related subject, Radio 4 was talking this morning about donors and apparently in 10% of cases the family go against the dead person's wishes. Of course it may be that the dead person did not communicate their wishes clearly to their family.
Jx
Hi Juniper, My dad died of a heart attack when I was 11 so I have been thinking about death since an early age. Death happens though it does worry me, I have two children and the thought of them not having a mum makes me shudder. Death of others sadden me but I think only the loss of my children would really shake me to the core. On my own mortality two pregnancies and they both nearly killed me first blood clot on the lung, second I hemorriged. Who do I thank for my survival SCIENCE and the wonderful people who study it and practise it.
ReplyDelete