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Death
Oct. 25th, 2006 | 06:33 pm
Nice Halloween topic.
Death is about the only thing I can positively state will happen to me. I will die. By this I mean that my body will cease to function.
I watched my father die. There wasn't much to it - no death rattle, no sudden absense of indefinable something, nothing. He just stopped breathing. I waited a bit, because his breathing had been difficult and erratic for some time, but when Mom came back into the room, I had to tell her he had stopped.
My father-in-law shot himself when he began having episodes when he couldn't remember who the people around him were, or why he was important to them. Most of the family accepted this - grieving that he had died, but not upset at his decision to die neatly and cleanly. The room my sister-in-law had been quietly preparing for him in her house was changed into a room for her new grandson. The one person who is upset over the suicide is my nephew, who has always had difficulty with death and feels angry with his grandfather.
Having one father hang on through physical and mental deterioration until he died and one shoot himself in the last four years has certainly brought home the idea of death. I was very close to both of them.
There is a Wikipedia article on death, with links to a bunch of related articles. Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source ever - for instance, it's article on the Semitic death god, Mot, doesn't even give a source reference. But it gives a jumping off place for exploring the topic.
I'm not particularly afraid of death, but I am terrified of dying. I'm scared of the pain, the embarrassment, the weariness of it. I'm afraid of losing my ability to think, of being dimly aware on some level that I've become a drooling zombie. I'm afraid of being alone, of ending up in a nursing home. I'm afraid of being trapped inside my own head, unable to find release or peace, while my body deteriorates.
The idea of being euthanistically knocked off when I've got a chance of recovery doesn't bother me nearly so much. Risking all the rest of it on the possibility of more time, and the even slimmer possibility of more worthwhile time, doesn't seem worth it to me.
Not that I've taken any legal steps one way or another. I don't know why not, but there are a lot of other things I haven't gotten around to as well, so I'll hesitate to assign deep psychological importance to the fact.
I'm fairly surprised, looking into this subject, to find that there are people who believe in currently available biological immortality. I'll have to research the topic, but the Rastafarians and Rebirthers are two groups that buy into this. This is not counting cryogenics and computer uploads and other technological aids to immortality. The opposite end of the scale are beliefs that actively embrace death. Of course, most of the sincere death beliefs, such as Hygesias' philosophy, tend to kill themselves off.
Death is about the only thing I can positively state will happen to me. I will die. By this I mean that my body will cease to function.
I watched my father die. There wasn't much to it - no death rattle, no sudden absense of indefinable something, nothing. He just stopped breathing. I waited a bit, because his breathing had been difficult and erratic for some time, but when Mom came back into the room, I had to tell her he had stopped.
My father-in-law shot himself when he began having episodes when he couldn't remember who the people around him were, or why he was important to them. Most of the family accepted this - grieving that he had died, but not upset at his decision to die neatly and cleanly. The room my sister-in-law had been quietly preparing for him in her house was changed into a room for her new grandson. The one person who is upset over the suicide is my nephew, who has always had difficulty with death and feels angry with his grandfather.
Having one father hang on through physical and mental deterioration until he died and one shoot himself in the last four years has certainly brought home the idea of death. I was very close to both of them.
There is a Wikipedia article on death, with links to a bunch of related articles. Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source ever - for instance, it's article on the Semitic death god, Mot, doesn't even give a source reference. But it gives a jumping off place for exploring the topic.
I'm not particularly afraid of death, but I am terrified of dying. I'm scared of the pain, the embarrassment, the weariness of it. I'm afraid of losing my ability to think, of being dimly aware on some level that I've become a drooling zombie. I'm afraid of being alone, of ending up in a nursing home. I'm afraid of being trapped inside my own head, unable to find release or peace, while my body deteriorates.
The idea of being euthanistically knocked off when I've got a chance of recovery doesn't bother me nearly so much. Risking all the rest of it on the possibility of more time, and the even slimmer possibility of more worthwhile time, doesn't seem worth it to me.
Not that I've taken any legal steps one way or another. I don't know why not, but there are a lot of other things I haven't gotten around to as well, so I'll hesitate to assign deep psychological importance to the fact.
I'm fairly surprised, looking into this subject, to find that there are people who believe in currently available biological immortality. I'll have to research the topic, but the Rastafarians and Rebirthers are two groups that buy into this. This is not counting cryogenics and computer uploads and other technological aids to immortality. The opposite end of the scale are beliefs that actively embrace death. Of course, most of the sincere death beliefs, such as Hygesias' philosophy, tend to kill themselves off.