How did you come to terms with Death?

[Faith No More]

The thought of leaving loved ones behind, plans unfinished and the tremendous waste that is death, is of course the worst aspect of it, but, I should never hope to live to a time where I didn't have loved ones to leave behind, or plans to finish. I think if you arrive at a point in your life where you can think, "I'm done", it'd be a terrible shame.

I have seen this first hand. In fact my first introduction to the reality of death was dealing with this exact situation. When I was thirteen I used to mow an elderly neighbor's yard. He and his wife never had many visitors so when I would go to collect my money I would usually sit down and talk to him for an hour or so. I could tell it was the highlight of his week, but eventually the conversation always steered in one direction. He was done with life and all he could do at that point was wait to die as he was miserable and in pain. Sometimes he would even proclaim that he thought God had forgotten about him.

This really made me think as I had never heard of anyone wanting to die and I couldn't wrap my head around it. I eventually came to the conclusion that life isn't always the precious thing it starts out to be and that death is necessary for life to be precious. Death is the one part of life that we are all guaranteed to experience and it is merely the next step in the cycle of life. Without death, life would be less valuable. Once you can come to grips with this and understand it is an inevitable part of existence then no belief in the afterlife is necessary.