My wife (39) died in October. Her breast cancer moved to her brain and over 20 days she went from perfect function to not being able to speak or move and being in excruciating pain. Sometime over those three weeks I made peace with my eventual death.

I dont believe in an afterlife but I hope there is one just so I can see her again. But either way life is to hard to wish to live forever. Immortality is a young persons wish. When you get older and you see what life takes from you piece by piece you come to realize that the end is not to be feared but welcomed just so the pain stops.

Fuck no. I’m terrified.

In my life I had 3 near-death experiences. All three were close calls, with one being so so so damn close that I felt my body shutting down and it was the most dreading sensation ever.

If anything, those experiences led me to realize that I still have lots to do before even thinking I’m ready to go.

Motherfucker, I’m not emotionally prepared to do the dishes

I’ve had one foot in the grave (doctor literally said that 50% die the first three days. after three days you have a good chance)

I remember the time the thought shot through my head: “If I’m dead I don’t feel the pain anymore” I immediately realized i’m not afraid to die, i’m just not ready to do that. So yes, I am prepared, just don’t wanna (yet). I also know it’s not hard on me (i’m dead then) but for those who love me and have to sit powerless and watch it happen and go on living.

Why would I need to be? I’m not going to have to live with the aftermath.

My loved ones dying, now there’s a problem.

Yes, i am. I had a challenging health episode last year, and am a member of a legal framework for assisted dying. I worked through the emotions, the letting go and the planning. It was very liberating, hard and sad. And I think I grew as a person in the process. I had a good life, and am happy I can live more, but I can confidently say I know how it feels, and if the world goes to shit I am out of here. I am not suicidal at all and enjoy family and my body, food, music, etc.

Yes. I’ve met enough people and seen enough things. It’s not going to get better.

Also we’re rapidly heading towards a future without topsoil, fresh water and breathable air. Oh and resource wars/ww3. Good times right?

United Nations: 90% of Earth’s topsoil at risk of depletion by 2050

World Economic Forum: Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030, experts warn

Stockholm University: Seven of nine planetary boundaries now breached

Hopefully cancer or something gets me before shit gets really bad in my area.

At this point I’m not sure I’m emotionally prepared to live.

Yes. Please strike me down where I stand.

No.

The mere thought that my life is going to end at some point makes me freeze up emotionally and physically. It exacerbates my depression to a point where I sometimes simply call in sick.

It’s sad. There is so much beauty in this world, in our existence, in our universe and one day my body will give up because of old age or because of sickness, depriving me of it all.

There is so much that I haven’t experienced, and it’s not relativistic. I don’t buy the BS that some people try to console me with when they say that the only reason that I value life and all it’s beauty is because it’s finite. F*ck you all. I genuinely weep at the sunrise, at the beauty in people, at the undiscovered knowledge of the universe regardless. I wish my life would never end.

For those of you that know the Japanese animated series Naruto, I feel so much compassion for Orochimaru, even though his human experiments were vile and evil.

My depression sometimes makes me want to stop existing to stop suffering from it, but that’s a sickness and an internal struggle and it doesn’t represent my true feelings. I don’t want to die.

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This is an impossible question to answer with certainty for pretty much everyone. Maybe the extremely suicidal or the terminally ill, but likely not anyone else.

Death (and our perceived relationship to it) changes with our proximity to it. So, being existentially and emotionally prepared for death when you’re young is very different from when you’re old, and from when death is pretty much imminent. I would wager even people who report a high degree of confidence that they are prepared for their eventual death are less so (and likely much less so) when they are facing imminent death. I imagine the number of people who don’t experience fear when their death is imminent is actually quite low.

I have considered myself prepared for death for much of my adult life, but since sometime in my 30’s I have also accepted that I can’t predict my preparedness in the months-to-moments before I die. The existential threat of your existence ending is simply too dependent on its immediacy to be predicted with certainty ahead of time.

Yep. I don’t want to but there’s nothing particularly distressing about the idea. I’ve never felt “existential angst” or anything like that.

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I had a serious motorcycle accident in my early 40s. It was the kind that usually results in death, but I got off easy with a shattered collarbone, two broken ribs, and some road rash. I remember the initial impact and then lying on my back looking up at the sky, but nothing else. That nothing made me realize what death would be like, and it freaks me out. Thinking about how someday I’ll just stop existing fills me with immense dread. I understand why some people are religious, it gives them an alternative to that dread.

Perhaps I won’t always feel this way.