Death and Dying ***Trigger Warning***

The five ideas that psychologists have organized as the death concept are: 1) non-functionality of all sensory responsive, brain and other biological functions too numerous to name. 2) Finality of the cessation of life refers to the loss of the breath of life as well as the beginning of decomposition of the body and the irreversibility of this process. 3) Universality of death means that death is not a phenomenon restricted to any location or type of life form. We can learn to accept death as the inevitable result of all life. 4) Applicability of death is significant to all animate or living forms.

Death anxiety refers to the apprehension of the inevitable event as a disruption in their life

Given my choices, I would prefer to die in my sleep, after a comfortable evening with loved ones and friends. Simply to pass away peacefully, with a minimum of stress for anyone.

@JolivetteListens

Thanks for this post. I personally find it more helpful to think about death than to avoid it. My favorite way would be at home in my bed, my husband at my side or if i would be alone laying on a soft kind of mattress watching, hearing and smelling the ocean - peacefully.

I have was with both of my parents when they died. I also unfortunately found a person who had been killed. And I do brain death scans at my job. They are usually, not always, a visual reason for the family to pull the plug. Death has never been anything but gone for me. The light leaves the body. Its amazing how you know when they are gone. As how I would die, I would like a bomb to drop on my home. On me. So no one would have to go thru a disease process with me. Or be there when I died., I would rather be alone.

I personally never thought I would be afraid to die - I've been suicidal for years, and several times was seconds away from ending my own life - but I believe I experienced the feeling of what it's like in your last second, when you are 100% certain you are going to die, and it was awful. Usually there's always a few lingering thoughts that maybe, just maybe this won't be the end. But due to a heavy medication dose at the time, that part of my brain had given up. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was the end. I'll sum up the situation, then describe what I did and felt in what I thought were my last moments.

This occured when I was visiting DC this summer. I had taken my medicine, which is basically a tranquilizer, after finishing dinner a few blocks away from my hotel. It kicked in hard, even worse than usual, and I was eager to get to my room. My mom and brother were leading, my sister behind me because I was struggling to walk and stay awake. When we got to the hotel it was surrounded by police tape with tons of cops inside. I remember my mom talking but I was looking at the sidewalk and I kind of drifted off. I managed to get my legs moving when my siblings started walking away. I remember someone asking if I needed an ambulance so I didn't pass out, but instead we headed to an alcove a block away. I slumped up against the granite wall and basically passed out. I drifted back into awareness a few minutes later to the sounds of crying and yelling and police sirens and planes and choppers. My barely-functioning brain put these things together as "they (still not sure who 'they' were supposed to be) are bombing the city." There were paramedics and forensic units nearby trying to calm down my brother, who was having a panic attack, and my sister, who was bawling into her hands. My mom was crying quietly too. This added to my certainty that DC was being bombed. The final nail in the coffin was when I started to ask "are they bombing us?" and no one would answer, my mom just cried harder. So my addled brain decided I was correct. I heard a low droning buzz that got louder and louder, and I knew it was a wave of planes and helicopters overhead waiting to drop bombs. I knew, just for a few seconds, I was about to die.

Obviously, I didn't die. It turns out that the crying and yelling were other people from our hotel, many of whom had been showering or in the pool when the hotel was evacuated and they were freezing/almost naked. The police sirens were more officers showing up. The choppers and planes were a mix of distant sounds from a nearby airport and my half-awake state of mind. It turns out there was just a bomb threat, but it doesn't change the things I experienced right before I was "about to die".

From the moment I suspected that the bombs were approaching, I kept my eyes closed. I was slumped against the wall on my right side, pretending to be unconscious so as not to frighten my family more. I heard them all upset, but I thought I wouldn't be afraid and I would just wait it out calmly. As the seconds ticked by, a slow dread began to weigh heavy on my stomach. I was ready to die quickly by bombs, but I was worried about how much it would hurt if the blast just collapsed the building on me and my death was dragged out. When I was certain the bombs were overhead, my heart was going far too fast and I was breathing unevenly and frantically. Tears stung at my eyes uncontrollably. My fingers and toes were buzzing, I was freezing and sweating at the same time, my head was spinning. I don't know why I didn't get up and run, or talk to my family in my last moments. I sat and waited until I was sure it was inevitable, then texted my best friend "they're bombing the city im sorry" or something to that effect. I also texted my dad to give my dog a kiss for me because he missed me a lot.. I put my phone away, went back to feigning sleep. And waited. I was scared, but I still sat and waited for my own death to come to me

This may be tangential to the topic, but I want to encourage anyone and everyone to make their desires known and if possible, pre-plan funeral expenses. It is the greatest gift you can give to those who love and care about you.

My mother died unexpectedly 3 years ago. I was devastated. But when I got home, instead of having to make difficult decisions and guess what Mom would have wanted, I discovered that everything was done. My parents had picked out and paid for plots in the local cemetery, their grave markers were already inscribed (just missing the final date), they had paid for cremation, and Mom had picked out an urn that looked like green marble. We had very few decisions to make - what font to put on the urn, write the obituary and decide on the date and time for the memorial service and burial. Easy compared to what it could have been.

Instead of focusing on caskets vs cremation, we focused on each other and Mom. It was the best gift ever.

Volunteering at a nursing home for more than 20 years allowed me to witness many passing and appreciate the beauty of Life. Some older people cannot talk anymore but their eyes speak and there is so much collective wisdom and Love in the eyes which never get old. Our life is a story and it must end but the author continues and I am looking forward to experience the next chapter even though am a little afraid from the transition. Also I pray that before I leave I will correct as many mistakes as possible (with relationships)

being older I find myself thinking about it more and more. I am likely to be ending a very long term relationship and will probably be spending the remaining time of my life alone. If my health concerns come to fruitation it may not be all that long. In a way I welcome life being over, it has been a miserable experience. I have been suicidal but am too much of a coward, I work every day to improve or change but it is tiring and progress seems fleeing. Recently I have been getting light headed and feeling faint, yesterday I was in the garden pulling some plants destroyed by hail and the weeds that did among them. When I would straighten up, I would get light headed and have to pause and steady myself. I tried to do it more slowly and I think it helped, but my mind wondered if "this" was it, am I having a stroke, is a blood clot causing this. I am haunted by a story I read on a website, a man stated that he was in a room when a "non-believer" was dying and the screams and exclamations of the person were horrific, like he was entering hell or paying the price for his life. Makes me shudder.

I read this Thread... I practice dying every night when I go to sleep. The practice part is just to pay attention to what is happening when you fall asleep. When I did CPR on my boss, he was not aware at all and when he stopped breathing I started CPR. You stop breathing, turn grey, Gone.... Then they shock you... If your lucky... It is as easy as falling to sleep, Light as a feather.