Category: Death

What Happens When We Die?

Death is a part of everyone’s life. When you are young, it might be a family pet or an elderly relative. Your first experience with seeing someone die can happen at an early age.

As we get older, we see it everywhere: on the way to work, you get stuck behind a funeral procession. A news report about a fatal accident. A rock star has an overdose. A friend dies from cancer. A beloved cultural icon dies at an old age. Perhaps you even have a traumatic incident in your own life, with parents or siblings dying.

Which leads to the obvious question: What happens to all those people when they die? And what will happen to me when I die?

Obviously, any guess about it is pure speculation. While there might be hints, like a person reporting on a near-death experience, there is no direct evidence.

Some religions offer some sort of reward (or punishment) for belief (or disbelief).  So what you think about death might be influenced by that: ascending to heaven, being reincarnated, and so on.

No doubt there is also some wish fulfillment. If a loved one dies, the grief can be overwhelming. It is a nice thought that when you die, you will be reunited once again.

Or if someone wrongs you, it is nice to think of some sort of cosmic justice being done in an afterlife even if there was no accountability here and now.

You’ve probably thought about this, one of the classic questions to ponder: what happens when we die? Do you have any thoughts?

Related questions: Why are people afraid of death? How do you remember someone who has died? What arrangements do you want when you die? Why are we sad when someone we don’t know dies?

How Have You Experienced Collective Grief?

If you experience a loss that is shared by a large group, you might well experience collective grief. What are some examples?

Shared loss can come in many different forms. One of the most common is when a well known figure dies. The death of an accomplished actor, an influential musician, or sports idol can be very powerful, and affect a large group of people.

When Prince died, for example, people gathered outside his Minnesota home to pay their respects. Sales of his albums spiked, and many fans wore his signature color purple in his honor.

Another example is some sort of large-scale tragedy. Individuals tell stories of where they were and what they were doing on September 11, 2001. Shocking events, like the assassination of JFK, the attack on Pearl Harbor, or the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger were all notable and seared into public consciousness.

There have been several of these events over the last decade or so. In one year alone, we had the public shutdown from COVID-19 in March 2020, followed by the marches after the murder of George Floyd later that summer, to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Each event, in it’s own way, was cause for grief and sorrow.

Are there events, these or others, that led to a large outpouring of emotion for you and people around you? Have you experienced a neighborhood trying to find a way to make sense of tragedy, as frustration and grief and anger all go through individuals and groups? What has brought solace to you, as well as to friends and neighbors in your community?

Related questions: How can we turn sadness into constructive action? How do you maintain hope? With which groups do you identify? Are we living through history?

What Kind Of Funeral Do You Want?

Have you thought about what happens after you die? What kind of funeral, memorial service, celebration of life, etc., do you want?

Share why if you wish.

Is Health Care A Human Right?

Health care is something that every person has experience with. Is that enough to make it a fundamental human right?

At various times throughout our lives, we need medical attention. That might come from a broken bone, a common illness, or even something more serious. It might mean visiting a doctor, or perhaps even a stay in the hospital.

In fact, this even predates hospitals. Tens of thousands of years ago, most if not all tribes of hunter gatherers, or early agricultural societies, probably had a shaman or medicine man. These people would fix broken legs, suggest herbs to numb pain or promote healing, and the like.

This universality in the need for medical attention might suggest a human right. Everyone will need some form of health care, regularly and throughout their entire lives. What could be more basic? Besides maybe air to breathe and water to drink?

And yet, that health care is provided by other humans. Doctors, nurses, porters, hospital administrators, technicians, and on and on. It requires drugs that are expensive to develop and produce, and ever-advancing equipment that can do remarkable things.

What happens if someone cannot pay for these goods and services? Should they be denied treatment that may extend their life? Or should they be treated, with the (potentially large) costs being passed on to the rest of us? Or perhaps the medical community should be required to provide these services at reduced or no cost?

Is health care a human right? If so, how do we pay for someone who cannot, themselves, provide payment? If not, how can we justify pain, suffering, and early or unnecessary death for the sake of money?

Related questions: What does it mean to be healthy? How do you stay healthy? What is the sickest you have ever been? Do animals have rights?

Why Are We Sad When Someone We Don’t Know Dies?

When someone dies who had an impact on us — a beloved entertainer from our childhood, for example — we are sad, even though we don’t know the figure personally. But why should that be?

There is no doubt that there is an emotional reaction to the news of someone’s death. For people we know and interact with, that is understandable. That person’s place in our life is missing.

However, we also feel sadness for some we have never met. For instance, a musician who sang a particularly meaningful song, or an author who wrote a touchstone book.

But why? The meaningful part — the song, say, or the book — still exist. They are not being erased from the public consciousness, and in fact may gain some awareness from the creator’s death.

Is it that the person will no longer be creating anything that might move you similarly? Chances are, unless you are a completist, there is music from that artist you have never heard, or books by that author you have never read. There is still new material  — new to you, that is — to be discovered.

Perhaps it is general empathy. We are sad to hear of someone’s death. A life with value has come to an end, which is a cause for mourning.

And yet, people with value die every minute of every day. With eight billion people on the planet, we cannot mourn the passing of each and every one — we would live in a constant tsunami of sadness.

So why, then, are we affected by these individual deaths? Why are we not happy that the person existed in the first place, and created such impactful works of art? Why not take joy that our world can produce such people, who in turn create such meaning?

There is no doubt that we are saddened by the news of these passings. It seems obvious that the feelings exist. But is there a reason why? Why do we feel sad when someone we don’t know dies?

Related questions: Why are people afraid of death? What is the nature of celebrity? What makes you nostalgic? What are you sad about?