Ohhh this was an interesting post and one that got me thinking much more then I ever planned to do today. Honestly, I have no answers to your questions. I never experienced death of someone close until this past summer. Honestly, I wanted to (and still to some degree do) ignore it all and push it to the back of my head. Maybe we make death as impersonal as possible to try and make it seem less real and easier to forget. Just a thought. Why that has only started recently in modern times I don't know. <div><br></div><div>Now this is going to intrigue and bother me the rest of the day. <img src="http://www.gayauthors.org/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/read.gif" alt="" class="bbc_emoticon"></div>

But that's my point. By pushing it away and making it more impersonal and ignoring if aren't we just making it more difficult for ourselves. We are trained to think that death is bad and terrible and somehow dirty. When death was up close and part of life I really think that it was more open and natural and therefore easier to deal with on both sides.

I was soo affraid of death as a kid. I was scared that I'd die or my mum would be killed. I was some what traumaticed when I winessed one suicide and a little friend of my dying in a hit and run.

As an adult, I have had to face death from close two times now. First I lost my beloved grandpa. I was next to him, holding him when life left him. I felt peacefull and I almost could swear I felt something moving through me, his spirit or soul or something.

The doctors wanted to do autopsy on him, but I refused. I didn't want him be opened up for no really valid reason.

In my eyes he died of old age.

I had to put my cat to sleep. That was in a way worse than loosing my grandpa, I had to make the decision to end my poor babys suffering. It was the right choise, he died in mya arms too.

I'm not affrait of death at all. I don't like the idea of our bodies breaking down to ground, so I want to be cremated. That is a weird thought for me and I can't say why it disturbes me being so natural.

I often wonder about the days that runs too fast when we get older. I often remember my thoughts as a kid before going to sleep wondering if I'm gonna be alive when I'm 30. Now I wonder the same about being 50. I used to imagine the excact feeling of life leavin me, but not that often anymore.

Death is a really really interesting topic. I really don't feel like death is only the end.

Death is a part of life. We should always be prepared for it...the death of others and our own. Shedding tears is a part of the grieving process, but fearing death is of no value to the living.

My outlook on death has changed completely over the past three years, since I held my wife's hand as she passed away. Death as such no longer scares me the way it used to. I have absolutely no fascination for it the way you do. However, it is no longer the big Unknown that I used to push to the back of my mind. I think I am stronger for it, although it came at a price that I had rather not paid.

I believe it's one of the strengths of the Buddhist tradition, especially the Tibetan one, to see death as just another stage in the ever-lasting cycle of life, and to prepare each and everyone to face that crossing to another — for lack of a better understanding of what it actually is — state of being.

I'm in no rush to experience death. I might even live life more fully now, having seen death so close to me. I just know I will be more prepared for it than I would otherwise have been.

In other words, fear pain because it can make you lose all humanity; don't fear death because death is actually the only certainty you have in life.

Like politics, death is a subject that troubles me but that I don't delve too far into because neither I nor anyone else can know enough to feel a sense of control over it.

Some feel that they've achieved a sort of victory over death by coming to terms with it, but I don't consider dignified surrender a form of victory.

Anywhere absence follows presence, you have a metaphor for death, and if you think about it, those are the situations people trouble themselves over most. All anxiety over loss is microcosmic death fear. Break-ups, graduations, relocations, empty bottles. These things aren't all necessarily bad, but they are stressful, and so too is death.

If people react poorly to your interest in it, then they are probably hypocrites without realizing it. Everyone fascinates over death, but perhaps most do only through its everyday guises and metaphors.

I hope not to deal too heavily with it for several decades.

My outlook on death has changed completely over the past three years, since I held my wife's hand as she passed away. Death as such no longer scares me the way it used to. I have absolutely no fascination for it the way you do. However, it is no longer the big Unknown that I used to push to the back of my mind. I think I am stronger for it, although it came at a price that I had rather not paid.....

I'm in no rush to experience death. I might even live life more fully now, having seen death so close to me. I just know I will be more prepared for it than I would otherwise have been.

In other words, fear pain because it can make you lose all humanity; don't fear death because death is actually the only certainty you have in life.

What a clear and wise way to answer .

I fully agree with you Bleu. I made in my long life 5 times (parents, children, friends) the same experience as you did with your wife, each time with the same grief and together a feeling of hope. Death belongs to Life,

First off i have to say those photo's you linked are interesting, kinda scares me a bit when you see them with their eyes closed and face sunken in.

I'd be considered weird too Nephy, Growing up my favorite movie was BeetleJuice and i even liked the Cartoon show as a child.

The otherday was 7years for my grandpa everyone the otherday was talking about it and didn't know how long it's been i was like "I was 18 then,,, it's been 7 years".

For awhile now i've been having pains in my legs like a constant numbness then they'll feel heavy and vibrate. I think because it was getting close to the death anniversary it hit me hard a few days before the actual anniversary. I was standing in the kitchen and my Grandma just finished making my doctor's appointment and i was like "I wish Grandpa was here, he'd tell me to fake it even better and ask me if i wanted him to hit me in the legs with a hammer to get disability". I started to cry a bit but i was laughing too.

There's alot of death in my bedroom. The last of my plants from my father''s funeral in June has died. It would grow 4 leaves as a time then loose the leaves. I'd get panic attacks over it loosing the leaves then i started telling myself "when it finally dies i'll take that as i sign that i can move on". It just died this week, i still have it sitting in the pot, maybe it'll make a comeback, I kept some roses and a cactus flower thing, so they're around my room too,,, also dead but they look rather nice.

The same night the plant died i had a horrible dream, we we're living in our old apartment , me,my mother and my sister and my father, but i was the only one in my dream who could see him. and Dad was even about the age in my dream then. I always hated that apartment and i'm still afraid when i have to go visit people in that building, as my father before through me down the stairs and stuff. In my dream i was like "We buried you, i placed you in the ground" HORRIBLE things to say! We never were close, i'm sort of still angry with him, as i become the one who had to take care of the funeral, got attacked at the funeral home by his family members.. And they're still fighting with me... EVEN over the plants! that i've killed.

This is the 3rd time i've dreamt of dead relatives, i've dreamt twice about my grandpa and another time shortly after about my Great Grandma who died shortly after my grandpa. I sort of believe i'm pyschic. It's stupid i know but my grandpa always said my grandma's side was Witches... My mom's adopted, so my WitchCraft wouldn't be genetic.. But maybe some how i'm channeling it from somewhere . I made my aunt cry once when she was buying my grandpa's tombstone and wouldn't let me chip in. When my grandpa died i had a dream the night before he was going to die, I told her about that years later when they were finally buying the stone, and she wants me to tell her if i ever have dreams about my grandpa agian.

Me and my aunt are very close,We are the only ones in the family who will go up to the graveyard and clean the leaves and such away from the stone, She'll make me cry because when we go she'll say "You'll be doing this for me soon" "You'll be the only one coming to visit me" she wants to be buried right beside my grandpa. We drove by the otherday on our way to a lake to go ice fishing, and she was talking about the stone, and im like "yeah i have two to visit now" and we were with her boyfriend and his son, I started to cry, and the little boy was starting to cry and starts asking me questions about death and heaven and such.

My grandma's house has had 2 funerals in it, We're our couch is back in the day they're was coffins there. My cousins are afraid to sleep in the attic because they are afraid of my great grandma's ghost. My room is now in the attic, i even have furniture from this Great Grandma. I'm not afraid at all. In the basement as kids we'd tell our cousins to watch out for Uncle Elmer and i forget the other uncles name... dutch names.

I have a lot of spiritual activity in my house and I'm fond of every one of them. The only thing that scares me is that they will leave me without communicating with me, although I think that some of them are just here to keep me company through lonely times.

Witchcraft isn't genetic, it's taught, felt and experienced. And psychism doest have to have anything to do with witchcraft. Personally i find wicca too restrictive. I often dream about dead relatives, espcially my mother and father... my father visited the house a couple of times when we first moved in, just to make sure it was ok, and he came to see my daughter when she was a baby (I was 3m pregnant when he died)

I practice all kinds of magical disciplines andI am also an exlectic vampire, taking prana from natural forces and human auras as well as through living blood. I find the whole thing totally natural and normal. What others think is not my problem.

I have a propensity for killing things. I even managed to kill my son't pet cockroah - go figure.

I have no fear of death, or what comes after. I do the best I can in teh now and what comes after follows on.