Ask Lemmy

No

My wife (39) died in October. Her breast cancer moved to her brain and over 20 days she went from perfect function to not being able to speak or move and being in excruciating pain. Sometime over those three weeks I made peace with my eventual death.

I dont believe in an afterlife but I hope there is one just so I can see her again. But either way life is to hard to wish to live forever. Immortality is a young persons wish. When you get older and you see what life takes from you piece by piece you come to realize that the end is not to be feared but welcomed just so the pain stops.

Motherfucker, I'm not emotionally prepared to do the dishes

Yes, i am. I had a challenging health episode last year, and am a member of a legal framework for assisted dying. I worked through the emotions, the letting go and the planning. It was very liberating, hard and sad. And I think I grew as a person in the process. I had a good life, and am happy I can live more, but I can confidently say I know how it feels, and if the world goes to shit I am out of here. I am not suicidal at all and enjoy family and my body, food, music, etc.

Yes. I've met enough people and seen enough things. It's not going to get better.

Also we're rapidly heading towards a future without topsoil, fresh water and breathable air. Oh and resource wars/ww3. Good times right?

United Nations: 90% of Earth’s topsoil at risk of depletion by 2050

World Economic Forum: Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030, experts warn

Stockholm University: Seven of nine planetary boundaries now breached

Hopefully cancer or something gets me before shit gets really bad in my area.

Yes. Please strike me down where I stand.

This is an impossible question to answer with certainty for pretty much everyone. Maybe the extremely suicidal or the terminally ill, but likely not anyone else.

Death (and our perceived relationship to it) changes with our proximity to it. So, being existentially and emotionally prepared for death when you’re young is very different from when you’re old, and from when death is pretty much imminent. I would wager even people who report a high degree of confidence that they are prepared for their eventual death are less so (and likely much less so) when they are facing imminent death. I imagine the number of people who don’t experience fear when their death is imminent is actually quite low.

I have considered myself prepared for death for much of my adult life, but since sometime in my 30’s I have also accepted that I can’t predict my preparedness in the months-to-moments before I die. The existential threat of your existence ending is simply too dependent on its immediacy to be predicted with certainty ahead of time.

I'm only scared of the pain that comes immediately before and the pain inflicted on my loved ones. Otherwise, if thinking purely selfishly, I wouldn't mind much. I had a goodorun but now i'm exhausted of life in general.

I've had a couple close calls and while that puts urgency and importance in perspective it did shit for anxiety or existential dread about death. I think there'll always be something else I want to do or time I want to spend with, but for emotionally preparing for death I think the 3 biggest positive effects have been deconstructing from my childhood indoctrinated belief in a utopia afterlife, an epic dose of shrooms in my 20s that helped with death anxiety and just anxiety in general, and grieving over the death of friends and family and understanding the process of death better by being there for someone as they experienced their last weeks.

Yes, I simply don't find enjoyments anymore that make me say "oh, I am so glad to be alive". Not that I am rushing to die, it's simply... waiting for my time to run out. Modern world doesn't prioritize enjoyment anymore and interaction with friends and family as it doesn't bring shareholder value.

Nope. Got too much shit to do.

Emotionally? Maybe. I have so many things that I still want to do that death is not even on the radar, and wasn’t even on the radar when I was a socially isolated and depressed teen. So I am not ready, but I would be able to accept it.

Mentally? Yes. As an atheist, I am of the firm belief that everything that has a beginning has an end, and death itself holds no fear for me.

Rather, it is the potentially-painful process of dying that has me nervous. And the concept of wanting to wrap things up and just shut it all down, but being stuck in hospice and no longer having a legal right to do so, is absolutely terrifying for me. Which is why I am now walking my Octogenarian parents through the process of MAiD such that they can still leverage it whenever they want to and for as long as possible; to give them the agency to flip that switch as they see fit. Supporting and maintaining their right of self-determination and agency right to the very end is probably the biggest gift I could ever give them.

Physically? Dear goodness, I hope not. Seeing as my own father is inching rather close to 90, and doing so in good physical condition, gives me hope that I can get another three-plus decades under my belt as well. I just hope I won’t mirror his cognitive decline.

Yes, no and perhaps.

Yes, because, simply put, it is inevitable. It is the only certain thing. I will end.

No, because I don't want to leave those who need or may need me to be left alone. I would like to see all those I love and cherish grow, build their families and carve their place into the world.

Perhaps, because there is nothing I can do to prevent, avoid or delay it. It will happen. When it happens, it will be sad but it will have to happen.

That's it.

I spent New Years in a camper van way out in the countryside.
While falling asleep I had the thought "if there's something wrong with the gas heating, I could die in my sleep tonight."
And then I realized that I would be perfectly fine with that. I've had a great and adventurous life so far, achieved my goals, have no children, and I know friends will take care of my cats.

Don't get me wrong, I am not the least bit suicidal, but I am not afraid to die anymore, and that's a greatly liberating feeling.

One of the reasons my panic attacks never last long is that I feel like I’m dying and once I think “hey wait why am I freaking out? I don’t care if I die and if I do I’d rather not die feeling so stressed” usually my body calms down very fast.

Same thing with a time when I almost drowned. I realized I’d rather just let go, so I stopped flailing about and let myself start sinking. Then it’s like “okay this is taking longer than expected to die, I could probably push myself up to take a breath or maybe even swim to shallow water before I die”

Accepting death is a great way to calm yourself down in stressful situations and calming yourself down is helpful in most stressful situations lol

I've dealt with brain cancer on and off for most of my life, and for a while things were looking pretty bad. I'm good now, but I think I came to terms with my own mortality pretty early on (around when I was 16). As someone now rapidly approaching 30, if I were to go tomorrow I feel I'd be OK with that, though I would worry about how my fiancée would take it (or not, I'd be dead so I wouldn't care about much of anything). I'm still looking forward to many more adventures but when my time is up, so be it.

When I die, I won't have emotions anymore.

Not at all, and I don't think I ever will. I want to see what will happen in the future, I want to learn everything, sadly that wont happen.

I'm happy with existence and desperate about it ending.

Used to be. Since I had kids, the answer is no.

Nope

Yes. I wonder what will happen to my plushies. It seems idiot I know, but I have around 150 plushies and they are bound together. They share a story. I don't want them to split, I don't want us to be apart, and I don't want them to "die".

Yea

Yes, since I already experienced it once. Before that I was terrified.

I’ve gone through it all so many times in my head, I do think I’d be prepared, but I am not ready, never have been, as illustrated by my consistently disappointing attempts at suicide, more so when I was younger, but not so many years ago, too.

There’s, fortunately, enough for me here not to be ready, instincts fight back, the mind finds a way to end in a satisfying enough compromise for whatever acute drives me there at the time. But since I’ve gone far enough on many of those occasions, I’ve done a lot of both mental and emotional work to be prepared, I’m happy with how my life is and has been, I wouldn’t feel like I miss anything, or I didn’t get to do all I wanted. I have. The important bits, that is. All the rest are just nice little things to do while I’m stuck here.

I was never suicidal in the bitter or angry sense. I’ve always just been simply too tired to bear everything life brings. It’s just too much and not worth it in my mind. But apparently my subconscious thinks otherwise. Which is fine. It’s a beautiful world, for the most part people are amazing and full of light, the nature just fills your soul with joy and a sense of wonder, animals are just so impossibly adorable to observe from afar, some from close enough that their excitement and love just rubs into me, too.

It’s all good, but not worth all the rest of it. It’s just way too tiring. Makes you empty and drained on a daily basis. There’s so much love and beauty, but not enough time, not enough resources, not enough anything to really reach them in a consistent enough basis, so you fight and you fight, you bear through everything to get there more often, and it’s simply not enough. It’s not worth it. I’d rather cease to exist and be blissfully oblivious to all of it. And be happy I got the time I did with it all. It was beautiful, in part, and it was so endearing, in part, but I’d rather leave it at that, smile and fade away to nothingness, away from all the toil and effort it takes to barely reach anything.

So in a conscious sense I’m all prepared, I’ve even gone and talked my friends and family through all this, so they’d be prepared too, so there wouldn’t be any threads left hanging. It’s all wrapped up nicely in a beautiful, happy little bundle, that should let me join eternity in peace, with a smile. I’d even like to think I’m ready, but in practice, I’ve had to come to accept my subconscious self simply doesn’t agree. Every time it feels like it does, finally, and I go through all the song and dance, and at the last minute, it halts my hand and makes me back off. Sometimes so bitterly close to release.

So I can’t really say I’m ready, even though I feel ready. Have felt for a very long time. Decades.

But I’m happy enough to remain here. It’s still a beautiful world. People, animals, nature are still so full or wonder and love. It feels barely worth it, I’d even say not worth it really, but the subconscious self has its own evaluation which doesn’t line up so nicely with mine. But I guess I should be happy about it, since while each and every day brings further drain, more burden, heavier a weight on my shoulders, it also adds up slowly to the pile of beauty and love and light and all. Not in a bearable ratio, in my mind, but who am I to question my subconscious. It’s still beauty, love and light. I’ll take it, if I have to, and I’ll cling to it all for sense of self and purpose.

Once I get to go, I’ll be all the more relieved, the more the burdens grow and the eyes tire. And the pile of beauty and love will have grown a bit bigger.

If I was, I would BE dead. What is the advantage to being alive if you are no longer emotionally attached to it?

It does scare me a bit, but I've thought about death and non-existence from time to time and gotten more comfortable with it. Not totally comfortable but it doesn't horrify me anymore.