RAFH

Logos, remember the old saw, "The best revenge you can have on an enemy is simply to live well". The same is true for those you love and respect. They could wish no more for you than you do live well. Hopefully they lived as well as they could.

So, to all of you out there, Live Well. In good times or bad, for yourselves, for those you love and even for your enemies. Live Well. Its the best tribute and the best revenge.


By the way, did your grandfather prefer shaken or stirred?

steamer

My first wife died of a liver disease. I remember looking into the clear blue eyes of my five year old daughter and telling her that her mother was dead. In a way, I suppose it was easier that I had so much to do taking care of her.

My wife wasn't in a lot of pain as she was mostly unconscious. When the doctors said they wouldn't operate, they came to me and asked for the non-resusication permission. They thought attempting a shunt would kill her.

That time was the hardest time in my life and you're right the only thing that really helps is time. I really feel for you.

As far as atheists having no consolation, I disagree. I had consolation that my wife was no longer suffering. My mother came to stay and helped me and that was a great comfort as well. My wifes family was also in pain and in consoling them I was consoling myself. Looking back, I think I'd have felt somehow cheated if I'd just turned to my imagination instead.

Vitalstatistix

What? No. God, no. Those tales are just cowardice, self pity, nihilism. Why would you ever accept a lie?


"Even many of those who claim to believe in immortality still tell themselves
and others that neither side of the question is susceptible of proof. Just
what can these hopeful ones believe that the word "proof" involves? The
evidence against the persistence of personal consciousness is as strong as
the the evidence for gravitation, and much more obvious. It is as convincing
and unassailable as the proof of the destruction of wood or coal by fire.
If it is not certain that death ends personal identity and memory, then
almost nothing that man accepts as true is susceptible as proof."
[Clarence Darrow, "The Myth of Immortality"]

yalla

"They" did WHAT?!!!!!
I'm speechless.

Cat59

Logos, I'm sorry for your loss. Your grandfather sounds like my great uncle, a wonderful irrascable Irish Catholic Priest, who helped Jews escape in Italy during WW2 and who lived well and for others, all his life. A man I miss very much too.

And you're right, life sucks. Today is my son's 18th birthday and the 18th anniversary of his brain damage that has caused him more suffering in one year of his short life than I've had in the whole of mine. But as a Theist, I didn't get much consolation emotionally from my beliefs around this. In the end I had to adopt a position of unknowing on suffering. I couldn't understand, for example, why a good god would let a child be tormented by voices due to epilepsy due to brain damage to the extent that he would try to kill himself. I couldn't explain it and in the end had just to accept that one day, I would understand, while I was being eaten up by the agony of seeing him suffer. All the cognitive manipulations in the world that I did could not offer consolation while actually physically holding my son in my arms and wondering why a good god who could intervene, sat there and allowed this to continue.

So for me, being an atheist is actually more consolation, in a way. Yes he suffers now and I strive alongside his docs and others to minimise that, and the anguish remains, but I don't have the added thought that someone is up there watching and allowing it, when it could be stopped, like a gigantic cosmic joke or trial that son1 was being used for. That thought was true agony to me, an addition to the suffering.

But at least he's still alive, when 18 years ago he so nearly died. And he often laughs and he makes people love him. And my aim is to reduce those times of suffering as much as I can, and give him the skills to live as independently as I can, so when I go, at least he'll be better able to manage. As I won't be up there praying for him...


And at least now, when someone I love dies, I don't have to worry where they've gone- I know if they suffered, their suffering is no more, rather than being an eternal one.

Logos, the agony you feel now will ease one day and you'll be able think not of those last few hours, but of his life as a whole, his WW2 exploits, his joy in living. Those live on in your memory, relish them and relive them when they come. Smile at them and share them with others. For me, doing that was a key to help the agony ease of facing the death of a loved one as an atheist.

Godless Raven

My condolences.

I guess for me personally, I've had a different experience. Although it's not 100% tied to my atheism, I know that in some ways, my dis-belief has lead me to the way I feel about life/death. I know there's no after life. No heaven for the good. No hell for the bad. No rewards or punishments. No eternity. But, I guess I look at the entire universe and where the milkyway is in it, where our solar system is in that etc etc. and I see just how rare our lives really are. Yeah, we're all evolved animals. Evolved from the most simple celled forms of life, but...that just makes us all the more rare. On this rare planet, in this unfathomably massive universe. Then to think about the millions of years of evolution it took to get to human beings, it's just incredible to think about how precious the life/consciousness I currently enjoy really is.

So when someone around me dies, and they have, particularly in the last 3 or 4 years, I don't get too upset (although I did cry at my best friends dads funeral). Instead, I think about how rare it is to be where I am, and how lucky I was to have existed during this millions of years of evolution with this person (who has passed on) whom I really cared about. What the odds of that are, and just how fortunate I've been. I look at all of my friends dead or alive that way. So when they go, I just think "I was fortunate to have known you." You know, one life, one shot, you gotta just appreciate the time you've had with good people and not get greedy feeling sorry for yourself when they go. Death is a fact, just as life is. All of those things you are going to miss, all of your favorite things are really all of the things you should be smiling about right now and all of the things you should be joyful about, just for having that great opportunity in the first place. It's not a loss so much as it is a gain that simply is no longer there. That doesn't mean it still wasn't a gain.

The people we care about live on in our memories, in the stories we tell and in the ways they have touched/effected our lives by being a part of them. That is something to truely appreciate and...frankly...something to smile about.

As far as your comment about "I should have seen them more", yeah, you're right, that's a natural reaction but...you know what? Kicking yourself about something that can't be changed is one of the worst wastes of energy ever known to mankind. Instead, take it as a positive lesson and remind yourself daily to keep in contact with friends and loved ones. Call up that old friend you've lost contact with. Ask your brother/sister out for lunch. Tell your family/friends that they have really had a positive influence on your life.

Anyway, that's just my personal philosophy on life/death. I realize it doesn't help the pain you're going through and I'm sorry that you're having this hard of a time.

Best regards,

Bryce/Godless Raven

fatpie42

Well Eternal Recurrence is not really a philosophy to take on at your deathbed, but it sounds to me like your granddad would have been happy to accept the responsibility of Eternal Recurrence while he was alive. I don't think you can be a WWII spy without deciding to make sure 'every minute counts' (though I'd love to know more about what that sort of job would be like, it sounds amazing).

The passage where Nietzsche introduces the Eternal Recurrence is as follows:

Nietzsche often describes religious beliefs (with Christianity in particular in mind) as 'life denying'. The idea of focussing on an afterlife is to devalue the importance of this life. In Eternal Recurrence every event is of the utmost importance because it does not represent a fleeting moment, but rather an every recurring echo through eternity. The question is, what kind of echo do you want to become? If you can feel proud of your granddad's life enough to wish it to be repeated again and again, considering that many could not bear to imagine their actions being repeated again and again, then that is something quite special.

If this was some help in this difficult time then I am glad. Take care dude.

Jehanne

Richard Dawkins, in his book Unweaving the Rainbow (and, The God Delusion, also) may have some words of comfort for you. He says something like this: "We are all going to die someday, and we are the lucky ones. The number of people who could have been born but who never were is like the sands on all the beaches of the world." Your grandfather was unique but now he is gone. Like you, he had the privilege of living, of being born and of dying. Countless of other potential "individuals" never had that opportunity.

Lógos Sokratikós

Ha ha ha ha! "My name is Sokratikós, Lógos Sokratikós. Pleased to meet you, Pussy Galore"- Ha ha ha ha!

Rum and cola, actually.

Lógos Sokratikós

This is so true. Thanks!