The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed
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The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed
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Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed
#2This is so sad. Dying alone is more frightening than death itself. It is articles like this that force me to stop working so hard and spend more time with family.
Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed
#3This is so sad. Dying alone is more frightening than death itself. It is articles like this that force me to stop working so hard and spend more time with family.
I genuinely want to know: why is that frightening? I have thought through this a few times and I did not come to this conclusion at all.
Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed
#4This is so sad. Dying alone is more frightening than death itself. It is articles like this that force me to stop working so hard and spend more time with family.
I genuinely want to know: why is that frightening? I have thought through this a few times and I did not come to this conclusion at all.
Primarily because it is the mark of a life not well lived. Having family, friends etc are essential to a good life for most people.
Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed
#5This is so sad. Dying alone is more frightening than death itself. It is articles like this that force me to stop working so hard and spend more time with family.
I genuinely want to know: why is that frightening? I have thought through this a few times and I did not come to this conclusion at all.
I don't understand it either. Why is it frightening?
I also didn't quite understand the family comment either. Whose family are you talking about?
When you are born, you have your mom (and possibly Dad) around you. But as you grow older, Mom and Dad will pass away and you'll thus be alone. Unless you have kids, you'll die alone.
Even if you do have kids, life happens. I know plenty of people who don't talk to their kids or they hate their mom or dad and there is no relation. Thus some people have died alone.
I think some people have this fantasy, that they are on their death bed and there is 3 generations weeping around them.
Sorry, but is this even true any more? Quite honestly for me. I'm quite happy to leave as unnoticed.
Oh and another thing. Friends. Unless you make seriously good friends and not those on facebook or acquaintances. They may be around you a long time. But I have rarely met someone in their 50s/60s that still knows their childhood friends.
So strike that one off the list. I think a life well-meant is what you did with it. Rather than who is in it.
Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
I genuinely want to know: why is that frightening? I have thought through this a few times and I did not come to this conclusion at all.
Primarily because it is the mark of a life not well lived. Having family, friends etc are essential to a good life for most people.
Who are any of us to judge what a life well lived is to anyone else?
Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed
#7This is so sad. Dying alone is more frightening than death itself. It is articles like this that force me to stop working so hard and spend more time with family.
I genuinely want to know: why is that frightening? I have thought through this a few times and I did not come to this conclusion at all.
At the moment of death you're having your last memories, so dying alone is like going into the abyss alone forever. Dying with people is like going into the abyss with that company forever. Or something like that. It could be even more subtle than this. I'm speaking psychologically of course. Replace the abyss with whatever.
This may seem odd in logical terms but it seems to be a common understanding, and it's found in movies, books, etc.
[edit]It might be analagous to children who don't want to fall asleep without an adult with them. They are scared by the darkness and don't want to go through something scary alone.
Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed
#8>We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone.
...or...
>For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone.
Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed
#9> His epiphany came when his current partner told him how she had lost her grandmother. Unlike Koremura’s loss, her grandmother had died alone—a kodokushi. It was seeing the deep regret in her, and accepting his own ennui, that made Koremura finally take action. He left his job as a stockbroker and set up his own removal company dedicated to the cleanup of kodokushi victims. He wanted to give something back to the generation of his grandmother, and he also wanted to change who he was. “I was ready for the prospect of change, but looking back, perhaps I wasn’t quite so ready for how different my life was to become,” he remembers.
It's odd that Toru Koremura's reaction to lonely elderly deaths was to go into the corpse-cleaning-up business, rather than starting a social outreach program for the lonely elderly. I understand there's dignity in how we treat the dead, but it doesn't solve the problem at all.
Re: The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed
#10>We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone. ...or... >For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone.
Unless you were born in a vat, you probably didn't enter the world alone.