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I have never been obsessed with or worried about death very much. I think it's normal for it to cross one's mind occasionally, since after all, it's an appointment we are ALL going to keep. I think it's responsible to have a will and final wishes, a living will, etc. legally drawn up and in place and I've kept mine updated since I was in my late twenties. I even have funeral ideas in there, but not because it's some sort of fantasy of mine, but because I think that may be helpful to my survivors during a stressful time.
Now that I'm in my fifties, I think about the inevitable more often than I did when I was younger but once again, I don't dwell on it. It's more a matter of curiosity to me since I'm reaching an age where friends and the parents of friends are experiencing health crises and even death more often. I'm more interested in eating well and exercising more, and avoiding unhealthy lifestyle choices.
I'm a lot more concerned about the skin that's starting to sag a bit under my chin than I am about actual death!
I'll be 60 in 9 months. Is this what I have to look forward to?
Or are you one of those people who stereotype older people? Frankly I am fed up with that type of attitude and it's the main reason I am so down right now.
I've had this thrown in my face and have been disrespected several times in recent years, especially recently. The stories are too long to go into.
I still have a lot of energy, go on 1.5 mile brisk walks 5 days a week, and NOTHING is breaking down.
I never had children so no "grandparent stage" for me. I like to go out and see live music in clubs, attend sporting events, and I feel I am up to working until at least 70.
That cracks me up when youngish people have this bizarre idea of 60-year-olds as hunchbacked, wizened, arthritic geezers and geezettes who can barely feed themselves anymore. Don't they actually KNOW anyone that age?
Hey re the music--my daughter was trying to get me to go with her to the Firefly music festival in Delaware this past week because her friend couldn't go (she went alone in the end and met new friends there). I couldn't go because of work, and I figured I was "too old" for the festival anyway, but I went on the website message board and there's a whole thread for people over 50 going to Firefly. Maybe next year I will!
Hmm, I thought I'd posted in this thread before and answered the title question.
I started thinking of my own death at six, when a cousin my own age died. Until I was in my forties and it occurred to me that not everyone did this, my first thought upon awakening each day was, "Is this going to be the day that I die?" I'd developed some weird death-related obsessions and intrusive thoughts over the years since I was a kid. Would take a lot of pages to explain that.
Anyway, what made me finally stop thinking of my own death all the time was coming close to it. September 11, 2001, One WTC. There was a short period of time that day when it seemed very possible that I was facing the moment of my death. Hundreds of people died very close to where I was, but I didn't go through the door that day even though I felt it open next to me. Someday I will, and I am not really afraid anymore. As I get older, it's not that I want to die, but there is an accumulation of the knowledge of so much sadness and wrong in this world, and when the time comes, it might just be a relief to leave it all behind.
For me it was sometime around age 5, probably because that's about when all four of my grandparents died. I didn't want to accept that one day I'd die, so I convinced myself that I wasn't like everyone else, and that I'd live forever. That was fairly brief. I didn't think much about dying again until around age 45 when my doctor told me I wasn't likely to survive from a brain tumor I'd developed. I wrote letters to my wife and each of my kids before my surgery, got my life insurance policies in order, etc. Then survived. That was okay.
My late wife told me one night that she was afraid of dying young. Her parents had both died fairly young. She was 50 or 51 at the time. She died at age 51.
On the other hand, my dad told me at around age 80 that he wasn't worried at all about dying. He said he was old enough and ready. He died just before his 90th birthday.
It bothered me when I turned 60, not because I was afraid of dying, but because I'd always considered 60 the beginning of old age. I'm 68 now, and I still consider 60 the beginning of old age. Ten years ago I could still hike or climb some pretty steep mountains. Now I wouldn't consider it. I'm still not ready to kick the bucket, but I don't worry about it except that I don't want to make my wife a widow. I've been there and don't wish it on anyone.
When I was young (from 0 to 30) death was just an abstract word like love, hate, or friendship. Yes, I knew death was there, we all gonna die and that stuff but I didn´t feel it as part of my life it was so distant, I didn´t pay much attention to the fact that we are here for a while.
My first contact with the death of a loved one was my grandfather when I was 6. I was too little to understand it, then my grandmother died when I was 20, but I lived the whole thing in a theoretical way, feeling what I thought I was supposed to feel, but not really feeling deep inside the weight of human death.
But it all changed when I turned 30. Dono exactly why, but I started to feel the presence of death.I surprised myself thinking about infinite. Infinte joy in Heaven, infinite pain in Hell, infinite nothingness in a black void, infinit reincarnations in infinite new lives.
Maybe God exists, maybe not. But one way or another, death will knock on our doors some day, and "something" will happen, whether we like it or not.
All this started filling my head in my early 30s, and it's been a recurrent subject in my mind since then. (I am 35 now).
I had a few anxiety attacks. I remember the past summer, I was walking into a mall and started looking at people.Old folk, children, women...dogs, cats, flies, flowers every single living creature some day will be gone "all this people walking by will die, I am walking around future death people,and so am I" and I felt so bad I had to walk out to the street and breath some air, almost fainted.
I guess being aware of death makes you value more life. Now I use my time more wisely than in my 20s, but at the same time I lived much more carefree in my 20s, so sometimes I miss those days.
I wonder at what age did you start worrying about death? (if you worry about death at all) Did that make you change your behavior, your priorities, your attitude?
At 16. I read a book about a teen who died from a brain tumor and voila! All of a sudden the headaches I'd been having seemed much more serious. I began to self-diagnose and figured I was going to die soon, so I began to write a memoir.
many worry about it when they get old and sick. what they need to do is focus on living. if they understand that better. the old and sick scenario does not happen or not in the tragic sense that you are sharing.
To be honest I think it can happen any point in your life. i was only 12 when it happened. I cried and i was up all night. Life is too short to worry about these things. But this is what calms me down. Consider the big chance of an afterlife.80% of people think there is an afterlife, the majority. I just sat down drank some tea and i thought about all the years ahead of me. Be optimistic about it and don't be afraid to talk to someone if you have an anxiety attack. Just calm down, try to think about right now not the future.Hope this helped.
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That cracks me up when youngish people have this bizarre idea of 60-year-olds as hunchbacked, wizened, arthritic geezers and geezettes who can barely feed themselves anymore. Don't they actually KNOW anyone that age?
