How do you deal with death?

I just got back from visiting a client at a nursing home and let me say that it was a very sad and quasi-emotional visit. To see someone who can't remember what was said to them 5 minutes ago and not being able to know who they are speaking to on the phone or sometimes in person(very close family members) is hard enough to deal with as a bystander, let alone being that person. That person was breaking down right in front of me. So my advise would be to talk to a nurse or a medical doctor, these seem to be the people who deal with death most frequently.

That said, I sat in on a speech this week about arts in medicine: musicians, painters, etc helping out terminally-ill, bid ridden and extremely unhealthy children. I wonder what it must be like to work with someone like that, to sit there and say: I am helping this person out through a very serious situation and they may not make it and I have to accept that.

It kind of turns me off from volunteering with organizations like that to think and know that all the work you put into it will be lost.

I don't know if that helps but somebody should get the thread snowballing.

 

My grandmother who lived with us died when I was 7 or 8. I didn't realize how badly I dealt with it at the time. I was in 3rd grade and I couldn't go to sleep at night because I was afraid I would die, it took a long time for me to get past that. Even now I don't like to deal with death, and I constantly think about how or when I'll die. Odd because I just turned 26 and I have a long time to go.

 

I think expecting it is somewhat easier to deal with. The best advice I can give you, is to let out any tears or emotions. Holding it in will make you feel like you're going to explode. However, the most important thing to me is: THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK. When people get upset or emotional, they tend to say things without thinking them through. You can not take back something you say. If someone offends you throughout the grieving process, please think before you say something that you both might regret.

 

The only permanent thing in life is impermanence.

-the Buddha

 

I have, knock on wood, never lost anyone close to me, yet. It's devastating to see others receive news of a loss. I've never seen my mother go from happy to sad so quickly when she received a phone call. And I never expected to come out of the bathroom from taking a shower and find my husband very upset at the computer when one of his best friends from high school (she came to our wedding and I met her a couple of times) died. He found out via FB when someone posted, shortly after her death (she died several states away on a vacation), a "remembrance" page for her. I've only been to one funeral and that was my husband's aunts. I only cried because his grandmother had broken down.

I think that everyone processes it different. When I worked at the morgue, I had to detach myself or else I would come home every night and think about the fact that one day I'm going to die. I could die getting in the car. I could die getting out of bed. I could die in bed. It's too much to think about.

I'm glad you were able to get a ticket to go see your friend. You would have regretted not being able to see him, even one last time, no matter the cost. There are many out there who would pay more than you can imagine to see a loved one one last time. When it happens to me...I'm not really sure how I will react and deal. I can only hope that I'm strong enough to push through if someone really close to me passed away.

 

My mother died a year ago in June.

I still can't say that I've wrapped my head around it yet.

She was only 68 and died of cancer.

I'd always imagined that she'd get to be the old grandma who'd get to watch her grandkids grow up. But it's probable that most of her grandkids will never remember her. It's not fair: she deserved to have them remember her. But there's nothing that can be done about it.

I'd also imagined that she'd go more slowly - that I'd be sitting next to her in the hospital, holding her hand or something... maybe sharing some important and meaningful words with her. But it didn't happen like that. My older brother was in town visiting my parents. He and my dad stepped out for an hour or so to take my dad to the doc and to run an errand, and when they returned she was gone.

I have a lot to be thankful for:
She could have been in a lot more pain for a longer time.
I'm thankful that by older bro was in town visiting them.
I'm thankful that I had just been in town and visited them that Saturday (she died on a Wednesday).
I'm thankful that my younger bro (who was out of the country) was able to come back as soon as he did and was able to make it to the funeral.
..and there's other stuff to be thankful of.

But when our family is together now, it feels like someone is missing. Like she's at the store or something.. that she'll be back soon and we need to wait for her to get back. But she's not coming back.

I don't find much consolation in anything that would relieve these feelings. When I have feelings like this, I just say what I'm feeling to my wife.

The bottom line is that we have to accept it. There is no compromise. It doesn't matter if you don't want to accept it. You must. Fighting acceptance and being in denial is only futile. A complete, losing battle.

 

Expecting it IS easier to deal with. I've unfortunately dealt with both.

My mom has has the worst luck. Both her parents and baby brother died in a car accident in 1960 (she was 13), and in November 2004 her sister was stabbed to death by her new husband.

Nothing scares me more than losing someone I love suddenly.

I can come to grips better if there's some time. Like losing my uncle last year to stomach cancer. Of course, that's probably pretty selfish, because I'd imagine most people want to go without realizing it/suffering.

 

I want it to be quick and painless, dying of a disease is not going to work for me. Here's hoping I don't get something that kills me slowly, because there is zero chance I'll go through with it.

 

We had a guy come in from prostate cancer which had metastasized to his bones. He killed himself after leaving a journal about not being able to deal with the pain anymore. He took control, in the end.

 

I don't want to say I wouldn't go that far, but if a doctor tells me I'm past the point of being cured and whatever I have will be a painful death. I'd rather live a few weeks/months doing what I want, then taking control of it then.

 

My grandfather currently has stage four colon cancer, and it seems like he will only be around for a couple of years tops. He's the first immediate family member of mine to be on his way to pass and it has bummed the hell out of me since I first heard of his cancer. I don't think I can ever deal with death properly when it happens, but after a while of grieving I will learn to move on.

Also alcohol helps.

 

A good friend of mine died very suddenly a few years ago of an embolism in his lung and I have to admit I didn't handle it very well. I broke down at the reception after his funeral and his dad comforted me. I was glad to be there with the rest of my friends and they helped me get through it.

Its never easy but as B-Bob quoted nothing is permanent and death is a part of life that happens to those we know and eventually to ourselves. The best way we can deal with it is to keep alive the memory of those who have gone with the hope that when we go others will remember us too.

 

Stoically

 

I lost one of my closest childhood friends in Afghanistan on June 25th.

I still haven't processed it. I lit a box of trash on fire. Helped a little. I feel like a dead man walking. My sympathies to your friends and his loved ones. Surround yourself with humanity, and hold on tight. Our days are numbered.

 

My best friend hung himself when I was 13. A year later a common friend did the same.

I've lost 5 extremely close friends, and close artistic collaborators (all under or right at 40), in the last 7 years. Of those, 2 were suicides, 1 was basically suicide by drinking though that was a very long and horrible process, one from congenital heart failure (just dropped dead), one from skin cancer that we all thought was in total remission but spread through his whole body with no warning but headaches. He was awaiting results on tests when he had a grand mal seizure during the hurricane blackout and never regained consciousness. I made it to the hospital in time to hold his hand for 3 of the last 4 hours of his life. Only family and his longtime girlfriend were there for the last hour. In the last year of my alcoholic friend's life I often felt I was watching him die. Once an unusually powerful man, physically and in other ways, a great talent, in his last year his skin and eyes turned a terrible shade of yellow and he was emaciated except for his distended belly. Due to his strong Swedish constitution he lasted and suffered for a very long time, at least five years after learning he had no chance for survival.

My maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather died before I was born. My paternal step-grandfather, to whom I was very close, died while I was away at college.

How do I deal with it? I don't know. I guess I don't really. You never get used to losing someone close to you. It never gets easier, though time does indeed make it more manageable as unimaginable grief turns to mere sadness.

I miss my friends every day. They often visit me in my dreams and those are the best dreams I ever have.

I also know, right in the front of my mind, that we are all dying from the moment we're born, that we will all die and turn to dust and go off the planet and eventually be lost to memory and so will everyone we know or love.

How does anyone deal with that other than denial? There is no other way of which I am aware. Buddhism might help to come to terms with it. Belief that death is not the end, belief in an afterlife, must help tremendously. Unfortunately I do not have that belief, as hard as I've tried to. I don't. I don't feel the presence of God, I regard anything to do with life after death to be a grand case of wishful thinking and also a valuable coping mechanism which I dearly wish I could access, but I can't.

Everyone has some sort of coping mechanism that allows him/her to get through the grief of losing a loved one, be it faith, denial, or, in my case, the understanding that it happens to us all, that the universe is unfair and that there's nothing I can do about it.

But none of these coping mechanisms is sufficient at the time of loss or maybe even for a very long time after.

I am sorry for all the losses I read about in this thread. And I'm sorry for you, Kevin, that you are facing a loss yourself.

The only advice I can offer, and it is pitifully inadequate, is to let yourself feel what you feel. Don't try to push it down, don't repress it. It will make you worse, not better. And it will come out eventually no matter what you do to contain it.

 

I'm sorry to hear about all of your loses, Batman. My Mom's boyfriend is like this...he's lost a lot of friends and people to suicide, drugs, accidents. He's gone through two cheating wives. I think all that loss and destruction has caused him to deal inwardly, blocking out things that might be good in fear of losing them. So my Mom struggles everyday to connect with him, but he only speaks his true feelings when drunk. However, my mother can't keep punishing herself by staying with a man who refuses to talk about anything. But, eh...can't talk sense into either one of them.

 

i don't think there's really a way to "not handle it very well", and if there was, your reaction certainly wouldn't qualify. i'm sure your friend's dad was touched.

sorry for everybody's losses in this thread. death truly sucks.

 

Thanks, Mae. I'm sorry about your mom and her boyfriend. I used to be like that too, expressing myself "honestly" (or so I thought) only when drunk or on drugs. I quit all that a while back and now I go to therapy instead, in search of authenticity in my feelings and my sense of self, working out all theses losses and trauma and pain.

Someone said earlier that alcohol helps in dealing with grief. Everyone has their own way but for me, at least, I thought that was true and learned that the truth was actually quite the opposite.

I wish the best for your mother and her boyfriend.