I have feelings about death. I don't like it. It's not fear, or anger, or anything. It's...loss. What you feel in the presence of death. When you touch an animal that was recently alive, and sense that it's now dead, and something in you cries out for it to not be dead. Thinking back on my experiences, I realize that I also feel this even about animals that I've hunted down and killed. It's not as strong when the animal is, say, a mouse, but it's there all the same.

And yet, rationally, at least in situations when I have decided to kill this animal for my own reasons, I do not want the animal to continue to be alive. I want it dead. But I feel as if I want it alive again.

And what about a pet or another animal that we don't want dead? Why is it that even though we rationally understand that it was going to die one day, that death is inevitable, we still feel that it should not be dead? Why do we rub its head and tug its legs when we know that its dead?

What about other people? Why is it that even when we understand death intellectually, we don't accept it emotionally?

And what is the emotion that we're feeling? Why don't I feel that way about my motorcycle when it's no longer worth fixing? Or a marble carving of the madonna that breaks? Some of these things really are irreplacable. I've never smashed a Greek vase, but I imagine that sort of thing happens all the time. Well, if you include all antiques, and not just Greek vases. And it's not about being irreplacable. Animals are ubiquitous. But if the last eagle in the world were to die, I would intellectually care more about the extinction of eagles. But I would feel more loss about the eagle that died than about the species that went extinct.

Why is that? What is it that we are feeling?
 

For one thing, it is very possible (and quite human) to become attached to particular objects and mourn their loss as one might feel the loss of a loved one (well, maybe not THAT much, but more than say the loss of an armadillo on the side of the road.

You mention being a hunter. I think hunters develop a feeling for their prey that most people don't have.

But, bottom line, I think we identify with the living things we see dead (especially large mammals). Why? Could be because we see their death and envision our own. It scares and thrills us because we know deep down that we are just like them; or close enough. And a violent death to an animal is especially evocative. We look at their meat and see ourselves "that way."

Anyway, that's my midnight Thursday hypothesis and I'm sticking to it.

 

Jeannette
 

And I'm not averse to my own death. I accept that it is inevitable and right that I should die. I also accept that it is inevitable and right that all other living things should die.

And I don't feel this feeling about things long dead, or things horribly dead, or insects and trees and a lot of other previously living things. But it's a real feeling. Or at least, it's real to me.

Anyway, it's a feeling that I'm not sure how to describe, and given that I deal with death in many of my stories, I think that I should try to understand it. Or even just learn whether it's important for me to know how to describe it in order to be a writer.
 

One thing I like about that, in particular, is that it takes the glory out of death and makes it affect (effect?) the audience on a truly visceral level. Perhaps you could do the same for deaths in your story. What exactly is happening to the body and mind as the time-since-causal-incident passes. Example:

The axe fell and the head was severed. In that instant, the brain's neurons began to fire madly sending and blocking pain signals, trying to control muscles that were no longer connected. Then cells began to starve for lack of oxygen. More signals. No reply. The eyes flew open reflexively and watched the world spin and tumble.

Finally, the head landed in the large open basket as gouts of blood splashed it from the platform above.

(This isn't anywhere near the level of detail but you get the idea).

Maybe I'm just crazy.
 

Have you tried to give yourself an instant-by-instant description of what you feel? Can you "pad" the description as much as possible? That works for me in some technical writing. I "over-write" the difficult sections, then cut out what is redudant or otherwise unecessary. It is a lot easier to cut than to figure out what's missing.

I may be reading too much into your posts on this, but it seems to me like a problem I often have as well -- finding the BEST possible description of some thing or event. I like the trick of purposefully writing too much, because then I'm not so worried about finding the BEST way to write as I am interested in finding as many ways as possible to say it. Then, I can refine and distill until I get a way that is satisfactory (or better). Usually it works for me.

As for conveying the feeling, I might also suggest that a novel description of the PHYSICAL events might evoke the desired feelings in your readers more effectively than the best possible description of the feelings. But I could be wrong. You poets seem to have ways of surprising me in your ability to describe a feeling so well that I can recognize it and feel a harmonic thrill based on your words.

I'd be interested to see what you come up with.

 

Touch the still warm body of an animal, its body relaxed, the heart still, and repose almost like sleep. Still, quiet, silent, it lays there, not to wake.

Ah, this is useless. I don't even know that I'm even talking about a real feeling. Certainly I don't know how it can be evoked. I just want to know what it is.

Jeannette
 

Where are you going?
Who goes with thee?
What master do you serve?

Azreal,

Take me with you.
Be my companion.
Let us serve together.

Azreal, Who are you?
 

I have never attempted to write down any description of what I was feeling. I'm not sure I would want to. It was rather intense for me, and I didn't like going there. But anyhow, it was somewhat of a self-hynotic thing like Poe's character in the Raven.

I was depressed, just sitting in front of my computer when my screen saver came on. You have all seen it, the starfield simulation. I was lost motion through the stars, just blankly staring for a long time.

I started thinking about what it would be like to travel through infinity eternally when the emotion of the following words hit me. "Where I am, you cannot come. Worlds without end". I had to turn away. And then came the stronger emotion. What if I couldn't turn away.

This probably doesn't speak to what you started the thread for, but if I wanted write the emotions of death, I would have to spend more time dwelling in that state than I would care to. I think Poe drank a lot didn't he?

[This message has been edited by Ether (edited August 11, 2000).]
 

The child of almost seven years of age stands by her father's casket and takes his hand and says, "Good bye daddy." In that childs heart and soul is the emptyness of no more bed time stories, no more trips to the beach in early spring . . . no more and no more and no more.

The young woman raised mostly by her grandmother standing at her grandmothers bedside after cancer has consumed almost all of her life. The feel of her grandmothers hand, the nurses refusing to give an old dieing woman any more morphine because it is addictive. The pain, the begging for it to end. And finally the end. Breath stops. The hand relaxes. And the young woman cries. Relief. No more no more no more, but this time it is no more pain. An end to suffering.

The group of friends riding motor cycles. Speed and laughter. A wet bridge. The cycle in front skids. The cycle and ridder skid under the bridge rail. All that's left on the bridge is a helmet. A splatter of blood. The friend's head is still in the helmet. The one time lover gone. no more no more no more. I don't want to know this. I don't want to see this. I can't even walk, guts tight, legs shaking. Lungs gasphing in horror. Twenty six years later I see that image and wake up shaking. No more, he is gone. No more cycles, ever. Can't get on one, feet won't move.

Just some thoughts from feelings.

Shawn
 

I don't know if it makes a difference, but I think that there may be some special burden for the death of a person to whom you were...when you were the closest....

Not when you were the best or closest person in his or her esteem, but when nobody would mourn more than you for that death. Whenever I've known a person that died, someone else had that right.

And that makes death seem more abstract, when someone else will do the mourning. I've mourned only so much as was appropriate, and no more.
 

Just a parody of a

Thought