At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on • Hacker News Board

Re: At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on

#221

Post by jcims » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #220

war1025 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end This rings very true for me. My dad died of brain cancer going on five years ago now. He was diagnosed in 2014. They were clear the prognosis was not good. One or two years at best. They removed the tumor as soon as they found it, and he returned basically to normal. There was a weird settling in of what it all meant and treatments that were meant to stall th…

> It took a little over a month for "Dad's acting funny again" to turn into "Dad died last night". I lost my mother from lung cancer so I can relate. My dad on the other hand died without notice. I got a message on my phone one day when I was at work. It was a cop from my father's town. They didn't tell me why they were calling, but I knew something happened to my father because he was living on the edge. I took the…

I agree. I got a similar call that my dad was killed at work when I was in my early 20s. Due to the circumstances I'm not convinced it wasn't intentional on his part, and in some odd ways I get a bit of relief from that. It was devastating to me, but watching my wife and the mother of my children go through a tortuous 26 months of treatments, unrelenting pain, cycles of hope and despair, various indignities and ultimately passing in a confused state was orders of magnitude worse.

Re: At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on

#222

Post by shrimp_emoji » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

Tade0 wrote: post #190

I'm the same age and not at all at peace with my mortality - the dominant feeling being envy of those who get to live after my death. If I wrote a book with ghosts, zombies or other undead I would give the antagonists this as their reasons for hating the living. Anyway that point about vulnerability is spot on. When I hug my SO I often reflexively blurt something among the lines of "softness is important", but what I…

I think: lose enough ego and entitlement, and you can not only find peace with death but even see it as a truly "happy ending" given the wondrous experiences of the uncountable people that will come after you (and what a petty, selfish distinction whose experiences those are is).

But that's not easy. It seems to take years of thinking about death almost daily and thinking about space and time[0] and history and stuff. And maybe psychedelics, although I never tried those yet.

0: https://youtu.be/5TbUxGZtwGI

Re: At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on

#223

Post by ido » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

andreilys wrote: post #150

wunderflix wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, when I talk to my 4 year old son, I imagine how we will have our last goodbye talk on my death bed. How we will both know that this is the last moment together, how we both will be mourning. It makes me incredibly sad, and, at the same time it helps me to make better decisions in life. Choosing spending time with him instead of surfing the web for no reason for example.

I’d also invite you to contemplate the reverse: a last goodbye talk on his death bed. I find contemplating the absence of others to be much more powerful than my own return back to the void.

I think that's a great point and I'm absolutely not going to do that - I can't bring myself to imagine my children will die before me.

Re: At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on

#224

Post by jcims » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

stjohnswarts wrote: post #219

jcims wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My girls were raised Christian and I and my wife practiced and professed that faith our entire relationship. I haven't given up on the faith but I am so profoundly disappointed in the modern church that I need to go back to the root of it all and see how much it still resonates.

Have you been to a Unitarian Church? They tend to do away with a lot of the politics and dogma and stick to the core and have better camaraderie than any other church I've been to. I'm an agnostic, but I'm always up for hanging out with cool, chill people. I mean if you're actually a believer and such it might be cool. Bahai meetings were the only other one I've been to that rivaled. They're the polar opposite of the…

No but i've heard good things. May give that a try. Thank you.

Re: At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on

#225

Post by dang » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

weregiraffe wrote: post #115

"Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our early childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are childish, foolish, and short-sighted — in a word, are big children all their lives, something intermediate between the child and the man, who is a man in the strict sense of the word." -- Arthur Schopenhauer

Please don't do this. Hopping straight to the worst thing someone said or did as soon as their name is mentioned is a recipe for discussion hell.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9722096

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24398679)

Re: At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on

#226

Post by dang » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

podgaj wrote: post #69

srtjstjsj wrote: post #51

Rainn Wilson's Soul Pancake has a long playlist of videos featuring dying people. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzvRx_johoA8ITQgxBpeJ...

Death porn!

You've posted 15 comments in this thread, most of which have been flamebait or outright trolling. You can't do that on HN, whether death is real or not. Please stop.

Re: At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on

#227

Post by fnord77 » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

jcims wrote: post #149

My wife passed this year from cancer. Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end, and in the last few weeks her beautiful mind was influenced by the disease. I’m sure someone on HN is going through this at least adjacently and my recommendation is to not wait to the end to have important conversations. For those that aren’t going through this now, maybe for a little while live life like you are...it mig…

> It’s hard to know exactly what to say in those moments

often just being there for her is more important than saying anything.

Re: At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on

#228

Post by Diesel555 » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

jcims wrote: post #212

slivanes wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christian faith would have you believe it is God's will that you perish at His time of choosing. He also loves you.

My girls were raised Christian and I and my wife practiced and professed that faith our entire relationship. I haven't given up on the faith but I am so profoundly disappointed in the modern church that I need to go back to the root of it all and see how much it still resonates.

It sounds like you are disappointed in what people who are in the modern church, publicly speaking that you have access to, are saying. There will obviously be an availability bias on how we each perceive the "modern church".

If you don't believe in what the Bible says, then disregard everything below.

Try reading the Bible. As a whole. And if you have, do it again. Don't let individual versus taken out of context influence major decisions. Know who wrote each chapter (if we know that), who they were writing to, and why they wrote that chapter to put everything in context. I found I was reading too fast and missing major parts. Also translation makes a big deal - some words just don't translate properly - and a good Bible will have footnotes to explain the original word. There are lots of plans out there.

Then, I think, you will realize that what those in the modern church you are referencing are saying should disappoint all of us... and it's not in alignment with the Bible and Jesus' teachings, and you can see where they don't align. Not all churches are that way. Anyways go to the source (if you haven't already).

Re: At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on

#229

Post by kilroy123 » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

jcims wrote: post #149

My wife passed this year from cancer. Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end, and in the last few weeks her beautiful mind was influenced by the disease. I’m sure someone on HN is going through this at least adjacently and my recommendation is to not wait to the end to have important conversations. For those that aren’t going through this now, maybe for a little while live life like you are...it mig…

I don't have anything to say other than I'm very sorry. I know it's not enough but I really feel for you.

Re: At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on

#230

Post by klunger » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #139

_ink_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they not want to revive you? How awesome would it be, if we could revive someone who lived around the year 1500, 1000 or even 0? I expect people in the year 3000 (if there are still people around and if they have it relatively good) would see it equally when looking to the year 2000.

I'd be worried some rich psychopath (actually, probably an AI) would resurrect people and put them into a torture dungeon for eternity. Imagine never being able to die. Only suffer. No mouth, must scream vibes. Who knows what the future holds. But in the remote chance this is what the future holds, the AI may not even need your body. It might be able to simulate you up to the moment of your death. Or find some quirk…

You really ought to read I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. The author has already thought of basically the same thing and written a rather compelling yet disturbing short story about. In 1967, no less.