Category: Grief

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?