cletus-factor
TMF Expert
- Joined
- May 20, 2002
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Well, I searched for death using the search function and I can see that for the past year at least there have been no posts concerning death, other than Anna Nicole and Va Tech.
So, what I'm going to do here is open up a thread about death on two topics.
The first topic is this:
I'm trying to write a story involving a young girl who loses her pet dog. The dog dies from giving birth (don't worry I have most of those details worked out as my neighbor just happens to be a vet). The trouble is I have virtually no material outside of a few things and so I was wondering what any of you might want to share about the death of a pet, in particular as a child. A special problem in my story is I have a few ideas of things to put in between A) death of dog to point B) discovery by child of what death is to her.
Myself I have 2 experiences, but neither of which really plays into this story. The first was my pet hamster when I was in Kindergarten. The thing stopped eating and so its teeth got so big that it starved. Well anyway it died of natural causes and hamsters only live like 3 years. I had fish, but fish are a little more alien to us than a mammal and so them dying didn't bother me more than the sun rising every morning. The other mammalian death suffered unto our family was that of my brother's dog. I was already going to college when this occurred, but I had met the animal on a few occasions. It seemed friendly enough and it was still just a puppy when it died. We believe that a neighbor poisoned it. Anyway, the point is that I remember feeling a distinct loss over both of these animals, and the thing which has always struck me most about death is the ending of this physical existence. The ending of being alive and the enjoyment of life. I often think to myself that when I die, if I'm in the middle of something that I perceived of as being fun (like a videogame or listening to music) will I miss it? Will the afterlife be more fun than this life?
The other topic of this thread is:
I want to explore death. No, I do not want to die for real, but from what we know, what does everyone think?
Myself, I have looked into just about every aspect of it to try and gain a clearer interpretation of something that cannot be known in its entirety.
I have come to some conclusions, though they may not be definitive.
We do know what happens physically to us when we die, and we even know what happens to the body after a person dies, but what happens to us after we die? It seems there are 3 paths which are all based on religious beliefs or a lack thereof. The first idea being that we just cease to be. A scary thought, but if you cease to be so do your thoughts and so no real gain or loss. The second idea (the one I'm partial to) is that we have something of the religious beliefs, such as a soul, and a form of an afterlife, but that what any of this means is anyone's guess. And the third interpretation is the purely religious beliefs. That there is a heaven or reincarnation or some variant thereof.
Anyway...
So, what I'm going to do here is open up a thread about death on two topics.
The first topic is this:
I'm trying to write a story involving a young girl who loses her pet dog. The dog dies from giving birth (don't worry I have most of those details worked out as my neighbor just happens to be a vet). The trouble is I have virtually no material outside of a few things and so I was wondering what any of you might want to share about the death of a pet, in particular as a child. A special problem in my story is I have a few ideas of things to put in between A) death of dog to point B) discovery by child of what death is to her.
Myself I have 2 experiences, but neither of which really plays into this story. The first was my pet hamster when I was in Kindergarten. The thing stopped eating and so its teeth got so big that it starved. Well anyway it died of natural causes and hamsters only live like 3 years. I had fish, but fish are a little more alien to us than a mammal and so them dying didn't bother me more than the sun rising every morning. The other mammalian death suffered unto our family was that of my brother's dog. I was already going to college when this occurred, but I had met the animal on a few occasions. It seemed friendly enough and it was still just a puppy when it died. We believe that a neighbor poisoned it. Anyway, the point is that I remember feeling a distinct loss over both of these animals, and the thing which has always struck me most about death is the ending of this physical existence. The ending of being alive and the enjoyment of life. I often think to myself that when I die, if I'm in the middle of something that I perceived of as being fun (like a videogame or listening to music) will I miss it? Will the afterlife be more fun than this life?
The other topic of this thread is:
I want to explore death. No, I do not want to die for real, but from what we know, what does everyone think?
Myself, I have looked into just about every aspect of it to try and gain a clearer interpretation of something that cannot be known in its entirety.
I have come to some conclusions, though they may not be definitive.
We do know what happens physically to us when we die, and we even know what happens to the body after a person dies, but what happens to us after we die? It seems there are 3 paths which are all based on religious beliefs or a lack thereof. The first idea being that we just cease to be. A scary thought, but if you cease to be so do your thoughts and so no real gain or loss. The second idea (the one I'm partial to) is that we have something of the religious beliefs, such as a soul, and a form of an afterlife, but that what any of this means is anyone's guess. And the third interpretation is the purely religious beliefs. That there is a heaven or reincarnation or some variant thereof.
Anyway...
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