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Who lives forever anyway?


sparquelito

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4 hours ago, Larsongs said:

Question for the OP; Have you ever lost someone you loved & weren't affected or felt the pain of loss? 

That's a fair question, and of course I felt the pain of the loss. 
I just traveled to New Hampshire month before last to be with my sister as she died from lung cancer. 
It was crushingly sad. 


I just went back and read my original words, and realized that I edited myself poorly the other night, and pulled the trigger on that posting before I had proof-read myself. 

I published, "sad and out of sorts whenever our beloved family members and treasured rock stars pass and eventually release this mortal coil?"

Where I was going with that sentence was to our collective sense of loss at this rock star or that one, and would have read more like so, if I had checked my restructuring while writing:

"sad and out of sorts whenever treasured rock stars pass and eventually release this mortal coil, even in the same measure as our beloved family members ?"
 

I'll slow down and work it out better next time I post such a thing. 
😬


 

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22 hours ago, kidblast said:

well said brutha..  I do remember when you told us that had lost your wife,  I'm sorry for that still.  I can't imagine.  

I thank you for that.  And my wish for you(and any other married men here)  is that imagining that is the worst it gets for you.

Whitefang

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18 minutes ago, Whitefang said:

I thank you for that.  And my wish for you(and any other married men here)  is that imagining that is the worst it gets for you.

Whitefang

So... that means I go first..  not a great deal either way I guess...  

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"You live in a world of illusion
Where everything's peaches and cream
We all face a scarlet conclusion
But we spend our time in a dream"

 
from the song  Jungle Love -written by Lonnie Turner & Greg Douglass - performed by the Steve Miller Band
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22 minutes ago, Pinch said:

People like feeling like they're a part of things, I  guess.

Mr. Watts probably had a great, and certainly a relatively long life. I'd celebrate that rather than RIP it.

Well sure.  I imagine that's why most(if not all) of us join forums like this.  And I suppose too, that people mourn the passing of music and movie "heroes" because of a natural sense of empathy and/or because of whatever part they played in making their lives more enjoyable or at least bearable.  And of course it's more disturbing if that death is at a young age and under tragic circumstances.  Like  Buddy Holly, of long ago,  Or Jimi, Janis, Jim, Jimmy,  Kurt,  and others.   

Just the other day there was an acknowledgement  here in Detroit of the 20th anniversary of Detroit singer AaLIYAH's death in a small plane crash.  She was just 22.

Whitefang

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4 minutes ago, Whitefang said:

Well sure.  I imagine that's why most(if not all) of us join forums like this.  And I suppose too, that people mourn the passing of music and movie "heroes" because of a natural sense of empathy and/or because of whatever part they played in making their lives more enjoyable or at least bearable.  And of course it's more disturbing if that death is at a young age and under tragic circumstances.  Like  Buddy Holly, of long ago,  Or Jimi, Janis, Jim, Jimmy,  Kurt,  and others.   

Just the other day there was an acknowledgement  here in Detroit of the 20th anniversary of Detroit singer AaLIYAH's death in a small plane crash.  She was just 22.

Whitefang

I think this forum and forums in general are altogether different phenomena...  The RIP Thing, I think, is more complex.

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2 minutes ago, Pinch said:

.  The RIP Thing, I think, is more complex.

Not really.  That's just paying respects.   What the OP might have been alluding to are those people who(and for example) like a friend of my daughter, that cried for hours, went into a scary deep funk, didn't answer calls and took a week off of work because PRINCE died!

And she didn't know or ever meet him.  That daughter too, is a huge Prince fan, but just felt sad for a few hours and spent the next few days listening to a lot of his music.  

Whitefang

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Just now, Whitefang said:

Not really.  That's just paying respects.   What the OP might have been alluding to are those people who(and for example) like a friend of my daughter, that cried for hours, went into a scary deep funk, didn't answer calls and took a week off of work because PRINCE died!

And she didn't know or ever meet him.  That daughter too, is a huge Prince fan, but just felt sad for a few hours and spent the next few days listening to a lot of his music.  

Whitefang

Oh, I guess I misunderstood/read OP too quickly.

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The older I get, the more questions and doubts I have.  For me, seeing these musical heroes die just brings reality home to us as we fly along as if we’ll live forever (especially when they are part of our own generation).  I’m sorry they’re gone, but their problems on this planet are over.  Life is for the living and it’s the living who will mourn their deaths.  As stated by others, RIP is a form of respect.  If you think about it, we say it for ourselves so no one thinks bad of us.  Beyond that, who the hell knows?  All religious texts were written by humans.  Not by God or “a” god.  Whatever we worship today is hardly any different than the mythological gods of the Romans or Greeks.  The difference is that societies (through wars, famines, technology, morals, and the evolution of humans)  change and so do gods they believe in.  The same God that lets one little kid survive cancer and allows another to die from it is doing exactly what the Roman and Egyptian gods did centuries ago, yet we provide “our” god with attributes that make him/her the real and better god.  ……I believe we go somewhere after we leave this life, but I doubt it has anything to do with any religion.  Wherever it is, I hope my family members, Charlie Watts, Cash, Patsy Cline, Audey Murphy, Dean Martin, John Kennedy, Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and many others that served as a positive example for me are all there…..Just my view on things.  Doesn’t make me right and someone else wrong…….Meanwhile——God Bless all of you.

Edited by MissouriPicker
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MP,   you left  Prince and aAlihya (?)  off your list?   Possibly you have a second list?  Am I on it?  (asking for a friend).  😀

Seriously -   I think you covered the wobbly topic first posted pretty well.   When we were children, in our generation, we were pretty much insulated from 'death'.   We knew it existed, of course, because we all had a grandmother or grandfather who died.   It becomes more real year by year, as we lose friends.  High school friend in a car crash as a college freshman,  another in Vietnam.   Then we learn about cancer, in all it's wonderfully deadly forms.  A contemporary performer dies -  Joplin,  Elvis ... Soon, too soon, it's our parents.  It seems as if some force is preparing us for the inevitable.  The conquering Roman Generals who had a slave behind them as their chariot proceeded through the victory celebration, whispering in their ears  "Remember, you are mortal.".      As we get older, time moves more quickly, seems to get away from us.  Like a car heading towards a cliff in the night, picking up speed, swerving around unseen objects.   Inevitably, we are all forced to be introspective and serious. Dismissive remarks about  "Death and Taxes" and  "Life's a bytch, then you die." are suddenly no longer funny.   The loss of a loved one,  the end of a career, a debilitating illness - one day,  each of us realizes we'll experience them all and  then, we have that cliche  "a crisis of faith".   Are the religious teachings we held on to - REAL?   Has my life mattered?  Have I made a difference?     I wish you all come out of the darkness of that tunnel, into the light once again - as whole and filled with peace as you entered it.  Perhaps as we were on that sunny Spring day when we graduated from high school.  

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I've been to celebrations of life, where black clothes were prohibited. Its a positive spin on a bleak & difficult time. I'm used to it now & I find it ok. 

Cherry is a Christian. So she believes in an afterlife. I myself do not, but we both share the same mindset about the time that remains to us. Live it to the hilt. 

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My Mother died a few years before my best friend's Mom( who I always considered my "Mom away from Mom").  He wasn't able to come to her funeral home viewings( in hospital at the time) but did sent condolences.

But when his Mom died I was able to go pay my respects.  And I then went and asked his Dad how he was holding up then sat down next to my friend and asked, "So......had enough yet?"   He asked, Enough what?" Just then, two women his Mom's age walked up, said they were sorry and then, "All her troubles are over now" and "She's in a better place"  and when they walked off I said, "Again....had enough?"   I was still smoking then and we went to the basement of the funeral home that was the designated smoking area and also where coffee or other beverages were available.  It was then I told him, "I've heard that 'troubles are over' and 'Better place' horsesh!t so much at my Mom's funeral it was all I could do to not whack. the next idiot who said that with the chair I was sitting on."  

We agreed they meant well, but that people should just give it up.   It is hard to try and say the right thing in a situation where there's really NO right thing to say.  I was gratefully spared that at my wife's funeral  by people who instead  offered condolences and preferred to talk about a pleasant memory they had of her.  And I was really touched when the drivers of the ambulance that would transport her three days a week back and forth for dialysis showed up and seemed genuinely saddened.   And my brother in law was spared any possibility of that due to his wife of 63 years(my wife's sister) dying at the beginning of the Covid restriction period(her death wasn't Covid related) and funeral homes weren't providing those services for a while.  It was bad enough that she died, but worse that she died the morning of his birthday. At that time there was no place we could all gather for a memorial except in one of her other sister's backyard.  And since it was May('20) the bugs and sun made it all a bit uncomfortable.

Whitefang

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No matter how much we believe in something and want it to be true, if it’s not true, it’s just not true.   For myself, there are far too many contradictions for God to be anything like I was raised to believe.  We just do the best we can and hope for the best.  ………Anyway, 5-10 million years from now, on a planet somewhere, someone will be staring-up at the billions of stars in the sky and they won’t even know that you and I existed.

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23 hours ago, jvi said:

"we " didnt all graduate on a mythical sunny spring day, many of us arnt in a dark tunnel, many are just what we are.

and previously ...   "You may want to try to understand a persons post and intent before you "advise". 

I think Sgt. Pepper  correctly identified  the dark tunnel your head is in.   

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33 minutes ago, fortyearspickn said:

and previously ...   "You may want to try to understand a persons post and intent before you "advise". 

I think Sgt. Pepper  correctly identified  the dark tunnel your head is in.   

my first post in weeks and you go out of your way to attack, pep returns to post right below me, I think I know which dark tunnnel yer heads up

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Boys, boys!  Be nice.  [wink]

No matter what anyone believes, it's what THEY believe and is just as valid as anyone else's belief.  After all, faith is believing something is true, even though there's no proof that either confirms it or disproves it.   Consider.....

An electronics geek I know,  when I asked him just how television DOES work, answered, "Magic".  [wink]   "Every electronics logic we know suggests it isn't possible, but there it is.! " He went on.  And I've read somewhere that judging by all aeronautic engineering knowledge and analysis that the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly.  But fly it does.   So, how to reckon that is the question.

Whitefang

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Many years ago someone told me that when a person dies and we are sad, if you think about it, we are sad mainly for ourselves because that person will not be around to contribute the things they always contributed to our lives.  Whether it was the music they made, or the jokes they told, or the love they gave us - it will no longer be there so mourning is sort of feeling sorry for ourselves.  The closer you were to the diseased the more they probably contributed to your life in some way, thus the sadness is greater.

Edited by Twang Gang
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11 hours ago, Twang Gang said:

Many years ago someone told me that when a person dies and we are sad, if you think about it, we are sad mainly for ourselves because that person will not be around to contribute the things they always contributed to our lives.  Whether it was the music they made, or the jokes they told, or the love they gave us - it will no longer be there so mourning is sort of feeling sorry for ourselves.  The closer you were to the diseased the more they probably contributed to your life in some way, thus the sadness is greater.

This is exactly right.

As they say, there's two things in life that are certainties, Taxes & Death.  Personally, I believe that when you die you simply return to the state you were in before you were born. 

 

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18 hours ago, Twang Gang said:

Many years ago someone told me that when a person dies and we are sad, if you think about it, we are sad mainly for ourselves because that person will not be around to contribute the things they always contributed to our lives.  Whether it was the music they made, or the jokes they told, or the love they gave us - it will no longer be there so mourning is sort of feeling sorry for ourselves.  The closer you were to the diseased the more they probably contributed to your life in some way, thus the sadness is greater.

And the closer you were to the diseased might mean soon you too, will be deceased.  [wink] (sorry.....couldn't resist)

There's a lot in what you state though.  But in the case of Watts and other celebs who pass, I never felt teeth gnashing grief over it,  but did feel a bit sad about it.  Say like, when GEORGE CARLIN died.  I felt bad that no more humor will be bestowed from him, but I was reminded of how much he gave us that we can still obtain.  Same with long time music "heroes" who die at an advanced age and after a long illness.   But of course, if it concerns someone we were close to, and despite the circumstances of their passing, it does always hit harder.  And too, depending on the circumstances of their passing affects our grief as well.   And you can take the next with a grain of salt......

My Mother had a belief( and I also adopted it) that when you see a family go way overboard on the expense of somebody's funeral, that it's more a sign of GUILT  than love.  Especially when that expense is always being pointed out by them.  

I adopted that belief after going to the funeral of a nephew's Mother in law.   We knew her fairly well too, and often heard her son, a couple of daughters and nieces and nephews  complain about what a rotten, nasty b!tch they all though she was.  But made a big deal out of letting everyone know they paid $15,000 for the funeral!  Which reminds me......

I should get off my *** and do what my Mom did.  We didn't pay ONE DIME for her funeral.  She had it arranged and paid for  several years before she even got sick!  And the total cost was $4500.    My wife made clear what she wanted in the event,  and following all her wishes I too, didn't pay much more than my Mom's cost.   And it was my Mom's funeral that inspired her. 

Whitefang

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A lot of well written and thought-out responses. Too many to address them all. Condolences to those who shared their stories of tragic loss.

As to the OP and response to the deaths of famous musicians or celebrities. For me, I RIP is just the thing to say or post. There's not a lot of deep meaning behind it. Just an acknowledgement that I respected what they accomplished, whether I knew them or not. Of course I do feel a tinge of personal pain sometimes even if I never met or knew the person. Some examples like SRV, Tom Petty amongst others.     

 

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