Do You Ever Think About Death?

Having just read your post about the bison, the idea of running into the storm feels pertinent here. But what do we do when the storm is just the ever present knowledge of one of life’s inevitabilities? Who knows. For me, I’m very committed to feeling all the way to the bottom of my feeling, whatever it is. I’ve recently realized I really love being alive and with that has come a new fear of death. I’ve been allowing myself a big hearty cry about that, whenever the feeling accumulates and pours over. It’s strange to cry about something so basic to being alive. And yet. I lost a dear friend to brain cancer shortly after she turned 40. We wept and wept and the reality was she loved being alive and just wanted to keep doing that. With or without a diagnosis, that truth exists for us all, if we are lucky enough to want more of the life we have. Who knows.

I’m a palliative care doctor, a new one, started in family medicine delivering babies, seeing everyone of every age. The physical patterns of death are becoming known to me. I feel the sacred energy of actively dying people, of all people when I’m good or lucky. I feel afraid of dying right now in my life. For a person who thought really hard about suicide in the darkest times of medical training, this blooming into the joy and precarious of life feels so precious. Thank you to the beautiful people I care for who are showing me what it means to live, and sometimes die, so close to the marrow of what matters: loved ones, the natural world, the cycle of breath.

I’m a Christian priest (although I’m the kind that thinks it’s best not to be too firm about the afterlife details) and last week sat with someone on hospice. I get to be the person who speaks really frankly with people while they’re dying (often they try to protect their loved ones from this) so I just straight up asked if she was frightened that day. She thought about it and said, “You know, I’m really not. The medical process of dying is a little scary with all the changes in my body, but I’m just so loved. I’m not afraid.” It brings tears again to write it. I would pray that kind of heart space for us all.

I have had a long and complicated journey with death and grief and now work as a Burial Coordinator at a green cemetery outside of Ithaca, NY. I think about death a lot. I don’t have any answers, but I’ll say this- when my life has gotten difficult, I always comfort myself with the reminder that I am not alone, people have handled things this difficult (and more!) since time immemorial. Death feels that way to me now. We are all in this together, we will all be touched by it.. It can feel so terrifying and lonely, but we are not alone in it and that makes it less scary to me. My job can be so sad, but it is also life affirming, joyful, and sacred. Holding space for grieving hearts is an honor.

As someone who’s battled depression since 12 and had several friends die in my teens, I’ve thought about death a lot and for a long time. As recent as this year, my dad has been on the brink of death twice and my maid of honor died from complications of brain cancer. Before you feel sorry for me, please don’t. I’m alright. I’m very much at peace with death and I’ve found these experiences have put me in a position to bring comfort and peace to others. To also quote the poet Andrea Gibson, I consider myself a bit of a “grief astronomer”, as they put it.

This is going to sound odd maybe, but I do not fear death. Not to mean that I want it to happen! I want to live as long as possible so that I can see my children grow and meet my grandchildren. I fear being ill, infirm, or in pain. I fear being a burden, losing agency. But death in my mind is just getting off the treadmill. Everything stops, which is ok. What I fear are the consequences that my death would have on my family and loved ones. I dread that my absence would bring them sadness, that I would not be there to help and support them. In the same vein, I would be devastated if someone I loved died because that means they are gone from my life. And that is the hard part – being left behind.

Maybe this is silly, but the way Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson talked about their mother’s attitude toward death in an episode of their IMO podcast made a big impact on me. They said that their mother would talk about death as the day she would “drop dead.” As in, “when I drop dead,…” I’ve been using that phrase to talk about death ever since, and it strangely takes the fear out of it–it’s both matter-of-fact and silly, and so unsentimental that I don’t get choked up when talking about it. I think the podcast episode is titled, “Lessons Our Mother Taught Us.” Once again, Michelle Obama shows us the way in her infinite wisdom.

My young (5 and 1) kids dad died earlier this year and if that experience does not give a person perspective…I don’t know what would. What it has given me is immense gratitude for the continued opportunity to be among the living and a deep commitment to leave it all on the field. Say/do/feel the thing

I relate to this! I have those same sudden realizations that I will die as I am falling asleep since I was a young child. The other day my 9 year old son came down after going to bed and started to almost to cry. He said, I’m scared of dying. And one day you and Dad are going to die too. The stark realization hit him. I had never mentioned it to him but somehow he must have inherited it from me. I grew up in a Catholic family, and my mom would always calm me down by saying that you go to heaven when you die, so I was still scared but somehow reassured. I no longer practice any religion, so it’s much harder for me to comfort my son. And as I get older and closer to death, I think about it more often. Now of course I worry about untimely death, e.g., by a car accident, the house collapsing, a terrorist attack. I then get panicked about that. Or something happening to my children. I also am saddened by thinking about missing out on my kids’ lives if I die early. My mom dies when I was only 30 from a long battle with breast cancer. She didn’t get to see her grandchildren. I do tell my kids stories about her to keep the memory alive. I also still think about her often. What would she think? What did she do when my sisters or I were being difficult? What would she think about me as a parent and fully-grown adult (sort-of)?

“Gone from my sight” was in the booklet the hospice people gave us when my husband was dying of cancer at home. During that time, all of our young adult kids (his four, my two) read and talked about that poem—it was a real source of comfort, and needed change of perspective, for all of us. To quote Kate Bowler—life is terrible. Life is beautiful.

I’m not sure how exactly I stumbled across this podcast but I quickly devoured it because I realized it was making me feel very soothed and comforted about death. Her voice is soothing, the stories are touching and she helps so many people through their grief. The podcast is by a medium named Fleur Leussink (! I know what you’re thinking…but don’t discount this – seriously, give it a listen and you’ll see!) and it’s called “Moving beyond”. I’ve long talked to my relatives who have passed, and this just seemed to also confirm and deepen that connection – sounds silly but if you’ve lost someone very close like a parent, you likely understand what I mean.

I’ve had to turn toward it in the past 6 months with a lot of loss. My mom died the day this post was written. I had seen her 20 minutes before and she was fine and then she was gone. She had just rung the bell for completing chemo treatment for breast cancer the week before and was so ready for the next years of her life, loving on her kids and grandkids. So clearly I don’t know how we best manage grief as it’s still so new but I feel so strongly that she will be with us and that brings me peace. My mom was love and joy and kindness. She was safety and comfort. She was an exuberant, in your face, no holds back light and love giver. That’s her legacy and ours. This poem by Wendell Berry has helped me this last week-The Peace of Wild Things When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. Wendell Berry

Different things have helped with my fear of death; my Christian faith (it was on life support for a bit there 11 years ago after Trump got in and the utter hypocrisy of my religious background–for obvious reasons). Reading “The Great Divorce” by CS Lewis helped, too. But what helped more anything was hearing Bach’s Chaconne about 2 1/2 years ago. My undergrad is in piano, and of course we covered such a seminal work in my music history classes, but I didn’t really HEAR it until well into middle age. For a couple months after listening to it, I would get choked up every time I heard it. In the middle part, the same anguished harmonic structures are transformed and inverted, completely different, no more pain and suffering, but complete, unfettered joy. There’s something so confident, so *secure* in those passages, that it really does feel like heaven just opens up. Bach didn’t write thematic music like Beethoven started to do later in his growth as a composer. Music written to sound like a storm, an experience, an occasion, started with Beethoven (one of the reasons why he is such a transitional composer), but really took off during the Romantic age. That being said, Bach had written his Partita #2; with its four movements, it was essentially complete. The fifth movement was written *later*, AFTER Bach came away from a long journey and discovered that his wife had died. When you listen to that fifth movement, that matches the other ones but is also so distinct, you hear the grief, loss, but also the love. But it’s so much more than that; Bach is famous for his deep faith, and in each work, he would write “Jesu Juva” at the beginning (Jesus, help), and “Soli Deo Gloria” (to God be the Glory) at the end. I hear the humanity in the Chaconne, but I hear that faith, too. I am so grateful that God has long spoken to me through music….and…I write all of this not to try and convert anyone to what I believe (I’m kind of beyond that at this point in my faith journey re: manipulating others), but just to share as a human to human how much this piece has helped me. If you listen to it, I have heard a number of versions, and Itzhak Perlman’s is the absolute best for his rendition for the Chaconne. The most sublime piece ever written, the most powerful performance ever performed.

My husband always says my family is VERY COMFORTABLE WITH DEATH 😂 I’ve recently been helping a friend with a business he’s starting making beautiful pine & cedar caskets for people in the Midwest. I grew up going to funerals as an important part of our life — in small towns, they’re a social event that everyone attends. I always grew up around old people & my parents always showed up. Funerals, to me, are one of the most beautiful ways to show up for your friends. I have so many memories of seeing my best friends show up at my grandparents’ funerals & it fills me with so much gratitude. I hold a Christian perspective, so I’ve honestly never feared death for myself, but only for others. I’m experiencing a lot of anticipatory grief for my parents & also my dog. & i always tell my husband & friends that i want to die first so I don’t have to grieve their death when it comes someday.

Hello! The baking substitute might be just baki by soda and/or baki my powder ornyou should try aquafaba: the waters canned chickpeas come in! It’s magical

In 2019 I saved something about death that resonated with me—-from here, Cup of Jo. Death. It’s about trust. Something outside of my control brought me into the world and something outside my control will take me out of it. If I can trust the phenomenon of life,I choose to believe I can also trust death.

I don’t know what happens after but I like to think our souls remain intact in some way. I did have a fun moment with my 6 year old last week where we were discussing that some people believe in re-incarnation and we spent the next few minutes coming up with funnier and funnier things to be re-incarnated as. This is actually how I deal with most things related to spiritual and ethereal with my kids. I say many people believe in God of some sort, they just know him or her by different names. But the lessons and stories from their God are mostly more or less the same. Some people don’t believe God exists at all and they believe in evolution. I can see that nothing I’ve explained thus far has really hit it with him and he often asks me what I believe and I tell him I don’t know. Because I don’t. I know it might be destabilising for him and kids prefer certainty but my view is that it is better for him to understand that its okay to not know. Specifically on this topic. And the same goes for death and what happens after. I don’t know so I am not going to pretend to. Also, it’s fun exploring all the different options with my child.

I just turned 50 and my mother just turned 80 and my dad will be 80 in February. I’m highly blessed, my mom still works a full time job, gardens, dances and takes cake of her kids, my dad is still partners with my brother in the fishing industry. Both are sharp and able and so much our parents. I think about life and death every day. When you’re aware of the passing of time, every moment is bittersweet but full of love.

I have considered what it would be like to die. I’ve got several chronic health conditions that leave me with chronic pain. I know that when I die, I’ll no longer be in pain and will be with Jesus at that point. But getting to the death bed is scary indeed.

I was raised religious and it’s funny, the concept of heaven that I was taught – basically a never ending, very somber worship service. And no animals allowed! – sounded AWFUL. I knew I was supposed to want to go there, but in my truest heart I didn’t. I no longer believe in that version of heaven. I don’t know what happens after this, but it has to be something, and I believe it’s good, and perhaps my most deeply held belief- all the animals are definitely there, and they are healthy and they are happy and no one is cruel to them :)

The earliest funerals I remember attending were my youngest sister, who was stillborn when I was five, and my mom’s first cousin, who died of AIDS when I was six, but I’ve had a funeral for family or family friends basically every year of my life. As someone else said, I’ve never not had a funeral outfit in my closet. In elementary school I do vividly remember realizing one day that, barring some sort of huge disaster, everyone I had ever known was either going to die before me or after me, and that made me feel utterly panicked in that moment (as it does now!). But other than that specific thought, I felt mostly at peace with mortality in my teens and 20s. People I knew continued to die, and I also spent almost fifteen years studying and teaching genocide education, so I had constant reminders of how short life is and how hard loss is, but I also felt that since death was inevitable, why waste this wild and precious life worrying about it? The best and only thing to do was to be kind, to take care of people, and to experience as much joy as possible. I still believe that, but after I had kids in my early 30s I became very, very, very afraid to die. It started when our first was born, and was amplified by postpartum anxiety after our second. At times it has felt all consuming, and I had more than a few middle of the night panic attacks about it. That acute anxiety has waned now, but I still feel much more anxious than I used to about dying and about my loved ones dying. I just love my husband, my kids, my life so, so, so much, I don’t want it to end. I want to keep hanging out forever! My response to it really depends on the day though (and how close I am to my luteal phase, ha!) When I think about not existing anymore, not being able to cuddle my husband and kids and spend time with them, I feel gripped with panic, like I’m being buried alive (incidentally, the idea of being buried also makes me feel very panicked, even though I’m not otherwise claustrophobic). Sometimes that feeling is all consuming, but other times I quickly go back to the feeling of, why waste this wild and precious life worrying about this when I could just be enjoying myself! And I feel comforted by the idea that we’re “all just walking each other home”, it makes me feel so much tenderness about the precariousness of life, and how important it is to take care of our people, and our communities. I’m not religious, and the not being sure about what happens after we die is part of what makes me feel unsettled by death, for sure. But I am culturally Jewish, and one of the most comforting parts of being Jewish for me is the rituals around death and grieving. The idea that family, friends, and community support the mourners, emotionally and physically (so much food), that grieving doesn’t end with the funeral, there’s a week of shiva, a month of shloshim, and then a full year afterwards, so the family can ease back in over time, and that official mourning ends with the first yarzheit (anniversary of someone’s death) which is then observed every year until everyone who knew that person has also died (we still observe yarzheits for my mom’s grandparents, who are my kids great-great-grandparents). There’s also a belief that no one is truly gone until the last person who knew them has also died, or until someone speaks their name for the last time. There are songs we sing and prayers we say at funerals, shiva, and yarzheits, and while they aren’t meaningful to me in a religious sense, they are still so comforting when I’m processing the death of a loved one, or supporting a friend through it. That culture around death and dying has also made me deeply believe in the life advice of “go to the funeral” (and “remember the yarzheit”) because I‘ve seen over and over again what a comfort it is to other families, and to our family. They show up for you, and you show up for them, for generations and generations.

Joanna, I’m so sorry to hear about your friend. You mention feeling his presence. I encourage you to read this NYT article about seeing signs from loved ones who have passed. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/opinion/grief-mediums-ghosts-contact.html?searchResultPosition=1

I grew up extremely religious and hung all my hopes on the concept of eternal life. Now that I’m no longer religious, I’ve been surprised at my own feelings changing about an afterlife. It terrifies me now, like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Instead, I deeply value the temporariness of this life. It’s precious and urgent. I hold my loved ones tighter. I look into my dog’s eyes a little longer. There isn’t a later. The time is now. And I’m so grateful.

Thank you for sharing those beautiful poems. I’ve lost people close to me, but never thought much about my own mortality. Then I recently became ill suddenly and went septic. I slammed up against that possibility when an ER doc asked if I wanted to be resuscitated if I crashed. “Yes, please,” I said, causing the various caregivers to laugh. It was humbling, to say the least.

Or as I overheard my dad say to the financial advisor responding to my father’s cancer accelerated mortal use by date, “Hey, no one gets out of here alive.”

I’ve thought about death regularly, at least since I was a teenager. To me, it’s a comforting thought: at some point this exhausting (beautiful, exhilarating, infuriating, heart-breaking, funny…) thing called life will end. This too shall pass, if you will. I’m not in a hurry to get there, but the idea of finally resting is calming to me. Also, thinking of death (memento mori) reminds me to do things will I can, not to squander my life. It’s both a calming and motivating thought.

I’ve in the unfortunate club (that we all join) of having lost someone I love unexpectedly and in a way that altered my entire life. I spend a lot of time trying to avoid thinking about death because it feels so immense I cannot even describe. But I do better when I make a little time to face it regularly. I have so many questions about death but something about dwelling in that not knowing is healing. Idk if I’m even explaining it well. These poems are so lovely and gave me a chance to sit with grief today—thanks for sharing.

Oh ALL the time, and like so many others it slammed into me like a freight train after having a child. I think it felt like passing the last big life milestone that does not have to do with losing people I love. I have always turned to children’s books for comfort, and I’m happy to see so many recommended in these comments! I have to add my own, written by a Unitarian Universalist minister who combines poetry and particle physics so beautifully to explain death to a child (/44 year old) https://bookshop.org/p/books/dance-together-spin-apart-molly-housh-gordon/a30e24f6c4b6dcff

For many years, from childhood to early adulthood, whenever the thought of my death happened to cross my mind, I was overcome by instantaneous panic. Ironically, I had a near-death experience when I was three. I always thought if I could remember that experience then I wouldn’t feel afraid. But I never could remember it. I just know what my mom told me. Then when I was 38, my mom became extremely unwell, very quickly. I was the one who took her to the ER, and I stayed in my hometown for several weeks while she was in the hospital. It was a terrifying experience. She had heart failure, kidney failure, afib, fluid around her lungs all at once and it took the doctors almost two weeks to discover why. It was a tumor that had invaded the muscle of her bladder. Bladder cancer is extremely aggressive and spreads quickly. I was consumed with saving her from death. I wanted her to have her bladder removed. I wanted her to start to start chemo. I wanted her to *do* something. But she couldn’t wrap her brain around what was happening to her and she felt so unwell and by the time she decided to have her bladder removed and start chemo, cancer was in all the bones of her body. She died 6 months after her diagnosis at age 68. It was the absolute worst time period in my entire life. But something shifted in my perspective because of all of it. I absolutely do not feel afraid of death anymore. There is nothing I can do to avoid it. I go to all the health screenings and I do the things to stay strong and resilient. But I now know that life is completely random. I could die today. And that has made me deeply savor all the experiences I have. Because I never know when I or someone I love will die. Life is a precious gift and I will absolutely welcome every opportunity to live fully while I’m alive. 💝

I absolutely have to dissociate with thoughts of anything mundane and HERE instead of death when the existential dread gets too big! BUT – I was listening to Good Hang ep with Andrea Garfield earlier this week, who I did not expect to be a wise philosophical voice on death, but he spoke so beautifully and comfortingly about how he feels his mother even more since she passed. Highly recommend to help climb out of existential freefall!

In every conversation I have with anyone on the broad topic of death and grief – I always recommend Anderson Cooper’s podcast “All There Is” – it’s is such a beautiful approach to a heavy, mysterious, and yet universal experience.

My mom died this summer. It wasn’t sudden but it was, it wasn’t shocking but it was. Please give your loved ones the gift of having your ducks in a row. Talk to them about your wishes so they don’t have to waste precious time guessing or chasing things down. I can’t tell you how many hours I could have spent holding my mom’s hand, and instead I was fighting with banks and caregivers and insurance companies, trying to guess passwords, trying to navigate bureaucracy.

Late to comment but here I go anyways- I think about death semi regularly. I’m a mom of a very neurodivergent child, an only child. I miscarried before I had my neurodivergent child. My child likes to ask me questions about the baby I once carried, where it is, how it felt. My child asks me what will happen to them when my husband and I die. Our death and subsequently, what happens to our child keeps me up literally, at night. Sometimes it causes me heart palpitations. I wouldn’t be so afraid of dying if I knew I could set her up with the best care with the kindest, most honest people who would truly look after her best interest and would never hurt even a hair on her. Yes, I think about death.

when I like a comment very much and I want to remember it, I print it out as a mini photo and pin it on my picture wall. I have 5 of those COJ comments photos and one of them (on a previous post re death) is this one from Audrey: A friend of mine once told me how in Japanese culture death is compared to life before being born. Now everytime my 6 year old twins ask me about death, I tell them: “do you remember the time before you were born? No, so don’t worry about that and go on with your life”. Radical but interesting! (Audrey, June 2024) I like it a lot.

My younger sister was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of last year. For the second time. The first time she was 29 and we had lost our mother to cancer six years earlier, so I was terrified that the same thing would happen to my younger sister and best friend. This second time was different, because we’re older and wiser (I hope). I never thought she could die and in fact she didn’t. But now that I’m 58, I think more often about my own death. Without fear, without sadness, simply as the inevitability of being alive. I don’t believe in life after death, in heaven or hell. I do believe that while we’re here, we should strive to do only good things, just because. Since we’re alive, why not be good? :) It does sadden me, though, to think that one day everyone I know will be dead and that I will cease to exist as a memory.

My first big life loss was my grandfather. While grief is hard in so many ways, I was particularly dumbstruck by the arrival of his first birthday without him. You kind of always have plans on your loved ones’ birthdays–your schedule is blocked so that you can be with them around a cake full of candles. Suddenly, the day is open, and I hated that. When my first child arrived 3 years later, he was born on my grandmother’s birthday. It felt like such luck for me. He is 7 now, and we have been able to gather on that day WITH my grandmother every time for shared songs and cakes. But in the future when it goes down to one cake, we will still gather and speak her name because of her great grandson. We will still have plans!

I do not believe in heaven or hell. I will be cremated and that will be the end of me other than others’ memories. That is all lovely but will fade after a generation or two. What i cling to is my love of nature and the fact that my physical body will never be 1000% gone from this world.

In January of this year I was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 43. That made me think a lot about death. I wrote an essay about being a mom and going through cancer and all my thoughts on death here: https://plaidrabbit.substack.com/p/a-good-death. In case it’s a helpful thing to read for anyone else:) xoxo Meghan

At this stage, I worry about death of loved ones more than I worry about my own death – but it’s started to settle in that I’m middle aged, and so I won’t cheat death forevermore. I have taken a death and dying class, plus periodically have morbid hyperfixation about learning about the dying process and death care. As for the after, I don’t have strong beliefs except that no energy is created or destroyed so, in some format, my energy will go on in the world.

I’m also 47 and am a person who’s always responded to my sister with, “why be scared about it? The person least affected by your death is you.” But as age becomes more of a reality and I see it in my parents, plus all the celebrities and sudden deaths that surround us all, I start to think about it more. Mostly because I want to enjoy as much of this life alongside my husband as I possibly can. We have been absolute soulmates and best friends since we met over 20 years ago. It’s made me think about my health and what changes I can make to help my longevity – and don’t put off the doctor’s appointments and checkups I can really easily fit into my schedule.

I have two living children now, but I unfortunately lost our first child early in the second trimester. The grief was earth shattering and I remember thinking how could no one know what I was going through, the death we had experienced, how our lives had changed overnight from joy to absolute misery. I believe with every fiber of my being that after death we will be with those that we love again. I have to believe it. I guess I’m a traditional Christian in that I believe in that type of heaven. What I don’t believe in, though, is hell. I don’t believe that any God who loves their children would punish them like that. Andrea Gibson is an incredible poet – the documentary Come See Me In the Good Light is an incredible study in grief and living, if you haven’t watched it yet, and definitely looks at death from many angles. I also can’t recommend enough Sara Bareilles’ recent most recent album, Good Grief, examining death and grief. The line from the song Just a Kid, written about her best friend’s death, that sticks with me most is “I smile and weep, ’cause I know you’re there…and he’s everywhere.” I see my loved ones that have passed one everywhere – I’m reminded of that lost baby in the smallest of things in the most surprising places. Sometimes it makes me sad, but most of the time it makes me smile, because I remember that baby and I have hope that some day I’ll get to meet them.

I spent most of my 30s in dread of mortality. I don’t know why. I hadn’t been surrounded by death. In fact, I probably went to fewer wakes and funerals in my 20s and 30s than I did as a child, when we started losing my score of elderly relatives. But it was just always there with me. Then at 42. (Just about a month short of 43), I had my daughter through IVF. And every single unsettled thought about death disappeared and only settled ones remained. I don’t know why. But an image kept coming to me: a flower that wanted to fling forward its seeds so a new flower could grow. I had wanted our child for so long, and it calmed something inside of me to have her here. I feel an acceptance about it that I couldn’t have imagined 10 years ago!

Thank you so much for this post! I probably think/worry about death (myself and for my loved ones) way too much (always have) , but I do feel it reminds me to be kind, show my love, and try to enjoy each day. Like others have said, I’m just having so much fun being alive and don’t want the party to stop! I am so comforted that I am not alone in this though and and am so sorry to you Joanna, and all those here who have lost someone. 💗

My Dad was murdered when I was 23. He was a Vietnam vet fighter pilot, who came home with PTSD, manic depression, and was a verbally abusive alcoholic, for all the years following his service, even tho he continued to be a celebrated flight instructor long after deployment. He got into a brawl, arguing with someone at a bar, which ended up in his death. My mother, (who had long suffered his outbursts, his mental, emotional abuse and financial neglect) succumbed to Alzheimers when I was 30. It runs in her family, but spouses of alcoholics have a higher risk of dementia. Luckily, it took her within a shortish number of years; I don’t mean to sound mercenary, but for her to be ill, and suffering for longer would have been so much worse. I was already living and working successfully in California, and stayed to pay for her care, while my brother in Texas made sure she got it. I still miss them, but our family was like a movie between “The Great Santini” and Ang Lee’s “The Ice Storm”. Peripatetic is a mild word for it. My dear Auntie (father’s sister, whom I still have around to love), explained it best when she told me “You know, there are ways of being alive that can be worse than death. Your Mom and Dad were not going to age well. They are both out of pain, you have been given a strange gift, but a gift nevertheless, of freedom from problems you could never ever have solved. Take it, and do the best you can”. I did. I still appreciate her, and them, and everything. Even the parts I hated. I’ve been at peace with it for a long time. And I am extremely grateful for that. Thanks for all your stories, I read every single one. xxxxxooooo

I have a completely different relationship to this topic than I did just ~three years ago! The nature of consciousness is the single topic I consume the most content (podcasts, books, etc) about, aside from my line of work in the arts. It has been so expansive and mind-blowing, both fascinating and liberating, and I can’t help but want to share with others about what I’ve learned because it has made me completely unafraid of death. (Still afraid of illness, physical decline, and losing people I love? You betcha! But I am no longer afraid of dying.) As a spiritually inclined, but skeptic and scientifically-minded person, having spent a couple of years deep diving into lots of research around this stuff and listening to many experts from different fields, this is what I have come to believe: The brain does not produce consciousness. It is more like a router. Consciousness arises somewhere else we can’t yet explain or understand, and we’re not meant to understand while we’re here. We are eternal beings of love and light, and consciousness survives after bodily death. Earth is a school. We belong to soul groups we incarnate with over and over in different forms of relationships, and each time we prepare for a life, we make agreements with one another about lessons we will learn together. Certain big lessons or events are agreed upon ahead of time, but we also have free will. Our departed loved ones are all around us, we just can’t sense them because their energy is vibrating at an imperceptible frequency. And they’re also busy doing their own thing and continuing to learn and grow on the Other Side! Each of us has a team of light composed of spirit guides (advanced souls) and departed loved ones who guide us and help steer us to our highest paths. None of us is any better than anyone else. And also (this gets weird) linear time is an illusion and all our “past” lives are occurring simultaneously, in a way our human brains can’t wrap our minds around but maybe has to do with quantum physics! Some resources people might be interested in: Leslie Keane, Surviving Death Laura Lynne Jackson, The Light Between Us + Signs Dr. Brian Weiss, Many Lives, Many Masters Dr. Bruce Greyson, After Dr. Ed Kelly, Irredubicle Mind + Beyond Physicalism + Consciousness Unbound Dr. Jim Tucker, Before: Children’s Memories of Past Lives WTF Just Happened podcast (lots of great interviews with scientists, spiritual practitioners, and other thinkers) + research institutes and sources: Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia (decades of research about children with verifiable past life memories) Forever Family Foundation IANDS (International Association for Near Death Studies) Windbridge Research Center

Listen to let the mystery be by iris dement. I grew up in a pretty scary religion and this has brought me endless peace. Having just lost a beloved 16 year old dog, my other feeling is love. You live on in the love that remains and that’s fucking amazing and enough. Well energy too lol

I was raised Christian and was inundated with heaven and hell at every possible opportunity. It wasn’t until I had an untangling/awakening/seismic shift in 2020, just before I turned 40 that I began to truly question for the first time. That multi-year journey with myself, trusted friends, pastors, and my amazing therapist led me further into becoming more comfortable with the unknown, because that’s exactly what it is…unknown. This process forced me to grieve the loss of my dad all over again, in new ways, who died from leukemia in 2017. I hired a medium to connect with him about a year after my process began and it was the most remarkable and stunning interaction that left me certain that there’s…something. And that was enough to give me comfort and hope. It’s like there isn’t language and descriptions for it, only feelings.

Death is something I think about everyday. Some days in a comforting way, some days is a curious way and some days in a dreadful and sorrowful way. I was diagnosed with terminal cancer nearly 4 years ago at the age of 40. In many ways my energy is like a nesting pregnant woman. Making preparations for my children, my husband, my mother. I’ve learned to live in the space between life and death, straddling both worlds with gratitude and sorrow. Poetry has been a great balm, so many beautiful poets put into words what I cannot. About the beauty and mystery and complexity of grief and death. And how it is the ultimate experience of humanity.

I had a near death experience when I was 2, and I lost my dad a year ago (he was only 68) — so, yes, I think about death often. But I’m not afraid of it. I think it’s harder for those who stay, than for those who pass. I by know means want to rush the process, I want to be here (and be well) as long as I can. I want to mother my children, shepherd them into adulthood, know (really know) my eventual grandchildren. I want to be left breathless by the inconsequential everyday moments, and then, hopefully around 90, I’ll return to wherever I was before I was born. 🤍

I can’t stop thinking about this: “I hope death is like being carried to your bedroom when you were a child & fell asleep on the couch during a family party. I hope you can hear the laughter from the next room.” (From @petfurniture on Twitter)

I think about death a lot, probably. When I think about myself dying, the main effect that has is reminding me how fleeting my life is, how lucky I am to be alive in this moment. It sounds cheesy to type it but it feels very real to me, it’s an easy way to ground myself it what’s actually important.

One of my best friends died suddenly and unexpectedly this summer. I love her so much. She died at a time where I was already thinking about mortality a lot, because of a milestone birthday. After some grieving, talking with loved ones, and reading, I think I’ve come to view death as this inevitable return across a threshold. Like birth, a soul makes a transition to a place unknown, and we have little control over how that unfolds. I don’t panic as much as I used to when I think about dying; I hope it feels like coming home.

I’m an estate planning attorney. I think about it all day, every day! 😅😅

Yes. Every day since my mom died on New Year’s Day 2023. I was with her for the last couple weeks of her life, and caring for her along with my siblings when she died. I was 35 when she died, and my mom was only 21 years older than me, so this sent me into a bit of an early midlife crisis when she was diagnosed with cancer and then more cancer and of course when she died. I think for me death became real when it happened to someone I really loved. Prior to her leaving I had had grandparents die (but a 96 year old dying is very different from a 56 year old, and I wasn’t too close to them.) Once the reality was thrust in my face it was a little freeing—so much we all worry about just doesn’t really matter. As for what I think happens? I like to imagine that we again become a part of the universe and perhaps eventually all of our particles work their way together again and we get to experience some version of life again. I also can say that I very much feel my mom’s love still and in that way I never really lost her.

Wendell Berry’s ‘A Meeting’ offers me more peace as the years tick on: A Meeting by Wendell Berry Wendell Berry In a Dream I meet my dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and far, and yet he is the same for the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was. Yet I, the changed one, ask: “How you been?” He grins and looks at me. “I been eating peaches off some mighty fine trees.” When I was in a pregnancy group, in between trying to speed read parenting books and pick the perfect mom bag, a whole meeting was dedicated to estate planning. It stopped us in our tracks, how far away ‘all that’ felt. Now that I’m middle aged, and seen painful death, sudden death, ‘all that’ is still just as broad. Reading all of your responses is so insightful, and really beautiful-all these lives, all this love.

For a while after my mom died, my nephew was perplexed when we’d talk about her. He’d say, but Grandma’s dead, and we’d say, but we still love and miss her, and want to talk about her. Last night he was being silly and said she was extinct like a dinosaur and my sister and I cracked up, picturing our mom in a T-rex costume… those tiny hands…

The first time I realized I was going to die, I was about 8, sitting on a cold, black, tiled floor at my best friend’s house. It hit me out of nowhere like a ton of bricks. I was like, “Even ME?!?!” I didn’t feel scared, exactly, just blown away. I’ve always been scared of my loved ones dying, but of my own death only just recently and briefly during a health scare. Right now I fiercely don’t want to die because my young daughter would be orphaned and heartbroken. I desperately don’t want that to happen.

I just finished Switzy and boy that got me thinking about death.

At 47, I think a lot about death these days. Especially when I hear news of celebrities dying, those people I grew up watching. More recently, like Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, Catherine O-Hara. I think about my mom, who is getting older, but I still see as a vibrant 30/40 something. I think about MY death and who will take care of my autistic daughter if that were to happen. To me, the concept of death, at least MY death, is not scary. I know it will happen for everyone. I really only think about the people who will be left behind. But my comfort is this phrase in the Bible, which, if you’re not religious, is also a practical way of looking at the cycle of life. Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 (is quite long, so here’s an excerpt): There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them….

I likely think about death more than the typical person. Recently I asked my financial advisor, “Who will take over the management of my accounts in the event of your death?” in a far too blunt and spontaneous manner. My focus on death, and my ease with talking about it, is probably because my husband lived (joyfully) with terminal cancer for 4.5 years before dying in March. This allowed us time to prepare for his death as much as one can possibly prepare. We spent time with family and beloved friends. We had finances and estate documents in order. I knew his wishes for his body and his funeral. He donated his body to science and we held a celebration of life service. He didn’t want anyone to honor him, but we did anyway. As one friend said, “Who the hell else are we gonna talk about?” My husband wanted his funeral to focus solely on God, from whom he felt immeasurable, incomprehensible peace. That answers your other question – I believe we spend eternity with God if we choose to believe in Him, but I also agree with Andrea Gibson’s poem that when we leave these bodies, we return to spirit, and the spirits of those we love are always near. In their poem “The Wheels of Time”, they write, “…to run out of time is to run into the truth that none of us have ever been our bodies. If we were, how would we fit in each other’s hearts?” Lastly, even though my husband and I were uber prepared, it STILL happened far more quickly than we expected and there were STILL things we neglected. Simple little things. Like passwords. Don’t forget to write down passwords.

After Andrea Gibson’s death, her partner (also a writer) began saying Andrea “allegedly died” because “what does death even mean? Nobody even knows what it means.” I completely agree. We don’t know what death means, and the mystery of it is thrilling! There’s a gorgeous Mary Oliver poem that says, “Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.” My hobby is also existential dread and I have gobbled up every single episode of Anderson Cooper’s podcast “All There Is.” It’s so moving, and brings me so much comfort, wonder and peace.

My dad died this week. Our relationship was complex, at times frustrating, but I find myself revisiting every good moment and missing him so much it hurts. He’s the first person close to me to pass and it makes me realize how precious life is.

The Heidelberg Catechism had the same question. Question: What is your only comfort in life and in death? Answer: That I am not my own, but belong— body and soul, in life and in death— to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has delivered me from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, also assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Grateful for this post and for the chance to read everyone’s thoughts. When I think of death, the first thing I think of is this scene from The Good Place. And how bring a little sad about death all the time is just a normal, human experience. https://youtu.be/vWVEnhtBBEk?is=1iPQgjgz13kWX9-E

I follow Neil deGrasse Tyson’s scientific explanation of what happens when we die: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1507481467534549 Which coincides with the Beatles’ Song Here There and Everywhere Knowing that love is to share Each one believing that love never dies Watching her eyes and hoping I’m always there I will be there and everywhere Here, there, and everywhere

My four year old is obsessed with death so we talk about it…..a lot. He wants to know about my grandparents who have died. Are they buried or cremated? Did they become zombies? (Am I *sure* they are not a zombie?) If I mention someone’s age he needs to know if they are “old to die”? Do I know kids who have died? What were their names? What were they like? How did it happen? What are we doing to prevent his death? Are ghosts real? Whats the difference between a grave stone and a memorial plaque? Why are so many people named Miller buried in that one cemetery we went to that one time? It’s been actually kind of great to be forced to talk about something so difficult with my child.

Great timing. I’m in the middle of a divorce. I’m also falling in love with someone new. Someone who is so beautiful and curious and special that I have become wracked with the thought that I will die before I can enjoy being in their presence for just a little bit longer. I’m 55 years old. I worry about cancer (I know more than a few people with cancer these days) and car accidents and plane crashes. I realize this is a bit of cherophobia and death anxiety combined.

After spending the day in the comment section, I think it’s safe to say that we should talk about death more often at Cup of Jo! There is so much wisdom and beauty and love here ready to be passed around.

My husband died of cancer when I was 30 and he was 31. It was drawn out and excruciating and caring for him at the very end is one of the most sacred duties I was lucky enough to perform for him. About four years later I had an incredibly vivid dream that I had been diagnosed with cancer and gotten very sick and died. I woke up sobbing and panicked, absolutely terrified at the thought of my own death. And then some wiser voice inside me (or maybe from outside of me masquerading as myself?) said “you don’t know what happens after you die. Why not be curious instead of afraid?” And instantly it was like a switch. I could just be curious instead of afraid. I COULD BE CURIOUS INSTEAD OF AFRAID. It sounds so small but it profoundly altered me. Not knowing about something doesn’t mean it’s bad. That dream was four years ago now and I haven’t worried about death since.

Just saying thank you Joanna and everyone sharing in this conversation. I sit here and sob, made breathless by all of the tenderness, and find somewhere in me a love so ancient and vast I just know is beyond comprehension but connected to every one of us.