It's been about 2 years since my best friend committed suicide. Back when it happened, I was a TBM, but I left TSCC about 8 months ago. So back then, I was counting on eternal life and such, but now that I don't believe that, I'm kind of not sure how to feel anymore. Right now, I'm just trying to remember his memory and take the kind parts of his personality and adapt them into my own, but I'm still not sure how I should feel about not seeing him ever again. Anyone out there got any advice on the subject?

If you don't want to believe that we survive our deaths in some form, then I think that you are doing just fine with it. On the other hand, if you wish to believe that we may, or do survive our deaths, feel free. The Mormons don't own the concept, and neither do the Christians. Plenty of people have believed this in every age. The ancient Romans believed it, the Vikings believed it, and many other cultures have as well.

Belief in surviving death is definitely not for 'religious people' only.

Everyone will survive death as a spirit/energy.

If you want to contact the dead ------ study medium books or go pay for a medium. On the other hand be open through meditation/prayer ----- as they will try to contact you.

Good luck. You will be able to cope with his death no matter which way you believe.

mbslytherin Wrote:
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> Anyone out there
> got any advice on the subject?

A kid my kids knew killed himself a week ago. His funeral was last weekend. We don't know how it happened just that it happened.

He had tons of friends and a lot going for him. We as a family were greatly saddened by his passing. People my kids age aren't supposed to die.

Someone posted this on his memorial.

"I wish all young people could express affection and love the way he seemed to. He was a special young man. He will be missed by so many. I hope for peace and for pride for the young man that he was for his family."

It was a great thought, I thought.

I commend your remembering your best friend.

On the not seeing him again front I've been a disbeliever for over a decade and it still gets me this finality of death. This recent death confirmed it for me. But I never really hoped in an Eternal Family. I have never felt that what is now would ever be how it would be if we lived forever. It just seems like such a stretch to hope to see someone in an afterlife like you would in life. A reunion amongst the stars surely wouldn't be the same as now. We can reflect on what we know and what we know are memories and how a person's life can pay forward in the lives they touched.

These are just my opinions. You get what you paid for.

I was raised with the idea that there was no life after death.

I learned that the people were gone and that was it. There was no holding on and waiting until I die to see them again. To me it makes it easier to let go and get on with life.

I know people that go to the grave of a loved one every year and every year they grieve again because they are holding on to the person still existing. I do not understand why someone would do this.

I think I understand what you mean MJ, when I lost my first loved one after realizing that I was an atheist it was, of course, devastating, but oddly comforting. Comforting to know that they were gone and pain-free always and they weren't strumming a harp somewhere bored or (insert whatever faiths afterlife you can think of.) They exist always in my memories.

Much easier than the LDS paradigm of "you have to be perfect so you have a chance at seeing them again."

I do like to visit graves now & then. Sometimes I talk to the person who's gone, I know they're gone but it's comforting somehow to me. I think grief changes shape and gets smaller but it never truly goes away for some.

I think the visiting graves is something that is learned while people believe in an afterlife.

I was not raised with the idea of an afterlife so I never once thought that talking with a dead person made any sense at all.

I was raised with all that eternal life BS but it never made sense to me. I've always thought the dirt nap was it and I'd better do my good works while I'm still standing on my hind legs and able to take nourishment.

RB

I'm so sorry for your loss. I have gone through a lot of anxiety about facing the chasm of death without the sure "knowledge" of resurrection, etc. It can be scary and overwhelming to deal with a major change in worldviews, but I think coming to grips with the nature of death at an older age is its own hell.

As far as what I believe happens when we die/my new worldview, it's a bit of a mash up. I believe in science and in the reality of the material universe, but I think there's great evidence for a higher plane of existence beyond right now. I believe that our souls or spirits continue on past this life. Whether or not we are reincarnated or have an afterlife or have an afterlife and are then reincarnated I don't know. I started to profoundly consider these things but stopped when I started having some bizarre phobias surface (strong phobias are often associated with past life regression, where the phobia comes from the trauma in a past life).

Since I started my instrospection re: whether or not I had lived previously I developed a sudden and severe fear of heights that I can't attribute to any trauma. My first nightmare (at 2 or so) was of looking over a cliff and it was unrelated to any experience I had with heights.

Having said this, I also have had a lot of other weird spiritual experiences. I don't know if they mean there is really a spiritual dimension, or whether or not I might have mild temporal lope epilepsy (this often leads to religious visions and so forth) or if I'm just more prone to mental illness.

I can't answer these questions right now and really don't want to. I think there is compelling personal experience that suggests more than physicality but I could very well be the victim of my own ignorance or wishful thinking.

Sorry to be long winded. Whatever you decide you believe, I hope you have peace with it. I think that is most important.

When a person had a belief in an afterlife and subsequently loses that belief, that loss of belief might tend to make the person "left behind" discouraged and saddened by the loss of a loved one.

However, if we live for the moment and make the best of what we have, our "legacy" gets passed on to those left behind - and it ought to be a good one if we're successful in living to the fullest. So, likewise, when we are the ones left behind, remembering the good of someone who has passed, and smiling in their memory, would seem to me to ease that passing.

Just my 2¢

I am so sorry to hear of your loss. I wish I could say that I 'can't imagine'. Unfortunately I can.

What I have found is that as a non-believer I am more at peace with loss than I was as a believer. But being at peace is quite different than being OK. Each of us experiences grief and loss in our own ways. I can tell you that in the midst of great loss in my life that I found no comfort at all in the Mormon narratives regarding death and the afterlife.

All I know for sure is that I am here right now. How I cope is to try to learn to bear my loss and draw on my experience with it to live my life 'more deeply' each day. The 'Mormon way' can take your eye off what really matters.

It's hard for former religious people to live with ambiguity--but IMO it's healthier than living with lies. All the rules and entry-requirements for the Mormon heaven and the Catholic heaven and Purgatory and Prison and the 3-degrees of Glory (always stupid in my mind) are complicated and worrisome. There were lots of authoritarian leaders to tell you where to go and how to get there--always on their terms. Yes, and the bottom line is always how much money you pay to the promoters of the particular heaven you buy into.

Now, death is so simple, so--equal. It happens to all of us the same, and no one really knows what's on the other side. For non-believers, real safety is found in living the best possible life you can, and in loving others. Other than that, everything else perishes. Once again, we are left with nothing but the echo of Love, and God is Love.

I'm sorry about your friend. Untimely deaths are harder to process. Don't be afraid of your memories of this person. Memories are all you have, so embrace them. Trying to forget a person never works. Deliberately putting someone out of your mind is more about you than the dead person, more about self-pity than honoring someone. When my parents died, I had a lot of growing up to do. I will forever miss them, but I love the memories, stories, photographs, the special places and activities. I like to re-live those with my children and grandchildren. I feel close to my parents, or to the memory of them.

You see him anytime you like, in your mind and heart. You can probably call to mind what his response would be to most situations. It's okay to miss his physical presence, but you will probably always remember him.

I lost my best freind to suicide nearly ten years ago. The hardest part for me was how angry I was. I blamed him, didn't blame him, hated him, loved him, but mostly missed him. I couldn't talk to him about my feelings, because he was gone.

Back then, before accepting atheism, I worried about what I would say to him in the afterlife..."Hi, you POS coward. WHAT could you possibly say that would interest me now?" I know it was bad; not me, I was just hurt and angry.

There was no vision in my mind where I could or would ever get over it.

Realizing that I had fully embraced atheism has been, and continues to be, one of the most liberating experiences of my life.

Taking his life was a moment of painful desperation that he couldn't overcome. His limits had been reached, and he sought relief. I try to find peace knowing that no god, no hell, no pain, either of this world or in a fictional eternity, will ever touch him again.

For him, it was a success.

I'm free to miss him, and like you, carry those good parts of him with me, and call on them whenever I like. He lives on in those who remember the good he did in this world, and try to pass it on.

My cousin and his father were buried next to each other at a local cemetery. On rare occasions I visit their graves and talk to their headstones. It's weird, because I'm an atheist. And it's weirder still in that neither one of them was likeable in any way. The cemetery is beautiful, though. And there's a nice little stone bench among the dogwood trees. They keep the lawns green.

My husband of over 50 years passed away from illness a little over two years ago. Fortunately, we knew it was coming and were as well prepared as possible.
Still, it's a huge adjustment for everyone in the family.

I have refrained from attaching any specific understanding to what happens after death. Everyone and everything dies. What happens next is what has been happening forever. I don't know what happens when we die, I have no specific belief system about that. I do sense his presence, however. I don't know how or why, but there are things that happen that give me comfort.

I keep him alive in my world by thinking about how he would like this or that, what he would say, how I knew his expressions, how he would be so proud of his children and grandchildren.

I have not been close to someone who committed suicide. The method and reason are different, the end result is the same.

I have found that we all figure it out when it happens to us the best we can. We adjust to our "New Normal" little by little. We find what brings us comfort and helps us carry on.

My best wishes to you. I have found that it gets easier with time.

My wife passed away several years back while we were both TBM. First came the "God needed her", or "She must have work to do". Yeah, tell that yo four children at home.
Then came the "you must work hard to reach the celestial Kingdom". Well, I knew that would never happen on my own accord. I've had several, vivid dreams, none of which had anything to do with where she was staying. Only that she liked it "there". I would like to think we'll be together again but I have no idea what to make of it.

I hope that you and your children are finding ways to manage through this. I've reached the conclusion that the church narratives around unimaginable loss are more about comforting those who fear it could happen to them rather than those who had the loss. What was so stark to me was after my son died last year was how hollow these phrases, offered to comfort me and my family as comforts, sounded to me. The "he is free from suffering", "he is with his grandparents", "I felt the spirit of your father there", an so on. Perhaps one way to think of your vivid dreams is that they are part of your grieving such a profound loss.

For what it might mean I can't imagine that a 'God the father' would separate people who love each other in an afterlife. We would not do that to our own children. Why would a father in heaven do that to his. The church thinking that it can administer ordinances that have an effect on what God does is a statement of profound arrogance IMHO.

While I am no longer a believer I have thought quite a bit about what my conception of God could be. In addition, my believing spouse does not doubt that she and I and our family will be together despite what is taught. I wish I could offer more.

Death is a mystery that we all face. We start to die with our birth. My faith in Christianity gives me comfort as I age. I am not afraid to face that event when it arrives. In my life I have faced war and illness that could have ended in death. In those instances I was not ready to go easily, but now I am. The fear of that great unknown has been lifted by Jesus and for that I am thankful. I know that for some this sounds strange and crazy, but not so for me. I just hope that when we all come to our end here in mortality that we can face the end with grace and a peace in our soul.

evidence, I just don't worry about it. BUT my boyfriend is a Jewish convert and he says that remembering those who have passed away keeps them "alive." I have never understood why we don't remember them on the day they died as well as their birthdays.

I visit my parents' grave for me. It helps me. My sister can't visit it because it causes her too much pain. I decorate their grave and keep it decorated. We got vases on the headstone.

I found out about a year ago that my very good friend from my childhood had committed suicide. The anniversary is coming up for 2 years. I found something appropriate to put at her gravesite. I have visited her mother.

And I remember.

My therapist told me when my last dog died 4 years ago that because I had been through so many other things, I had never mourned my prior dog or given enough to mourning my parents. He told me to take a few minutes a day to remember. I did it for a year--every day. And I healed. I still miss them all, but I haven't carried the deep, deep pain I had for YEARS because I didn't take the time to mourn.

My wife of 30 years died a couple of years ago. We were both disassociated with the church by then. I believe in no god, or continuation of 'self'. My wife thought of the universe as a power or thing where the self may reside after death.

I have found peace with her passing by acknowledging my profound luck and happiness by having been able to share most of my life with a person I loved dearly and with whom I created amazing children. To want more than that - a year or an eternity - would be selfish.

I am still hurt and saddened by death. So too are many mormons that I know.

Death is one of the commonalities that bind us as humans. We will all experience it on our own personal level. Most, if not all, of us will suffer the death of someone we love. Yet, I find that in talking to others that have lost a loved one, we each handle it differently, making it a very unique and personal thing to deal with.

The one thing that I know, with complete sincerity, is that whatever happens when one dies, is exactly what happened to my wife, and it is exactly what will happen when I die. My personal belief or even understanding of the process have no bearing on what really happens. That comforts me in a strange way.

I wish you peace in your journey through life. May you be lucky enough to encounter others for whom you care deeply.

I'm an atheist. I think that when you die, you die. End of story. There is no evidence to the contrary and belief in an afterlife is wishful thinking.

I don't find it sad or depressing not to believe in an afterlife. What is hard is missing your loved ones. You would experience that no matter. At some point you die, and it ceases to be an issue.

I didn't miss being here before I was born, and don't see death as any different.