Atheists: Finding Comfort in Loss

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This post is absolutely not meant to strike up a religious debate and it is not intended to be patronizing - it's only something I've thought about before but never had a chance to hear an answer.

It's difficult enough for theists to endure the loss of a loved one, but at least there's usually the underlying hope that the person will be met again in the afterlife to ease the burden somewhat.

What I want to know is this: Atheists and agnostics (in some cases), how do you find peace when a loved one dies? How do lighten the thought of knowing that you'll never see that beloved and familiar face that has been a part of your life for 10, 30 or 70 years? Going a step further, what brings comfort in thinking of your own death?

Do you even need to be comforted? Is it the simple acceptance of the fact that death is a part of life?

 

Haven't had a loved one die yet. I'll tell you when I do.
Okay, no, I probably won't.

Maybe I'll feel differently when I think it's imminent, but, yes, this. No, I don't particularly need to comforted. Yes, one day I'll die and then...be no more. That's not really any more frightening than going to sleep.

Now, the process of dying might be scary as hell. But that's not the same thing. Dying might be scary, death--that is, oblivion--most certainly is not.

 

I'm an atheist, I dont believe in life after death.

You know... I dont think the death of a family member or loved one bothers me any more or less than it used when I was a Christian (I was raised as one). Lets face it - death, no matter what face you put on it, is horrible. Nobody likes it when someone close to them dies, and no matter what you believe, its never easy to accept.

But I guess, my "beliefs", make more sense to me, because I no longer believe that there is a God who's "plan" involves senseless death. I remember asking my Dad why he was going to die (he died of cancer 9 years ago), or at least how he could justify it as a Christian, and he said with his death his insurance policy would pay off and we would be financially secure. And I remember saying to my Dad that no amount of money would ever be worth it.

All of the rationalizations that religious people use for death - that its part of the plan, that it makes us grow and become stronger - ring hollow in my ears. People dont want to believe the truth - that sometimes things happen for no reason - because the thought of an all knowing all loving God planning it out is so much easier to accept at face value.

Atheism doesnt make death any easier to accept than religion did, but I think I'm much more at peace with the concept that some things are out of my control and I have to make the best with the life which I've got. At least I dont have to pretend to be thankful to God when he kills people I love, because I realize he has nothing to do with their deaths at all.

Not seeing them again is a bummer, but then believing in heaven doesnt make it true. And if I can accept that I wont see them again in this life, I think I can accept it for all eternity. Which, being a mortal who doesnt believe in the afterlife, really just means my own life.

As for heaven... doesnt bother me, as I said I dont believe in it anyway. I find the concept of heaven and hell quite horrifying actually, that good people who dont believe go to hell just the same as the real sinners. And one lifetime worth of mistake can land you up in eternal torment without so much of a whisper of a second chance. Its so unbelievable that the Christian god would be so unforgiving towards humanity, it just sounds ridiculous.

I've learned to accept my own death, and responsibility for all of my mistakes. I cant blame the devil or the creator, its just me. I need to be sure that, when I leave this world, I've made up for any transgressions I did. With the people against whom I committed them. Accepting that I'm not going to live forever in heaven doesnt bother me actually.

And if I were to choose an afterlife, it would probably be reincarnation anyway. I'd want to experience new things. But yeah, not even that exists!

 

The way I see it, this concept of the afterlife lessens the intensity of the experience. If you are confronted with the inevitable loss of a loved one, then you should deal with the pain of the loss right then and there, in a way you owe it to their memory.
If you negate the feeling of loss by the assurance of afterlife, not only are you delaying the misery (until your own death hopefully), but you are building up high expectations.
For people who later 'lose' their religion, this can lead to their entire foundations shaking. The terrible thought that you will not only never see them again, but that you smeared their loss with cheesy promises of some better place, will make you feel like you cheated yourself and the loved ones of some deserved grieving.

 

Have you ever been unconscious? That is how I believe death will be, if it is sudden, you will never know about it, if it is long winded, maybe from cancer then maybe you could find peace knowing that you will be free from the pain.

Dealing with the death of another? I dont know, Im the kind of person who doesnt deal with things, I just go about my life like nothing has happened, and then cry when noone is around and bottling it up has gotten to much for me.

 

Comfort?

Loss?

Me?

I don't even understand what this question means and it seems I'm unable to see it's relevance. Everything is as it as it is.

I do understand that some people have a need to find comfort(?) in a situation of losing(?) someone, something, whatever. I can relate to the pain which they seem to have and seem too deem necessary to feel. It is acceptable to choose to feel so. It is also possible not to choose to feel so. I find it unnecessary. If there is a situation in which sadness or pain might feel overwhelming, I know it is something that will pass and something which can be shut on or off. It does take time, practice and patience.

One more:

atheists?

The notion of a god or God is irrelevant. Or relevant to you, if you want it to be. I find it not to be useful. Whether there be a god or God, I care not. I'm not exactly an atheist, nor agnostic. If you want, perhaps you can call me post(post?)modernist in this respect.

 

To me the metaphor the comparison to being knocked unconscious doesn't really work because you wake up from that. Your mind forms thoughts like this:

"OK, there's EMT's over me right now cutting off my sweatshirt. What was I doing? Oh, I was dunking basketballs off of chairs, okay... I must have had a bad concussion, this makes sense." (maybe that's just me )

Any amount of thinking I do when eliminating life after death scenarios invariably ends up with the concept of non-existence. It is absolutely inconceivable to the mind what it would be like to just end. There is no way to know what it is like and it just tends to hurt my head to even try to imagine. At the same time, I feel that eternity is an (nearly) equal impossibility for the mind to perceive. It likewise hurts my head

As for the comfort with the loss of a loved one, well, I can't rightly say as I am not an athiest. I will go so far as to say that relief that they are not experiencing pain such as cancer would give relief. I know my grandpa (a devout religious man) was in enough discomfort near the time of his death that he just wanted to get it over with and face whatever was coming. I imagine an athiest might have the same views.

 

Not many things in life are certain but the fact that everyone will one day die is one of them. I do not see how this would be a loss any more than water being wet or the sun hot being a loss. It just is, it is a reality. Creating elaborate fantasies to avoid accepting it seems like a pretty poor way of dealing with in my eyes. Sure, some deaths are suckier than others but when it has arrived I see no point in mulling over it anymore. I have no great experience in "loss" the closest being a few dogs, a couple of grandparents and two nieces who died a few weeks after birth. The process up to the point of death is painful but when it has arrived there is nothing you can do and if there is nothing you can do why spend more time and energy on it? Time to move on. The person is gone, he is not coming back he has ceased to exist. Fighting things you cannot fight seems incredibly stupid and an utter waste of time and energy to me.

 

when a person dies they become non-existing

how i deal with it? i don't really know actually, 2 of my onkels have died and i believe they where pretty close to me, i have no idea of how i "dealt with it" though, i think i might just not deal with.

come to think of it, they just become a non-factor in my life, and therefor i do not think about them that often, it's not like i don't like the memory of them, but they just seem to become more and more insignificant

 

There's nothing to imagine. Because there's nothing to experience.

 

Well yeah, I understand what you are saying, but I still have trouble with it. It's just that there is no way to grasp (at least for me) the concept of non-existence. There is nothing to experience, but having everything end is an experience itself... I don't know if I'm not articulate enough here or what, but that's basically it for me. Nothingness is an impossibility while you still have the ability to think.

For me it is like imagining what it would be like to be a baby in a mothers womb, or right after death. I cannot imagine what not knowing anything is like in much the same way I cannot imagine the logistics of not existing... Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to read, but it does to me!

*Disclaimer* It is 6am for me without any sleep while studying for a final today... so, my mind may not be making complete sense.

 

Part of becoming an agnostic or athiest is the acceptance of such loss and acceptance that there is nothing else. My mother passed a few years ago and I don't think it affected me any more than it affected my sisters (who are both deeply religious). I accepted that she was gone, they preferred to believe they would see her years from now.

The biggest difference between my agnostic beliefs and my sisters' religious leanings occured after my mother's massive stroke (one week before she died). I chose to let my mother know I loved her and encouraged her to keep fighting -- my sisters encouraged her to "move on to a better place."

I certainly hope that the question "do you even need to be comforted?" should really have read "do you even need to be comforted about your own death?"

If the question was asked in regard to all death (not just our own) I do not understand how anyone can correlate non-believe in God with a lack of feeling for everyone. The loss of a loved one is tramatic to anyone but the most unfeeling people -- to assume the lack of believe in a diety means total apathy for life is ridiculous.

 

As far as my own death is concerned, I need no comfort. It is simply part of life. I do not feel the concept of an afterlife is particularly comforting. To exist forever in a heaven or hell sounds terribly boring to me. I'd rather have (after)life be truncated, finite. If there must be some sort of afterlife, I'd prefer reincarnation, which would at least be somewhat interesting.

When considering the death of others, I don't need to believe that there is a better place where they've gone to, or that I might meet them again later in an afterlife. The simple fact is that I won't see them again in this life and I will have to deal with that. Not that I've had a lot of trouble with that so far in my life. When people die, I know I won't ever see them again, but to my senses it is not all that different from the many friends that I've known so far but am no longer in contact with. Though there is still a chance that I might see those old friends in the future, chances are that I won't, so how is that so different from someone I know I won't have any possibility of seeing?

The only case in which I imagine I'd feel more is if my better half were to die. In that case, I'd probably would need to resort to my way of dealing with stress: Putting it in perspective. Like: Despite the loss, the world keeps on turning and tomorrow there will be another day. Life goes on and so must I.

 

Yes, i meant regarding your own death. I’m not trying to ask whether or not you're able to have human qualities if you don't believe in God. I hoped that my opening statement would do away with the notion that I was trying to imply something like this.

 

Wow! T2B has a 7th rep block!

Anyway, to answer the question. I don't have any living grandparents, but the times of their death were at very different points of my life. The first one died when I was still a child, while the last one died just a few years ago when I was already in my 30s. In childhood I believed in god, but now I do not*. In comparing my emotions at the times of their death, I actually believed I coped with the deaths that happened after I stopped believing in an afterlife than I coped with the ones that died when I believed they went to heavan. Of course, the fact that I was still a kid may have been responsible for me having more difficulty coping with the earlier deaths, and that my belief (or lack thereof) in an afterlife may have had no impact at all in how I coped with them - maybe I just dealt with the later deaths better because I was more mature.

As for my own death, my tagline pretty much sums up my feelings. I think that death is very similar (identical even) to prior to birth (I guess I can say prior to conception if I want to get really specific).

* I would still probably categorize myself as an agnostic and not an atheist. However, while I am not completely convinced either way regarding god's existance, I think it is far more likely that god does not exist, than that he does.

 

I think you hit it spot on there. After you die is just like it was a hundred years before you were born. Just because one cannot imagine it, does not mean that it cannot (or did not) happen. The world was certainly around a hundred years ago.

 

Well atleast atheists don't have to worry about our sinful loved ones going to hell.

I think the mourning process is not much more difficult really. While I'm myself agnostic I have a hard time believing that I'll ever see that person again in the afterlife. It's about accepting facts. It might even be that the religious ones have more difficult of a time moving on, since they'll clinge to the traumas since to them that person is still present in spirit. I suppose it's very personal though and varies from person to person, I doubt religion has that much to do with it really. It's more about individual psychology.

As for my own death I really don't know how I'll react when I'm dying. I certainly don't want to die, but it's kind of inevitable in the long run. Right now I prefer not to think about it too much.

 

Exactly, I'm not saying it isn't possible that death just ends everything, I'm just saying that we can have no clue of what that'd be like.

...Which in retrospect doesn't really fit in with the questions that were being asked in this thread.

 

I've lost people close to me and it's a great comfort to me (as a Christian) to think that I will see them again.
However, who knows? I couldn't contemplate there not being an afterlife but if you don't believe, you don't believe. Nobody's going to find out and be able to add a post to tell us!

Belief is whatever gets you through the day. Even Atheism is a form of belief, you belive there is no God/Afterlife. Who are we to judge?

 

It's really not the same thing.