Are you affraid of talking about death?

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How do You cope with death in the family?
Have you seen a dead body?
Are you affraid of death?
Do you think funerals is scary?

It would be interesting to me to read your own thoughts and experiences around death.

My grandmother, 93 died last thursday.
Later its funeral and she will be put in a coffin and into the ground...I fear this moment...
I know her soul is not there anymore but also know the body will be rotten and then a skeleton by time. These thoughts really scare me.

I saw my Granny *on fathers side* in the coffin. That was the most scary experience I ever had in my life.That was in 2004.
The body looked so "spooky".... The view of it killed my soul and I cried my heart out so loud that it gave such echo in the big huge church.

Now I have decided I dont want to see my other grannys body in this way. I will try to keep my happy memories but still its difficult to not think of the dead body

I know her time was in and it was natural but...its so unreal....and Im affraid of death.

Last edited by xalepax on 23 Apr 2009, 1:50 pm, edited 4 times in total.

You are supposed to go through grief. It's normal. You are doing everything right, xalepax, - talking it out is the best medicine.

Some people like to put pictures and memorable objects of the deceased person and to create a memory album with pictures. It helps with the feeling of connectedness and meaning. We also meet, as a family, once a year to remember the deceased person and to visit the cemetery. Personally I like to pray that the person goes to heaven.

Take care,

Jeff

This is such a hard thing for me to answer because I've never really... 'dealt' with a death. I have had a member of my immediate family die.. but I didn't feel anything. I just accpeted that he was gone and moved on. So I am not sure what advice to give you... I think many of us here have trouble processing/feeling grief.


I'm sorry I can't say anything better than that

same as above

i lost my grandpa some years ago, and we were really close. i didnt feel much grief. i knew he was ill, i knew he was going to die, and then he died.

i guess thats the only thing you can really know. life goes on for the living. death is the end.

i felt guilty for not crying and stuff, cus i expected to. at the time i didnt know aspergers existed. i was just being weird and unusual yet again, felt s**t about it, and told my mother, who tried to comfort me with that "it would probably come along at a later time". it never did.,

as for the questions:
How do You cope with death in the family?
By accepting it. Theres nothing else i know how to do.
Ive only lost one family member that i was truly close to tho, but thats what happened. Acceptance.

Have you seen a dead body?
No. My mother asked if i wanted to see my grandpa, but last i saw him, he was smiling and in a good mood. I wanted to keep that image. My brother went and saw him, and it freaked him out. He "didnt look real".

Are you affraid of death?
Yes. Terrified. I seriously wish i could live eternally. screw all those "but that would be boring" "imagine leaving behind all your friends as they die of age?" what friends? i would absolutely want to live eternally! :]

Do you think funerals is scary?
No. I think theyre weird and unnatural. My grandpa said "dont make a fuss out of it. In fact, put me in a bag, and throw me in the river" (i laughed ) altho it was a joke, he meant some of it. dont make a fuss. they made a fuss. it pissed me off.

Sorry to hear about your grandmother xalepax.

How do You cope with death in the family?

Don't know if I cope really, just go through it. It becomes easier with time because the sadness loses its intensity with time.

Have you seen a dead body?

Yes and it stayed in my mind for a long time, although it was peaceful-looking. I prefer to remember people when they were alive and happy times I had with them. I replay these times, and conversations with them, in my mind, so there is always that part of them that I remember, that is alive.

Are you affraid of death?

Yes. It's so permanent! The end of all conversations/relationships. It's such a Big Thing.

Do you think funerals is scary?

I think they're sad more than scary, saying goodbye to people I've loved/liked.
I find funerals overwhelming really. I go to pieces and sob. Perhaps that's what you're supposed to do, maybe it's emotionally helpful to get all the grief out but sometimes I try to concentrate on the stained glass if it's a church funeral, to take my mind off it for a while.

If I died though, (when I die I should say ) I wouldn't want people to be sad, maybe a little, but also remember fun times too. Funerals are so solemn, and the people whose funerals I've been too weren't like that. Maybe there should be a little bit of laughter/celebration of their life, too. I think it helps to have a photo in the house, of when they were alive and happy to help you remember them that way.

I have my: step farther, father, grand mother and grand father.

In all of those I only cried once and was my step fater which the first.

I find funerals sybolic of sadness but I dont grieve because it doesn't do much other than make you sad, although I pity those who do.

No I do not fear death as it will happen if you want it or not.
I beleve in "life after death". Death isn't an end merely another begining.

A warm Thank You with great appreciation towards you all who have responded here so far!

I changed the title a bit as I got the sense people might get uncertain and a bit affraid of talking about death.

I want to say that nobody should be affraid of confronting me in this. I do my personal grief with my family who also knew my Grandmother.
Here Im mostly interested to hear about other peoples experiences of death and how you deal with it and how your thoughts are.

Are they diffrent for us with AS, is the thougths diffrent if you are religious and not and so on....

Dont be sorry. I put value in all replies no matter what you write.
Its okay to be uncertain in what to say. Im mostly okay and Im walking around the forum and talk in general just as before so dont worry!

My 96 year old grandmother died, but I was fine. I did not experience grieg. My grandfather died 3 years ago. I have not talked to him for a year, and have not seen him in person for 10 years. He lived in another country. I was not really affected by the death, but my dad cried and experienced grief. Noone else in my family has died yet, but my grandparents are pretty old, so I imagine I should be ready for this.

Have you seen a dead body?

Yes and I was fine and still am.

Same here. The one I lost was my father when I was 11. We weren't very close but he was still my dad.. seems like I should have felt something but I didn't. I didn't cry. I felt very guilty when standing with my sobbing family dry-eyed and calm. My mother assumed that I was buring or repressing the grief and that it would hit me at a later time. But it never really did. I didn't know about AS at the time either.

I did see my father's body through the door as a nurse walked out. I was mostly just intruiged/curious. I would have walked in there to look at him if it wasn't so inappropriate...

I don't find funerals to be scary. I've been to my fathers, my grandfathers, and some uncles as well as friends of the family. I don't find them scary or sad. I kind of think they're a little silly to be honest. Everyone is so serious and formal. It seems like a strange tradition to me.

Not too many people in my family have died, but I soppose I might be sad for awhile remembering all the good things about that person, but I'd probably let it go, people die, its very natural to me. In this world people come and go all the time, thats the way life is.
Yes, twice I've seen dead bodies. For both my maternal grandfather and my paternal grandmother.
I am not afraid of death because I was dead for so long already before I was born, I only fear the pain that I may feel and the shock of dieing may cause chemical ractions of panic in my brain.
Funerals are somewhat interesting to me, if not alittle boring. You learn a lot about that persons life, and you get to hear stories about when they were younger. And the theme of death is just very interesting to me.
The only part that made me nervious and upset was seeing my mother cry for the first time in my life, which was very awkward for me, being that my mother is very strong minded.

And with the feeling guilty for not crying, I used to feel that but then I kind of let it go. Because most people who are still alive don't really want people to cry about it anyway. I almost cried at my grandfathers funural though, I mean he knew and was close to so many people. I remember being told about it though when I woke up and I was like "thats terrible" in a casual voice.

I agree.. people should be alowlled to espess thier feelings freel without the boundry of ritualised ceremony, which pointless. some might argue that it gives structure to the emotions..... but emotions are by their nature chaotic and to structure them is to confine and destroy them.

How do You cope with death in the family?

I don't really have a need to cope with it. I never have. To me, dying is a direct result of being born. When my grandmother died when I was nine I didn't understand what everyone was so upset about. She was sick and had been suffering from a degenerative neuromuscular disease that is always fatal in the end. I understood her death to be the end of her suffering.

When my mother died in 2007, I felt the same thing (she died in a similar way to her own mother). I wasn't sad. I was relieved that she was no longer suffering.

Have you seen a dead body?

Yeah at viewings.....mostly bodies that have already been embalmed. I've seen my maternal grandmother, a friend of mine when I was 14, I've seen a couple friends who've died of drug overdoses and in accidents...

The strangest one was my mother....who I actually saw die in front of me. It's a strange thing watching someone die....when I realized she had taken her last breath, I picked up a cell phone and called the funeral home.....the rest of my family was crying and hugging each other....

Are you affraid of death?

No, not really. I'm not really a fan of pain, so when I go I hope it's not too painful, but other than that I imagine it would be like falling into a dreamless sleep and not waking up.

Do you think funerals is scary?

Funerals not at all....they are sort of like saying goodbye, someone says a some nice words and stuff and that's about it...

I don't really like viewings much, especially if it's someone in my family that died. I don't like people touching me and I can't stand it when people that I don't know think that hugging me will make me fell better. I don't like when people tell me how sorry they are and how to respond to them.

When it's a viewing for a friend or a friends loved one...I find it very difficult to display sympathy, and I feel even worse for trying to fake it. I know I'm not the most empathetic person, but I try to understand the pain they are feeling but I just can't. It also freaks me out to see people crying and I can't bring myself to give someone a hug out of sympathy. All that aside I still show up and pay my respects, and I have to remember that no one there cares if I'm not crying, not hugging, or acting like an emotionless robot.....it's not at all about me.

Death am I are friends, no scare here.

It is a lost, but quite well.



More than one: The first in the age of 5: My Grand-grand-mother, most recent my mother.



No - death the end of all sensations and feeling; therefore I do not care.



No - boring!

I nver saw one embalmed - it is very uncommon where I grown up (and I never saw the point of doing so).