# Healing and Wellbeing > Spirituality, Religion and Faith >  >  Dealing with death

## BrookeAshley

Hi everyone.

I have a question. Since my daughter passed away in April, I've had many people offer their prayer and thoughts. Which I appreciate so much. I'm not a very religious person. So even though they offer their prayers, its not much comfort to me. I lost my faith quite awhile ago and when I had to hold my baby lifeless, all my faith left. I don't believe God is going to save me and I feel that we are all on our own. I want to believe there's a God and a heaven because that would make it a tad bit easier to feel like someone is listening out there that can help or that my little girl is somewhere happy, playing and smiling. But at the end of the day, I don't feel that's true. I lost my grandfather when I was in high school and that was the first major death I had to deal with. This is the second. The first time around with my grandfather, I prayed and prayed. This time, I feel like my pleads are unheard. I don't have the belief or faith. So I guess for those of you that aren't religious, how did you handle death? I'm having trouble talking to friends and others. I feel they get uncomfortable because they're unsure of what to say and I don't blame them. I just feel really alone. My fianc? is dealing his own way, and sometimes I don't want to bring it up and bring him down if he's having an okay moment.

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## InvisibleGuy

I think I know how you feel in a lot of ways. I'm not a very religious person. Most people that know me would probably describe me as agnostic, but I'm not sure that's really accurate. I believe there is a God, I also think he just doesn't care who suffers, who dies, who wins or who loses. There is someone driving the bus, but he doesn't care if it goes off a cliff.

I really struggled with what little faith I had when I lost my gf to suicide five years ago. I mean, I lost whatever faith I had. I went through a time when I was in complete denial. This is going to sound crazy, but there's an old saying in therapy "the mind is kind". In other words, if you're going through something that leaves you so emotionally raw, so hopeless and so low and despondent that you cannot even deal with it then your mind will find ways of helping you deal with it.....usually through denial. I actually believed for a short time after my gf's suicide that she had to still be alive. I believed that when they put her in the ambulance, they saved her, and she was still out there somewhere. And yes, I realize how crazy that sounds, but that's how strong denial can be I guess. My grief counselors have said it's not uncommon at all, it's one of the stages of grief.

People didn't and still don't know what to say to me. Suicide is a very taboo subject with most people. I witnessed my gf's suicide. My dad somehow found out about it that morning and had to basically scrape me up off the driveway and drag me to his car. He said I was on my knees crying and wouldn't move. There are huge, huge chunks of time from that day and the days that followed that I don't remember. So, because of the way it happened and how it happened it never, ever gets mentioned in my family. In fact it never got mentioned again after the first week, unless I brought it up and then the subject was changed. My family sweeps things under the rug that's how they deal with it.

I think a lot of it is they didn't know what to say. Friends didn't know what to say. My cousin found out about it when I told him, and he didn't know what to say. Everyone just says "I'm sorry" or "it will get better with time" (which is just a huge lie).

So...because no one I know has ever wanted to talk about it, even on the most superficial level, I started going to therapy to talk. I have a therapist / grief counselor, and then another grief counselor who specializes in PTSD who I see once in a while. I did not want to start therapy and there are days when I really, really just do not want to go, but sometimes it really saves me. Anyway, that's just been my experience. I hope you find some peace. I really hope you find someone to talk it out with. (if you ever want to talk I'm here  ::):  )

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## Cuchculan

How to write this up. I read a lot of Buddhist material. It is not religious. One story I read one day was about a woman who lost her child to death. She was walking through a town. She began to cry out for help. Nobody came to her. Then one man appeared by her side. He said he would bring her child back to life on one condition. That she go to a house in the town, any house at all. at get him one grain of salt from a house that has no experienced death. So off she went. House to house, to house to house. But each house she knocked at the people in the house all knew somebody who had died. It was at this point she realised what the man was trying to tell her. He was asking but a simple task on one hand. A grain of salt. On the other hand it was near impossible. To find a house that had not experienced death. That was the hard part. This same woman went on to become the first female to gain enlightenment. She stuck with the man and began to learn from him. In their culture they learn from an early age that death and life go side by side. That as soon as you are born you are dying. It is just the way they openly accept this. I am not saying they don't mourn like we do. But they believe we come back over and over. Each life we live we learn something new from. It is kind of like they embrace death. They don't see it as something to be feared. That is not saying they want to die. To them it is part of life. They see the body as like a vessel for the soul. In other words the body is not important at all. It is nice to believe in. That you get to come back time and time again. But their main message is that death can happen anybody. If you ask around amongst your friends, they will probably all know an Aunt or Uncle or some family member who has died. It simply can't be avoided. I know it may seem unfair when it happens to one so young. That you want answers that you will never get. Because there is no right answer. People talk about a God. That is the wrong answer in your eyes. They talk about prayers. Again the wrong answer in your eyes. Only yesterday we had one person post that everything happens for a reason. Wrong answer in most of our eyes. Is there a right answer? What I am even writing here might be viewed as the wrong answer. This is simply my way of dealing with such things. I accept death as part of life. That does not mean I don't mourn a passing. I do. Just like everybody else would. But to me, death happens. It is out of our hands. It hurts us. But if we learn to accept it, we can learn to move on as well. I have 3 close friends who have died. Plus my father. 1 died only last year. They were all young enough. I accept that they are dead. I also accept there was nothing I could have done to change that. But I will always remember them. This is not about forgetting those who have died. I have pictures of them all. They will always live on inside me. But life is what life is. Life is also death. Death is what happened to them. Death is what will happen to us all at some point in time. Something I also accept. To me it is all about acceptance. Understanding death as part of life. Not blaming yourself or anybody else for those deaths we have to experience during our lifetime. Remembering too. Even if the person was only here for a short time.

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