Probably started at age 4 when my great grandmother died. I tried to understand why they can't just feed her food and drinks and she will come back to life in the casket. I thought they should dig her up and basically force feed her and she would "wake up". I guess that's because people explain death to children as "gone to sleep". Then my very distressed grieving mom said she will never wake up and I cried. I wouldn't say it was fully clear then but it was definitely the beginning.
I don't believe anyone under 25 can truly understand the inevitability of one's own death without experiencing it firsthand, your prefrontal lobe isn't able to fully grasp that you will die (especially from impulsive decisions). Our sense of self is still developing as well. I personally do not remember when it was fully clear, but probably mid 20s.
I was very young. I just remember being scared because heaven sounded boring. My mom told me all the fun things we'd do up there. Which sounded great, at first. But then I realized "forever" meant "never ending" and it worried me that we would run out of fun things to do and we would be stuck there, never able to leave.
I was very young. I just remember being scared because heaven sounded boring. My mom told me all the fun things we'd do up there. Which sounded great, at first. But then I realized "forever" meant "never ending" and it worried me that we would run out of fun things to do and we would be stuck there, never able to leave.
When I was a kid. As time went by, saw relatives pass away, saw classmates get erased.
Really hit home in 76, in Korea during the 'tree incident'. Was working in a building that surely would have been a target for any attacking NK aircraft. A scary time.
Hit home even harder fourteen years ago when the heart problem came up. Was never out of my mind in the two-plus years between definitive diagnosis and having surgery to fix the problem. Unlike Korea in 76, there was no defense system between me and the threat. Now the threat was right there, every day. Woke up very, very early day of the surgery wondering if this was the last morning on Earth. Just kept trusting in God. Made it through just fine.
Now I look at pics and obituaries of people I went to high school with and people I know and am glad to still be around.
Never forget tomorrow isn't guaranteed to any of us.
I was in my early 30s when I realized, bodily, that I was a creature who will die someday.
If life experiences don't make that clear to you, getting older will. And I don't even mean massive body changes, just small ones, like your eyesight getting weaker than it used to be.
Hit me one night in my late 20s. Fell into a thought loop of terror and introspection that I occasionally fall back into on quiet evenings. At the end of the day it's not something I can control, so I tell myself not to think about it. I also find comfort in how much there is we don't and can't know about life and the universe. What we do know is pretty horrific, unfortunately.
Last year, when my father passed away. I realized I wasn't going to leave behind any meaningful legacy and started to wonder what my funeral would even look like.
Last year, when my father passed away. I realized I wasn't going to leave behind any meaningful legacy and started to wonder what my funeral would even look like.
If funeral arrangements are something you care about, it's a good idea to mention it to family now. Advice I've heard from estate lawyers is don't put that shit in your will as it often gets read for the first time only after the funeral has completed. Write down your preferences separately and tell family where to find them if the need arises. Ditto for the list of people you'd want to be notified if you passed.
If funeral arrangements are something you care about, it's a good idea to mention it to family now. Advice I've heard from estate lawyers is don't put that shit in your will as it often gets read for the first time only after the funeral has completed. Write down your preferences separately and tell family where to find them if the need arises. Ditto for the list of people you'd want to be notified if you passed.
The issue is the more distant family doesn't give a fuck. In our circle we're the only ones who didn't get rich off, err, illegal acquisition of goods, so while not exactly poor we've never been able to lead a truly carefree life.. As far as everything is concerned, we no longer exist to them. So the only person I could reliably inform about my funeral preferences is my mother, and that would just be wrong. "Hey mom, here's what you gotta do when I die.". I guess my best bet is having a footnote in my wallet.
8 when it became very real to me, as I saw my uncle die right in front of me. Was pretty fucked up and made me very fearful of being in cars for years, and in general avoiding anything dangerous.
You never forget those death rattles, its as clear in my mind today as it was when it happened.
But, life goes on, make sure you don't piss your time away on shite.
I was in an existential crisis about death in 2017 as an Atheist back in the day. I needed enough spiritual knowledge to calm me down on such a topic. Death was something I later yearned for after years of feeling so horrendously sick. But it was something I feared so horrendously beforehand.
The weird thing is that I don't remember anything about what brought it on, what we were talking about or anything, just the realization by itself.
It was early afternoon and my mother was ironing in the living room. There was an issue of Mad magazine on the couch with a parody of Super Mario on the cover, red and yellow, so I could pinpoint the year and maybe month if I looked that issue up.
But I don't remember what we were talking about, just this vertiginous feeling like I was zooming out on a scene while I was standing still.
edit: January 1990. Later than I would have thought, but it makes sense with personal stuff that was going on.
I'm in the back half of my career these days, and I've started contemplating retirement planning and how many working years I have left, and it's well and truly hit me like a ton of bricks at this point.
I love what I do for a living and I'm in one of those rareified professions where I can actually matter to those I work with, but I'm really focusing on making my life mean something going forward because it won't last forever. At some point even my skill set will have to be shelved when I age out (I've watched it happen to other people), and all that I'll have left is what I passed on to those around me and how they felt about it. So I'm really trying to make it count.
I’m not sure how old I was but it happened when I was very young because I can remember how big my mom looked at the time. I remember being absolutely horrified and panicked at the time as I finally wrapped my head around the idea of not existing, an eternity in which everything I knew and loved might as well have never existed as I could have no memory in death or consciousness. My Mom tried to explain that I’d go to Heaven but by then I knew that was like Santa Clause, a fantasy. Reality hit me really hard that day and I’m not sure I ever recovered. Some nights it still gives me panic attacks. There’s nothing that can be done about it. It can be reasoned with or bribed. It’s an inevitable uncaring bleakness.
