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Essay about Death | Death Essay for Students and Children in English

February 7, 2024 by Prasanna

Essay about Death:  We shall all die. I am trying not to be prophetically catastrophic or something in my passing exposition; it is basically an articulation of truth. Each living will die over the long haul.

There is plenty of conceivable outcomes to delay demise. A man may live twenty years or a hundred years; however, no man can live, for instance, 200 years. Hence, passing is predictable for us all, and there is no way around it.

You can also find more  Essay Writing  articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Long and Short Essays on Death for Students and Kids in English

We provide students with essay samples on a long essay of 500 words and a short essay of 150 words on the topic of death for reference.

Long Essay on Death 500 Words in English

Long Essay on Death is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

We are largely mindful of death, and we know it will come to us, every one of us. To a significant number of us passing cuts a chill down our spine ridden with dread, however to others it is ridden with quality and fulfilment of achievement. Luckily or tragically, we are completely sentenced to death. But there is an interesting thing; we don’t have the knowledge of how the inevitable will strike to have a conversation. Not just how we don’t even have a clue on where and when it will happen. We just know this is inescapable.

The most ordinarily showed system for understanding the way toward lamenting and getting ready for death is the DABDA model. It states that that person who is dying will progress through five stages. The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and pain, and acceptance. The DABDA stages are based on a theory of a Swiss psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Researchers of the University of Michigan founded that, It is true that the brain is capable of acting for some time after we die. In that time brain shows a flashback of life in a dramatic scene to the person. But it differs man to man. Some people see a ray of light. Some people see a spiritual scene. That is controversial over the world.

Actually, we are all afraid of the loss of life for a proper reason, for it helps us continue to be alive. Who knows, perhaps if we weren’t afraid to die, we would be all too keen to do it in case of little problems like that.

We know death is a predictable thing, but still, when your loved one passes away, you will be broken naturally. In that time, the person needs to cry out loud to express the misery. We need to gather support to cop up the situation. We can feel good remembering the good cherished memories. And in the end, we have to embrace the present situation of life. Otherwise, life will be difficult to lead.

From a survey of 2017, we state that around 150,000 people die per day worldwide. Most of them know they are at the end of their lives. But here I want to share a myth about death. The myth I want to introduce, actually is not a myth. You can say it’s empathy or condolence for that person. The myth says positive thoughts can delay nearly came death. But It doesn’t affect. The development of explicit feelings doesn’t change the way that demise is a natural cycle, achieved by a mishap, or sickness measures that have arrived at a final turning point.

Our worldwide philosophy and religious views help us to lead a good life. That all philosophical facts of life start with Karma. And It stays with the soul afterlife. Philosophy says a soul never dies and takes birth with a new body and identity. We couldn’t find any logical fact about death, afterlife. But we can state that death is an entire genre of mystery.

Short Essay on Death 150 Words in English

Short Essay on Death is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Everyone dies one day: is a popular dialogue of Game of Thrones TV series. And this is true. We know each living will die after the long race.

The most ordinarily showed system for understanding the way toward lamenting and getting ready for death is the DABDA model. It shows five stages of the dying process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and pain and acceptance.

We all know death is inevitable. But when it comes about our loved one, we can’t control ourselves most of the time. But still, we need to embrace our life. And if we can’t cop up, we should have a consultation with a psychologist. Some people are afraid of death. It is called Thanatophobia, and it can be cured with love and faith.

According to Philosophy, Soul doesn’t have any end. And there are many souls which are commonly linked by DNA or any other factors. Sometimes they have the previous memory. And then the process is called transmigration. There are so many transmigration cases all over the world.

We don’t have any proper logic and information about the afterlife, transmigration and death. But after all these discussions we must say that death is a hell of a mystery.

10 Lines on Death Essay in English

1. Death is the permanent cessation of all biological features that sustain a living organism. 2. One of the main obvious indications of death is the point at which the eyes cover over, as liquid and oxygen quit streaming to the corneas. 3. Most of the time, the brain shows a flashback of life to the dying person before dying. 4. Thanatophobia is called as the fear of death. 5. People need to consult a psychologist if the death fear is getting worse. 6. When Thomas Edison died in 1941, Henry Ford captured his dying breath in a bottle. 7. According to philosophy, A soul never dies. 8. If a soul remembers his past life memory, it will be called transmigration. 9. Scientists said the DNA or any factor links all souls of all over the world. 10. Nearly 150,000 people die per day worldwide.

FAQ’s on Death Essay

Question 1. Does Dying hurt?

Answer: Pain is not an expected part of the dying process. In fact, some people experience no pain while dying. If someone’s particular condition does produce any pain, however, it can be managed by prescribed medications.

Question 2. What is the first stage of dying?

Answer: The first stage is shock and denial. This is a state of disbelief and numbed feelings.

Question 3. What happens after death?

Answer: The afterlife is a presence some accept that the basic piece of a person’s character or their continuous flow keeps on having after the passing of their actual body.

Question 4. How many people die each day?

Answer: Nearly 150,000 people die per day worldwide.

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May 3, 2023

Contemplating Mortality: Powerful Essays on Death and Inspiring Perspectives

The prospect of death may be unsettling, but it also holds a deep fascination for many of us. If you're curious to explore the many facets of mortality, from the scientific to the spiritual, our article is the perfect place to start. With expert guidance and a wealth of inspiration, we'll help you write an essay that engages and enlightens readers on one of life's most enduring mysteries!

Death is a universal human experience that we all must face at some point in our lives. While it can be difficult to contemplate mortality, reflecting on death and loss can offer inspiring perspectives on the nature of life and the importance of living in the present moment. In this collection of powerful essays about death, we explore profound writings that delve into the human experience of coping with death, grief, acceptance, and philosophical reflections on mortality.

Through these essays, readers can gain insight into different perspectives on death and how we can cope with it. From personal accounts of loss to philosophical reflections on the meaning of life, these essays offer a diverse range of perspectives that will inspire and challenge readers to contemplate their mortality.

The Inevitable: Coping with Mortality and Grief

Mortality is a reality that we all have to face, and it is something that we cannot avoid. While we may all wish to live forever, the truth is that we will all eventually pass away. In this article, we will explore different aspects of coping with mortality and grief, including understanding the grieving process, dealing with the fear of death, finding meaning in life, and seeking support.

Understanding the Grieving Process

Grief is a natural and normal response to loss. It is a process that we all go through when we lose someone or something important to us. The grieving process can be different for each person and can take different amounts of time. Some common stages of grief include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It is important to remember that there is no right or wrong way to grieve and that it is a personal process.

Denial is often the first stage of grief. It is a natural response to shock and disbelief. During this stage, we may refuse to believe that our loved one has passed away or that we are facing our mortality.

Anger is a common stage of grief. It can manifest as feelings of frustration, resentment, and even rage. It is important to allow yourself to feel angry and to express your emotions healthily.

Bargaining is often the stage of grief where we try to make deals with a higher power or the universe in an attempt to avoid our grief or loss. We may make promises or ask for help in exchange for something else.

Depression is a natural response to loss. It is important to allow yourself to feel sad and to seek support from others.

Acceptance is often the final stage of grief. It is when we come to terms with our loss and begin to move forward with our lives.

Dealing with the Fear of Death

The fear of death is a natural response to the realization of our mortality. It is important to acknowledge and accept our fear of death but also to not let it control our lives. Here are some ways to deal with the fear of death:

Accepting Mortality

Accepting our mortality is an important step in dealing with the fear of death. We must understand that death is a natural part of life and that it is something that we cannot avoid.

Finding Meaning in Life

Finding meaning in life can help us cope with the fear of death. It is important to pursue activities and goals that are meaningful and fulfilling to us.

Seeking Support

Seeking support from friends, family, or a therapist can help us cope with the fear of death. Talking about our fears and feelings can help us process them and move forward.

Finding meaning in life is important in coping with mortality and grief. It can help us find purpose and fulfillment, even in difficult times. Here are some ways to find meaning in life:

Pursuing Passions

Pursuing our passions and interests can help us find meaning and purpose in life. It is important to do things that we enjoy and that give us a sense of accomplishment.

Helping Others

Helping others can give us a sense of purpose and fulfillment. It can also help us feel connected to others and make a positive impact on the world.

Making Connections

Making connections with others is important in finding meaning in life. It is important to build relationships and connections with people who share our values and interests.

Seeking support is crucial when coping with mortality and grief. Here are some ways to seek support:

Talking to Friends and Family

Talking to friends and family members can provide us with a sense of comfort and support. It is important to express our feelings and emotions to those we trust.

Joining a Support Group

Joining a support group can help us connect with others who are going through similar experiences. It can provide us with a safe space to share our feelings and find support.

Seeking Professional Help

Seeking help from a therapist or counselor can help cope with grief and mortality. A mental health professional can provide us with the tools and support we need to process our emotions and move forward.

Coping with mortality and grief is a natural part of life. It is important to understand that grief is a personal process that may take time to work through. Finding meaning in life, dealing with the fear of death, and seeking support are all important ways to cope with mortality and grief. Remember to take care of yourself, allow yourself to feel your emotions, and seek support when needed.

The Ethics of Death: A Philosophical Exploration

Death is an inevitable part of life, and it is something that we will all experience at some point. It is a topic that has fascinated philosophers for centuries, and it continues to be debated to this day. In this article, we will explore the ethics of death from a philosophical perspective, considering questions such as what it means to die, the morality of assisted suicide, and the meaning of life in the face of death.

Death is a topic that elicits a wide range of emotions, from fear and sadness to acceptance and peace. Philosophers have long been interested in exploring the ethical implications of death, and in this article, we will delve into some of the most pressing questions in this field.

What does it mean to die?

The concept of death is a complex one, and there are many different ways to approach it from a philosophical perspective. One question that arises is what it means to die. Is death simply the cessation of bodily functions, or is there something more to it than that? Many philosophers argue that death represents the end of consciousness and the self, which raises questions about the nature of the soul and the afterlife.

The morality of assisted suicide

Assisted suicide is a controversial topic, and it raises several ethical concerns. On the one hand, some argue that individuals have the right to end their own lives if they are suffering from a terminal illness or unbearable pain. On the other hand, others argue that assisting someone in taking their own life is morally wrong and violates the sanctity of life. We will explore these arguments and consider the ethical implications of assisted suicide.

The meaning of life in the face of death

The inevitability of death raises important questions about the meaning of life. If our time on earth is finite, what is the purpose of our existence? Is there a higher meaning to life, or is it simply a product of biological processes? Many philosophers have grappled with these questions, and we will explore some of the most influential theories in this field.

The role of death in shaping our lives

While death is often seen as a negative force, it can also have a positive impact on our lives. The knowledge that our time on earth is limited can motivate us to live life to the fullest and to prioritize the things that truly matter. We will explore the role of death in shaping our values, goals, and priorities, and consider how we can use this knowledge to live more fulfilling lives.

The ethics of mourning

The process of mourning is an important part of the human experience, and it raises several ethical questions. How should we respond to the death of others, and what is our ethical responsibility to those who are grieving? We will explore these questions and consider how we can support those who are mourning while also respecting their autonomy and individual experiences.

The ethics of immortality

The idea of immortality has long been a fascination for humanity, but it raises important ethical questions. If we were able to live forever, what would be the implications for our sense of self, our relationships with others, and our moral responsibilities? We will explore the ethical implications of immortality and consider how it might challenge our understanding of what it means to be human.

The ethics of death in different cultural contexts

Death is a universal human experience, but how it is understood and experienced varies across different cultures. We will explore how different cultures approach death, mourning, and the afterlife, and consider the ethical implications of these differences.

Death is a complex and multifaceted topic, and it raises important questions about the nature of life, morality, and human experience. By exploring the ethics of death from a philosophical perspective, we can gain a deeper understanding of these questions and how they shape our lives.

The Ripple Effect of Loss: How Death Impacts Relationships

Losing a loved one is one of the most challenging experiences one can go through in life. It is a universal experience that touches people of all ages, cultures, and backgrounds. The grief that follows the death of someone close can be overwhelming and can take a significant toll on an individual's mental and physical health. However, it is not only the individual who experiences the grief but also the people around them. In this article, we will discuss the ripple effect of loss and how death impacts relationships.

Understanding Grief and Loss

Grief is the natural response to loss, and it can manifest in many different ways. The process of grieving is unique to each individual and can be affected by many factors, such as culture, religion, and personal beliefs. Grief can be intense and can impact all areas of life, including relationships, work, and physical health.

The Impact of Loss on Relationships

Death can impact relationships in many ways, and the effects can be long-lasting. Below are some of how loss can affect relationships:

1. Changes in Roles and Responsibilities

When someone dies, the roles and responsibilities within a family or social circle can shift dramatically. For example, a spouse who has lost their partner may have to take on responsibilities they never had before, such as managing finances or taking care of children. This can be a difficult adjustment, and it can put a strain on the relationship.

2. Changes in Communication

Grief can make it challenging to communicate with others effectively. Some people may withdraw and isolate themselves, while others may become angry and lash out. It is essential to understand that everyone grieves differently, and there is no right or wrong way to do it. However, these changes in communication can impact relationships, and it may take time to adjust to new ways of interacting with others.

3. Changes in Emotional Connection

When someone dies, the emotional connection between individuals can change. For example, a parent who has lost a child may find it challenging to connect with other parents who still have their children. This can lead to feelings of isolation and disconnection, and it can strain relationships.

4. Changes in Social Support

Social support is critical when dealing with grief and loss. However, it is not uncommon for people to feel unsupported during this time. Friends and family may not know what to say or do, or they may simply be too overwhelmed with their grief to offer support. This lack of social support can impact relationships and make it challenging to cope with grief.

Coping with Loss and Its Impact on Relationships

Coping with grief and loss is a long and difficult process, but it is possible to find ways to manage the impact on relationships. Below are some strategies that can help:

1. Communication

Effective communication is essential when dealing with grief and loss. It is essential to talk about how you feel and what you need from others. This can help to reduce misunderstandings and make it easier to navigate changes in relationships.

2. Seek Support

It is important to seek support from friends, family, or a professional if you are struggling to cope with grief and loss. Having someone to talk to can help to alleviate feelings of isolation and provide a safe space to process emotions.

3. Self-Care

Self-care is critical when dealing with grief and loss. It is essential to take care of your physical and emotional well-being. This can include things like exercise, eating well, and engaging in activities that you enjoy.

4. Allow for Flexibility

It is essential to allow for flexibility in relationships when dealing with grief and loss. People may not be able to provide the same level of support they once did or may need more support than they did before. Being open to changes in roles and responsibilities can help to reduce strain on relationships.

5. Find Meaning

Finding meaning in the loss can be a powerful way to cope with grief and loss. This can involve creating a memorial, participating in a support group, or volunteering for a cause that is meaningful to you.

The impact of loss is not limited to the individual who experiences it but extends to those around them as well. Relationships can be greatly impacted by the death of a loved one, and it is important to be aware of the changes that may occur. Coping with loss and its impact on relationships involves effective communication, seeking support, self-care, flexibility, and finding meaning.

What Lies Beyond Reflections on the Mystery of Death

Death is an inevitable part of life, and yet it remains one of the greatest mysteries that we face as humans. What happens when we die? Is there an afterlife? These are questions that have puzzled us for centuries, and they continue to do so today. In this article, we will explore the various perspectives on death and what lies beyond.

Understanding Death

Before we can delve into what lies beyond, we must first understand what death is. Death is defined as the permanent cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. This can occur as a result of illness, injury, or simply old age. Death is a natural process that occurs to all living things, but it is also a process that is often accompanied by fear and uncertainty.

The Physical Process of Death

When a person dies, their body undergoes several physical changes. The heart stops beating, and the body begins to cool and stiffen. This is known as rigor mortis, and it typically sets in within 2-6 hours after death. The body also begins to break down, and this can lead to a release of gases that cause bloating and discoloration.

The Psychological Experience of Death

In addition to the physical changes that occur during and after death, there is also a psychological experience that accompanies it. Many people report feeling a sense of detachment from their physical body, as well as a sense of peace and calm. Others report seeing bright lights or visions of loved ones who have already passed on.

Perspectives on What Lies Beyond

There are many different perspectives on what lies beyond death. Some people believe in an afterlife, while others believe in reincarnation or simply that death is the end of consciousness. Let's explore some of these perspectives in more detail.

One of the most common beliefs about what lies beyond death is the idea of an afterlife. This can take many forms, depending on one's religious or spiritual beliefs. For example, many Christians believe in heaven and hell, where people go after they die depending on their actions during life. Muslims believe in paradise and hellfire, while Hindus believe in reincarnation.

Reincarnation

Reincarnation is the belief that after we die, our consciousness is reborn into a new body. This can be based on karma, meaning that the quality of one's past actions will determine the quality of their next life. Some people believe that we can choose the circumstances of our next life based on our desires and attachments in this life.

End of Consciousness

The idea that death is simply the end of consciousness is a common belief among atheists and materialists. This view holds that the brain is responsible for creating consciousness, and when the brain dies, consciousness ceases to exist. While this view may be comforting to some, others find it unsettling.

Death is a complex and mysterious phenomenon that continues to fascinate us. While we may never fully understand what lies beyond death, it's important to remember that everyone has their own beliefs and perspectives on the matter. Whether you believe in an afterlife, reincarnation, or simply the end of consciousness, it's important to find ways to cope with the loss of a loved one and to find peace with your mortality.

Final Words

In conclusion, these powerful essays on death offer inspiring perspectives and deep insights into the human experience of coping with mortality, grief, and loss. From personal accounts to philosophical reflections, these essays provide a diverse range of perspectives that encourage readers to contemplate their mortality and the meaning of life.

By reading and reflecting on these essays, readers can gain a better understanding of how death shapes our lives and relationships, and how we can learn to accept and cope with this inevitable part of the human experience.

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Home Essay Samples Health Death

Reflections on the Death of a Loved One

Table of contents, introduction, the shock and sorrow: initial reactions to the death of a loved one, the process of grief: navigating life after loss, life lessons from death: a new perspective, works cited.

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100 Words Essay On Death In English

Google defines the term ‘death’ to be “the action or fact of dying or being killed; the end of the life of a person or organism.”

The common thread that links them together is that there always exists a being that extracts one’s soul. This varies from Grim Reaper to Yam Raj to Thanatos and so on. Here, death’s link with the soul also ultimately connects it with the notion of heaven and hell. 

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242 Death Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best death topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on death, 📌 most interesting death topics to write about, ✅ simple & easy death essay titles, 💡 good research topics about death, ✍️ death essay topics for college, ❓ interesting questions about death.

• The Death of My Grandmother and Lessons Learnt Often the loss of a grandmother is the first loss in life, which only complicates the feelings experienced. The loss of my grandmother was the biggest tragedy that has happened to me.
• Death Ceremonies in Luhya Tribe This tribe is called the Luhya tribe and is one of the 42 tribes of the Republic of Kenya. This is because a clan might actually size to exist due to the death of a […]
• Life After Death In many religions across the world, people belief in life after death and also being born again in the world after an individual. Life after death is the belief in the continuation of life after […]
• Plato on Death: Comparison With Aristotle Afterlife – Essay on Life After Death Philosophy On the other hand, religion has maintained that the soul is immortal and survives the death of the body. Plato argued that the soul is immortal and therefore survives the death of the body.
• Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection End of life care for my mother took a toll on me, and I had to reevaluate my aspirations to see whether I treated life as an endless path.
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• The Probable Cause of Marilyn Monroe’s Death She had many lovers, many admirers, she associated with the rich and powerful, but in the end, she was so emotionally and psychologically troubled that when she died in 1962, with bottles of drugs beside […]
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• The Peculiarities of Discussing the Theme of Death in Poetry and Prose The question of this fringe helps to emphasize the problem of the lovers’ separation.”The separation of the soul from the body, and the separation of lovers from each other, is not an ending but the […]
• Are the Witches Responsible for Duncan’s Death? For example, Banquo was given good news by the witches about the likelihood of his children becoming kings and yet he did not rush to murder as it’s in the Macbeth’s case.
• Death and the Afterlife: A Spiritual World After Death The spiritual world for people means the immortality of their souls, which is in general highly important from the point of view of religion and philosophy.
• The Theme of Death in the World of Literature Important is the fact that the death is personified in the poem and has the role of the gentleman. The death is presented as a powerful element of the poem and of the narrator’s life […]
• Magellan’s Death in the Philippines and Captain Cook’s Death in Hawaii Captain Cook was a surveyor in the royal navy and in 1778, he made his first trip to the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaiians were very hospitable to the captain and his crew.
• Worldviews in Religions on the Aspect of Death and Afterlife The essay compares and contrasts the worldviews of Christianity, medieval Buddhist and Muslim on the aspect of death and afterlife and is covered as follows.
• Socrates: His Life, Philosophy, & Death The Philosopher, Socrates was a Greek and he was born in the proximities of 470 B. Much of the philosophy and life of Socrates is explained by Plato in his dialogues.
• Philosophy: “Death” Essay by Thomas Nagel Therefore, the first element of viewing death is evil that the author examines is the contrast of this occurrence to life, which is perceived as good.
• Why Are We Afraid of Death? However, it can be interesting to understand why the rest of the people are so afraid of death. People are afraid of the unknown.
• Late Adulthood and Death This paper examines ageism and the stereotypes associated with late adulthood; how individuals can promote health and wellness in late adulthood; the importance of relationships and social interactions; and personal attitudes towards death in late […]
• Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Most of these studies focused on the incidences of SIDS, factors that are responsible for the condition, and the possible measures that could be put in place to reduce the incidence of the condition.
• Death and Suffering: War Opposing Viewpoints The number of human casualties is very much alarming Take the case of the Second World War. It is considered to be the worst and the most deadly war ever fought in the history of […]
• The Theme of Death in Fiction-Writing Nevertheless, while it is emotional, having to deal with death, the pain of losing a son, and having to deal with the sympathy of people around them, the story disguised the emotion of the individuals […]
• The Matter of Life and Death Since it is necessary that the population of the mankind did not expand, due to the lack of supplies, it is undesirable that the pregnant woman were in the bunker.
• Death and the Maiden: Emily Dickinson’s Thematic Obsession With Death The Afterlife less interesting than life?”.”My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close” opens another door into the theme of death from Dickinson’s penetrating and sharp intellect.
• Death and Funeral Customs of the Ainu and Nuer Peoples The high level of interest in the thematic is due to transformations in the rituals that indicate changes in the social order and conditions of its existence.
• From Birth to Death: Human’s Destiny The reason people seem to be so attached to Facebook and blogs is because they think this is their primary means of communicating and connecting to the world.
• The Theme of Death in Literary Works The Duke reflects on the death of the Duchess and finding a new mistress to please him. The significance of the use of dramatic monologue is that it distinguishes the poet from the main speaker […]
• Death and Terminal Illnesses Some of the diseases under this category are heart diseases in the advanced stages and to some extent cancer.”In popular use, terminal conditions indicate diseases which will end the life of the sufferers in a […]
• Exertional Heat Stroke and Sudden Death The heat leads to the malfunctioning of the Central Nervous System, which is manifested in the symptoms of EHS. According to the National Athletic Trainers’ Association, it is vital for an athletic trainer to recognize […]
• Modern Christianity View and Perspective on Death and Dying Some Christians believe that death is safe to the people of God and that it is a necessity to fit in the complete delight of God.
• “Death and Justice” by Edward I. Koch Although the issue of the death penalty is quite controversial, it is the most effective deterrence and the fairest justice that can be done to the victims of the most serious offenses.
• “Death” by Thomas Nagel: The Issue of Death and How People Think of It In a way, this contradicts his above reasoning that if there is no one to experience the loss of good life, then the absence of suffering and realization is not bad at all.
• Cleopatra’s Life, From Her Ascension to the Throne to Solemn Death The bond between Antony and Cleopatra continued to strengthen and resulted in the return of most of Egypt’s empires that had been conquered by the Romans.
• Becoming Original: Truth and Death in Hawthorne’s The Minister’s Black Veil In the creation and presentation of the true inevitability of death via Hooper’s veil, Hawthorne fulfills Fuller’s definition of the American writer as in possession of the “noble fearlessness [that] can give wings to the […]
• Sea Otters’ Life Cycle From Birth to Death However, after the species had almost become extinct and their protection began, the species began to recover and towards the close of the 20th century, conservation had given rise to tens of thousands of sea […]
• Detailed Coronial Analysis of a Chest Pain Related Death The coroner’s report reviewed in this paper is for the patient AD who was brought to the emergency department by the Queensland Ambulance Service with the diagnosis of the acute coronary syndrome.
• The Death of the Moth by Virginia Woolf It was as if they were mindful of what had happened to the moth but in truth these creatures were simply taking a break.
• Reflection on Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “On Death” We are not aware what happens at the moment of death or after it and seek to find the answers to the questions raised by Shelley in the poem “On Death”.
• Perspectives of Death In the different interpretations of death, there is a section of people that believe death is the final stage in the life journey of both human beings and plants.
• Social Issue: The Death of the Whitney Houston In addition to giving a precise of the aforementioned story, the next discussion also elaborates the story by relating it to sociological imagination and the concept of social perspectives.
• A Systematic Study of Suffering and Death in Christianity There exist six major perspectives that try to explain the meaning and existence of suffering in Christianity: First, the Bible exploits well the subject of suffering; it does not leave it to the believers’ own […]
• Effects of a Parental Death on Younger Children The impacts of paternal and maternal death on young children are premised on the child’s health, school enrollment and educational attainment of the child in comparison to adverse poverty.
• The Line Between Life and Death: The Terri Schiavo Case A clear definition of a person who is alive is important in order to be able to make decisions about patients in a vegetative state.
• Death & Mourning Rituals in China The unique beliefs put into the basis of Chinese philosophy, particularly those concerning the phenomena of death and dying may have a significant impact upon the patients’ attitudes and decision in the end-of-life care and […]
• The Death Scenario: Positive Psychology Generally, I am concerned about Death and my Death or the Death of a loved one for that matter in different ways. The fear of this death scenario and the pain associated with it are […]
• Ethical Issues of Death and Dying The aim of the end of life care is to ensure that the dying person encounters the least discomfort during the dying process.
• Forensic Psychology: Death Notifications Importance It is very important to surround the surviving relatives with compassion and understanding during the initial shock that follows the dreadful news. The purpose of delivering death notifications in person is to provide compassion.
• Buddhism: The Concept of Death and Dying Life is permanent but death is the transition of a human soul to either one of the six Buddhist realms. The purpose of this paper is to explain the concept of death from the Buddhist […]
• Self-Reflection on Life Values, Goals, and Death I want my life to be full of genuine relationships despite how challenging it is to find and cultivate such bonds in modern society.
• Death and Dying: How to Accept the End of Life Ideas Loss-related grief hurts and is frequently intolerable, and it can be challenging to maintain a good outlook on life when one is in pain.
• Atkinson’s Death Penalty Article: Rebuttal Argument Regardless of unrealistic and irrelevant assertions about therapeutic jurisprudence, the death sentence is an efficient deterrence and punishment mechanism when seen within the context of vigilante justice and as a part of the current legal […]
• Restorative Justice and the Death Penalty Draft thesis: The death penalty, when viewed under the retributive justice framework and as a part of the existing justice system, is an effective deterrent and punishment measure irrespective of impractical and irrelevant restorative justice […]
• The Death Definition and the Need for Euthanasia If the concept of the soul is to be believed in, then one’s death is simply a process that detaches the soul from the body.
• Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty Furthermore, the defense and, in the United States, the prosecution has the right of vexatious challenge, which allows it to confront several participants without providing a reason.
• Heracles’ Death in Women of Trachis and Modern Perspective The concept of a good death changes over time, and what was considered a good and glorifying death in ancient times may be terrifying today.
• Psychology: The Aftermath of a Death Thus it is necessary to analyze the emotions and experiences of others in order to have a general idea of the problems that occur in different people.
• The Wisdom of Silenus: The Meaning of Life & Death When thinking about this idea, it is difficult to take any specific point of view about it because the meaning of life primarily lies in the process of a lifetime; making any goal the meaning […]
• Can There Be Agreement as to What Constitutes Human Death From a biological point of view, death is considered a natural fact of the termination of life due to the exhaustion of the body’s vital resources.
• Low Vitamin D and Risk of Premature Death Categories of clear communication index, including the Main Message and Call to Action, Language, Information Design, State of the Science, Behavioral Recommendations, Numbers, and Risks, will evaluate the general consumer publication.
• Experience With Death in Personal Life Facing death is an ordeal because it leads to nervousness, prolonged sadness, and pain of loss. Third, facing death is an ordeal because we feel the pain of loss.
• The Black Death: Causes and Reactions This paper discusses the causes of the Black Death, human contribution to the spread of the disease, and describes the responses to the Black Death.
• Media Journal Assignment: Elijah McClain’s Death The death of a young Elijah was quite a shocking revelation about injustice that is taking place in the country. It demonstrates the social solidarity of people on the injustice that has taken a place.
• “Death on Demand Is Not Death With Dignity” by Debra Saunders The author uses the example of Brittany Maryland, who is diagnosed with terminal cancer and moves to Oregon as assisted suicide is legal there.
• Protests Over the Death of George Floyd The suspect was cooperating with the officers who instead treated him harshly and pinned him to the ground against the police conduct.
• Impact of Divorce vs. Death of Loved One On the contrary, suffering as a result of divorce is similar to experiencing a loved one’s death in many aspects. In my view, the impact of divorce and the death of a loved one should […]
• Social Causes of Suicide: Sex, Race, Ethnicity, Age Group, and Mechanism of Death Suicide is one of the top ten main causes of death in the United States, making it a major issue. The suicide rate in the West is higher than in the South, Midwest, and Northeast.
• Euthanasia: Nurses’ Attitudes Towards Death The weakest part of the article is that most of the participants did not clearly define the concept of euthanasia, which casts doubt on the reliability of the sampled data.
• Health Policy to Solve Premature Death Inequality Further, the policy will teach the community about the dangers of drug and substance abuse and how it relates to premature deaths.
• Newspaper Coverage of Adolf Hitler’s Death It marks the end of the era of the terrible events of the Holocaust, the seizure of Poland, the extermination of millions of people.
• Impact of Intentional Death Problem Moreover, the negative consequences of euthanasia are the devaluation of human life, violation of the equality of people before the law, medical duty, and the structure of the doctor-patient relationship.
• Tyler Skaggs’s Death Reminding About Opioid Crisis The case of Tyler Skaggs serves as a reminder of the problem that is crucial in the United States nowadays the opioid crisis.
• Attitude Towards Death Essay: Life-Span Development Therefore, I try to maintain respect for this phenomenon and thereby try to enjoy every moment of life so as not to regret anything on my deathbed. It became an increasingly sensitive topic to me […]
• Medical Error as Causes of Preventable Death One of the notable examples of significant damage to patient health due to a medical error in our hospital was the case of LIS caused by rapid correction of hyponatremia.
• The Investigation of Rigor Mortis: Method to Determine the Time of Death One of the methods to determine the time of death is the investigation of rigor mortis. Considering the state of the body, it is possible to determine the time of death using the progression of […]
• Death and Stages of Grief However, such an understanding can be questioned due to the invention of life support devices and the development of the death of the brain concept.
• Experiences of the Death of Spouse In order to elaborate the appropriate one, it is crucial to address Maslow’s Human Motivation and Hierarchy of Basic Human Needs.
• Regulated Cell Death Induced by Membrane-Interacting Peptide Amphiphiles Media from the cells will be removed and replaced with the fluorescent dilution media and incubated for 45 minutes. For visualization, the PA solution with 1 wt% of a fluorescent analog will be used.
• Death Perspectives in Epicurus’ Theory Starting with the assumptions that fear of this phenomenon is one of the most important stimuli in the life of people and ending with the suggestions that death is not bad for the deceased, thinkers […]
• Understanding of the Death Concept by Children The death component of irreversibility involves the child’s ability to conceptualize that death is permanent and the dead never return to life.
• Researching of Why Human Beings Fear Death From the religious perspective, some people know about their sins committed on earth in their life and are afraid of the punishment for those sins as opposed to people who believe in God and His […]
• Atherosclerosis: St. Louis Cardinal’s Death The function of the arteries is to carry oxygenated blood from the heart to other parts of the body, while the function of the veins is to transport deoxygenated blood from other organs to the […]
• Circumstances and Facts Behind the Death of Pamela Langley This memorandum highlights the circumstances and facts behind the death of Pamela Langley and the subsequent trial of the accused, Mr.
• Women’s Life Stories: Maori Sudden Infant Death Keeping in mind the analysis of both – modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors in relation to SIDS, it becomes obvious that equal attention is to be paid to biological and behavioral variables along with social […]
• Wrongful Death: How to Prove Legally That Death Was Wrongful The plaintiff sued the vehicle’s driver, County and the driver’s defendant on behalf of the decedent’s estate and as a family member.
• Mr. B’s Death: Valium Case However, this was not the case as the patient was only monitored for the blood pressure and the saturation of oxygen without monitoring the pulse rate and the breathing rhythm.
• A Psychological Perspective on Death and Mourning The psychological perspective in health psychology is interested in trying to explain how biological, environmental, and psychological factors have influenced and affected health psychology and also the prevention and treatment of illness and diseases.
• Death Rates and Causes: Global Health Assessment Furthermore, it has been recognized that both methods of research are applicable within the cultural context as well within the context of beliefs and perceptions of the individuals the conducts the research and individuals that […]
• Heart Disease: Cell Death During Myocardial Infarction This process is known as the non-reversible cell injury because of the changes in the cell structure and functions when the cell membrane is damaged, and the cell dies.
• The Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Ordinal variables show a “clear ordering of the categories”. In a ratio scale, the size interval represents a ratio or proportion of the total values.
• A Root Cause Analysis for Mr. B’s Death Without the tools, the doctor could neither measure the response to the sedation appropriately nor sense when the situation of the patient was worsening.
• Alzheimer Related Morbidity and Death Among New Yorkers Generally, Alzheimer disease is a form of dementia, which inflicts a loss of memory, thinking and behavior. The proportion of ethnic and racial diversity in the US is increasing.
• Vibrio Cholerae: Death by Diarrhoea Although it is widely believed that Vibrio cholerae is a human pathogen, implying that human beings serve as the natural host, it has the capacity to persist and survive in the absence of a human […]
• The Book “On Death and Denying” by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross According to Kubler-Ross, the stage of denial is the first in the grieving process. According to the Bible, Job says, “shall we not accept the good things that God does and adversities?” This is an […]
• The Death of a Loved One: Methods of Coping for the Elderly Prior to the start of the study, Mr.G.stated he did not remember the information the researcher had discussed and did not remember signing the consent.
• Abortion-Related-Maternal Death in Dominican Republic There is need to focus the effort in pressuring the lawmakers to respect the rights of women. The Dominican law prohibits women from abortion even the life of woman and the child is in danger.
• Problem of Death and Bereavement: Case Studies The life of a newborn child, no matter how disabled or handicapped it may be, is guarded by the ‘sanctity of human life’ doctrine, and the wishes of the parents or the prospects of the […]
• Death From Preventable Injuries: Predicting When Emergency Surgery Is Needed as Early as Possible The first attempt to quantify this occurred in 1999 when, at the instigation of a presidential task force, the Institute of Medicine extrapolated findings from three states to estimate that from 44,000 to 98,000 people […]
• Trauma and Death in World Literature and Films The themes of trauma and death unite the novel “The Day of the Locust” by Nathaniel West, the short story “Grief” by Scholastique Mukasonga, and the short film The Neighbors ‘Window by Marshall Curry.
• The Death of Hybrid Bodies in Literature and Cinematography The death itself is not always physical, it is the mental process of rejection or accommodation to the surrounding world, as the beast’s metamorphosis and integration into the human life paradigm is also a certain […]
• Hindu Death Rites and Provision of the End-of-Life Care Hindus have a particular perception of death and what happens to a person in the afterlife, shaping the appropriate for them end-of-life care.
• Global Inequity in Preventable Maternal Death Hence, in the framework of the international governance lens, discussions on the alienation of global inequity within the prevention of maternal deaths are relevant and reasonable to provide.
• The Role of Cocaine in the Death of Len Bias The primary focus of this paper is to analyze the existence of cocaine, its consumption, and connected public opinion at the end of the 20th century studying life and death of Len Bias, a renowned […]
• OSHA: Death Caused by Ladder Falls The first one is selecting the wrong type of ladder, which stems from the lack of understanding of essential tools. The most common cause of ladder accidents is the incorrect use of them.
• Suffering of Death Organs: Organ Donors and Transplantation The author begins the article by discussing how the past cessation of breathing used to be one of the recognized signs of death and how the development of the iron lung and later the artificial […]
• U1 IP Medicolegal Death Investigation There is one more problem: the bigger the interval between the death time and the body found, the more inaccurate will be the estimation.
• Line-of-Duty Death (LODD) or Critical Injury A group of persons with knowledge on the insurance policies of the company should be appointed to render assistance to the family in the filing of claim forms.
• The Chinese Belief on Death and Dying These distinctions are visible due to several cultures act of subjecting to an influencing experience of death in the African perspective, the keeping with the nature of the Bible or its times, the people from […]
• When Butterflies Die: Alvarez and Her Idea of Death Considering a loss as a chance to take a closer look at ourselves, Alvarez interprets the old idea of drinking the honey and throwing away the bee, applying it to people’s subconscious and suggesting to […]
• Greek Attitude Towards Death and Afterlife The thoughts about death and the beyond can send shivers down the spine of a contemporary person and the attitude of ancient Greeks to death was practically the same.
• Death in TV-Series “Six Feet Under” The paradox that is based on the conventional fear of death and the perception of death almost as one more member of the family cannot but leave a significant sign on each member of the […]
• The Duty to Die. “Going to Meet Death” by John Hardwig This approach is considered with the fact of how these loved ones should, on the one hand, bear all those condemnations and disagreements with life and words about soon death along with a perpetual presence […]
• Wit by Margaret Edson How to Face Death Through the story, the writer explains the tragic life of the Professor and how she recalls the story of her life which she spent without anybody to care and love for.
• Denial of Death in Major Religions I will agree at this point that the God that both the Christians serve and the Muslims is the same God because both religions believe that this supreme God is not comparable and will never […]
• The Western Corpse: Are We a Death-Denying Society? This belief in the body as merely a shell is also assisted by the fact that the corpse in modern times is no longer prepared for disposal by the loving hands of the friends and […]
• The Death of George Washington He is considered to be one of the most prominent politicians in the history of the United States. The twentieth century was marked with increased attention to the death of George Washington.
• Death Sentence to Muslim Terrorists: Should We Murder People Who Had Done the Same Before? In my opinion, the aim to punish is not the most important in this, but we should try to avoid the same crimes in the future, and that is the aim of Mankind.
• Aging and Death Relations The growth of damages in the organ elements that are required for the creation of new cells of the body leads to death.
• The Concept of Death as Depicted in the Iraq War It is a fact that the most prominent and evident aspect of the war is the phenomenon of death. The reactions of people to the thought of death depend on how death is represented through […]
• Ancient Conceptions of Death and the Afterlife Although the specific elements of the religion of the mostly pagan society of the composer of Beowulf around 1000 AD is fundamentally different from the Christian religion of Alfred Lord Tennyson who wrote Morte D’Arthur […]
• Final Wishes Before Death The better your visualization and your solutions to the problems that you have envisaged, the better is the peace that reigns in your home after you pass away.
• Death and Dying in Christianity and Buddhism Birth and death are part of everybody’s life: birth is the beginning of living, and death is the end of it.
• Death-Denying Culture Among Patients The author has argued that society has become a death-denying society where prolonging life becomes a test of the machines and technology that is bent on prolonging death.
• Healthy People 2020: Death Causes & Health Indicators Healthy People 2020 is a science-based governmental program designed to track progress on the national goals for improving public health in the United States. The scope of Healthy People 2020 is broad.
• Death Causes and Health Indicators in Georgia, US The analysis of the leading causes of death across the country identifies the most problematic health issues on the national scale.
• Overview of Sudden Death Infant Syndrome The cause of death in SIDS remains inexplicable in spite of a thorough examination of history and a detailed postmortem. In the United States of SIDS is the leading cause of post-neonatal infant mortality.
• Low-Carb Diets as a Cause of Premature Death There are various claims and misconceptions in the field of nutrition due to the fact that it is highly difficult to identify the core influencing factors.
• Emily Dickinson and Death as a Theme in Her Poetry Using the theme of death, the author says that she has to cut her connections with the world and anticipates death.
• Philosophical Perspectives on Death and Dying These are fear of premature death, fear of the idea of death, fear of the dying process, fear of the death of significant others, fear of the unknown, fear of being destroyed, fear of the […]
• Death in the Work of Danticat, Marshall and Roumaine The despair of Celianne in “Children of the Sea” as she throws herself into the ocean is felt by the male narrator of the same story when he embraces death and by Grace’s mother in […]
• Terri Schiavo’s Patient Rights and Death Euthanasia is the process of stopping the medical maintenance of a patient’s life when the patient/herself does not want to suffer anymore and the doctors are sure that no improvements in the patient’s condition are […]
• A Matter of Life and Death Compositional Elements Through the usage of color scheme, props, and the setting of the last mise en scene, A Matter of Life and Death facilitated the propagandist message of Anglo-American understanding within the pursuit of individual happiness.
• Ethics of Organ Donation After Human Death In reference to this case, the ethical dilemma is related to the fact that the hospital administrator needs to disregard the necessity of informed consent for organ donation.
• Dying With Dignity: Euthanasia Debate On the other hand, the supporters of the law claim that assisted death is not a suicide, and it allows more end-of-life options for terminally ill patients. The majority of people are concerned with control […]
• Determining Manners of Death Such deaths can occur as a result of the following: Life-threatening infections; Lack of supervision from staff; Falls and injuries; Neglect of basic needs and unsanitary conditions at facilities; Errors in medication.
• Manners of Death in Police The authors of the report also provided diverse sets of data sorting the incidence of death in custody in the state of California by various features such as the demographic characteristics of the victims, the […]
• Manners of Death in the United States However, there are many people in the entire world who happened to face lightning strikes and survived. For instance, lightning strikes and drowning deaths might be staged by criminals to confuse the police in a […]
• Spirituality Issues: Death and Dying The African culture maintains that it is only in the land of the living where rewards and punishments are inevitable. It is the last stage in the human life cycle and a transition to “life […]
• Medicolegal Death Investigation System in the US The paper below will cover various issues of the medicolegal death investigation system in the United States of America. The key points that will be addressed in this research are exploring the background information about […]
• Medicolegal Death Investigation: Coroner System A coroner carries out the investigation related to the case, defines the causes thereof, and confirms the incidence of death. The medical examiner system implies that a person with a medical degree should carry out […]
• Death Causes and Gender Factor in Herkimer County The following are the leading causes of death based on gender in Herkimer County, which is located in the state of New York.
• Child Death Causes by World Health Organization In the article WHO estimates of the causes of death in children, by Jennifer Bryce, Cynthia Boschi-Pinto, Kenji Shibuya, Robert Black, et al, the authors base their article on the fact that child survival efforts […]
• Internal Family Briefing After the Victim’s Death
• Knowing Age of Death and Its Disadvantages
• Life After Death: Scientific and Religious Answers
• Environmental Pollution and Increased Birds Death
• Medical Ethics in Charlie Card’s Death Case
• Death Awareness Effects on Self-Realization
• Death of the Historical Buddha in Zen Buddhism
• The Love of Poets for Nature: Life and Death
• Why Is Death Bad?
• PTSD as the Primary Factor Causing Infant Death
• The Concepts of Death and Afterlife in Religious Beliefs
• Shaken Baby Syndrome and Pathology of Death
• Good Life and Death for Humans and Other Animals
• “Life After Death” a Book by Damien Echols
• Change in Attitudes Towards Death and Dying
• Buddha’s Speculation About Life After Death
• Death in Psychological and Personal Understanding
• Death With Dignity as a Social Concept
• Life and Death in The Rio Grande by Américo Paredes
• Life After Death: Ideas in Religion and Culture
• Christian and Worldview Perceptions on Death
• Media Announcements: Human Death Deserved to Be Private
• Muammar Gaddafi’s Death: Scene and Dilemma
• “Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa”
• Euthanasia: Is It the Best Solution?
• Amusing Ourselves to Death Thesis
• Power, Memory and Spectacle on Saddam Hussein’s Death
• Socrates on Death and Virtue
• Death and Dying in Modern Christianity
• Muammar Gaddafi Deserved a Private Death
• Gaddafi Deserved a Private Death
• Philosophical Views on Life and Death
• Death Anxiety Is a Multidimensional Concept
• Children Literature Analysis: The Concept of Death
• A Matter of Life and Death, or Did You Hear Someone Knocking?
• A Comparison Between Pat Tillman’s Death and the Bourgeois Theory
• We Are Not Harmed by Our Own Death
• Different Approaches to the Theme of Death
• The Policy of One Child Per Couple in China: Death and Birth Rate
• Death and Everyday Life
• Does the Death Sentence Offer Justice to the Criminal?
• Death in The Shipping News
• How Death and Dying Is Dealt With in Other Cultures and Countries
• The Elephant in the Room: Existentialism and the Denial of Death
• Analysis of Nagel’s Death: The Assumptions and Theories
• Death Lore: Texas Rituals, Superstitions, and Legends of the Hereafter
• Parameters of a Children’s Book That Talks About Death and Dying
• The Kind of Sara’s Death: Medical and Religious Aspects
• Philosophical Analysis on the Death of Osama Bin Laden
• Death, Loss, and Grieving
• Poe’s Favorite Subject Matter Is Death
• Death, Dying and Bereavement
• Change of Death Attitude From Traditional to Modern Way
• Why Physician-Assisted Death on the Terminally Ill lacks Justification
• Death’s Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow: The Views of Religion and Death in 1720–1820
• Schutzstaffel: Hitler’s Infamous Legions of Death
• The American Way of Death: Process Analysis in Writing
• Is There Life After Death in Buddhism?
• How Did the Black Death Affect European Societies of the Mid-Fourteenth Century?
• Why Didn’t Socrates Fear Death?
• Can the Death Penalty Make Citizens Feel Safer?
• How Is the American Middle Class Affected by the Death?
• What Is the Implication of Death to the Meaning of Life and to the Human Person?
• How Is Death Viewed in Different Cultures?
• Will We Ever Be Able to Control Death?
• Could Death Row Inmates Be a Viable Source for Organ Donation?
• How Does Death Affect One’s Decision to Live an Authentic or Good Life?
• Does the Death Penalty Effectively Deter Crime?
• What Are the Cultural Aspects of Death?
• How Do Society and Culture Influence Our Views and Attitudes Toward Death?
• Does the Death Sentence Kill the Crime or the Criminal?
• Whether the Personal Consciousness Survives Death?
• How Does Death Affect Social Development?
• Did the Black Death Greatly Improve the European Society?
• How Does the Japanese Culture View Death?
• Should Physician-Assisted Death Be Legalized in the United States?
• How Has Death Changed in the Past 100 Years?
• Does the Brain Stay Active After Death?
• Should the Tobacco Industry Be Held Liable for Illness and Death Caused by Smoking?
• How Did the Black Death Impact Medieval History?
• Was Bob Marley’s Death a Conspiracy?
• How Does Mark Antony Manipulate the Crowd After the Death of Caesar?
• Domestic Violence Paper Topics
• Belief Questions
• Palliative Care Research Topics
• Fear Questions
• Auschwitz Research Topics
• Heart Disease Titles
• HIV Paper Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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25 great articles about death and dying, life after death, after life by joan didion, when things go missing by kathryn schulz, feet in smoke by john jeremiah sullivan, house for sale by jonathan franzen, not fade away by maria bustillos, now we are five by david sedaris, the unthinkable has happened by jayson greene, killing someone, fatal distraction by gene weingarten, the sorrow and the shame of the accidental killer by alice gregory, frozen alive by peter stark, i'm sorry i didn't respond to your email, my husband coughed to death two years ago by rachel ward, final forms by kathryn schulz, the coming death shortage by charles c. mann, not nothing by stephen cave, the undertaker's racket by jessica mitford, how old is too old to die by chuck klosterman, out of thin air by sirin kale, see also..., 25 great articles and essays about life.

How Not To Commit Suicide by Art Kleiner

Let’s die together by david samuels, the suicide catcher, the suicide epedemic by tony dokoupil, when i die by brooke jarvis, death on demand by christopher de bellaigue, the death treatment by rachel aviv, the year of magical thinking by joan didion, stiff by mary roach, being mortal by atul gawande.

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Montaigne on Death and the Art of Living

By maria popova.

In one of his 107 such exploratory essays, titled “That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die,” Montaigne turns to mortality — the subject of one of this year’s best psychology and philosophy books — and points to the understanding of death as a prerequisite for the understanding of life, for the very art of living .

Montaigne examines our conflicted relationship with dying:

Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest, as the means that accommodates human life with a soft and easy tranquillity, and gives us a pure and pleasant taste of living, without which all other pleasure would be extinct. […] The end of our race is death; ’tis the necessary object of our aim, which, if it fright us, how is it possible to advance a step without a fit of ague? The remedy the vulgar use is not to think on’t; but from what brutish stupidity can they derive so gross a blindness? They must bridle the ass by the tail: ‘Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro,’ [‘Who in his folly seeks to advance backwards’ — Lucretius, iv. 474] ’tis no wonder if he be often trapped in the pitfall. They affright people with the very mention of death, and many cross themselves, as it were the name of the devil. And because the making a man’s will is in reference to dying, not a man will be persuaded to take a pen in hand to that purpose, till the physician has passed sentence upon and totally given him over, and then betwixt and terror, God knows in how fit a condition of understanding he is to do it. The Romans, by reason that this poor syllable death sounded so harshly to their ears and seemed so ominous, found out a way to soften and spin it out by a periphrasis, and instead of pronouncing such a one is dead, said, ‘Such a one has lived,’ or ‘Such a one has ceased to live’ … provided there was any mention of life in the case, though past, it carried yet some sound of consolation. … I make account to live, at least, as many more. In the meantime, to trouble a man’s self with the thought of a thing so far off were folly. But what? Young and old die upon the same terms; no one departs out of life otherwise than if he had but just before entered into it; neither is any man so old and decrepit, who, having heard of Methuselah, does not think he has yet twenty good years to come. Fool that thou art! who has assured unto thee the term of life? Thou dependest upon physicians’ tales: rather consult effects and experience. According to the common course of things, ’tis long since that thou hast lived by extraordinary favour; thou hast already outlived the ordinary term of life. And that it is so, reckon up thy acquaintance, how many more have died before they arrived at thy age than have attained unto it; and of those who have ennobled their lives by their renown, take but an account, and I dare lay a wager thou wilt find more who have died before than after five-and-thirty years of age. … How many several ways has death to surprise us?

Rather than indulging the fear of death, Montaigne calls for dissipating it by facing it head-on, with awareness and attention — an approach common in Eastern spirituality:

[L]et us learn bravely to stand our ground, and fight him. And to begin to deprive him of the greatest advantage he has over us, let us take a way quite contrary to the common course. Let us disarm him of his novelty and strangeness, let us converse and be familiar with him, and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death. Upon all occasions represent him to our imagination in his every shape; at the stumbling of a horse, at the falling of a tile, at the least prick with a pin, let us presently consider, and say to ourselves, ‘Well, and what if it had been death itself?’ and, thereupon, let us encourage and fortify ourselves. Let us evermore, amidst our jollity and feasting, set the remembrance of our frail condition before our eyes, never suffering ourselves to be so far transported with our delights, but that we have some intervals of reflecting upon, and considering how many several ways this jollity of ours tends to death, and with how many dangers it threatens it. The Egyptians were wont to do after this manner, who in the height of their feasting and mirth, caused a dried skeleton of a man to be brought into the room to serve for a memento to their guests: ‘Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum Grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur, hora.’ ‘Think each day when past is thy last; the next day, as unexpected, will be the more welcome.’ — [Hor., Ep., i. 4, 13.] Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die has unlearned to serve. There is nothing evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that the privation of life is no evil: to know, how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint. Paulus Emilius answered him whom the miserable King of Macedon, his prisoner, sent to entreat him that he would not lead him in his triumph, ‘Let him make that request to himself.’ — [ Plutarch, Life of Paulus Aemilius, c. 17; Cicero, Tusc., v. 40. ] In truth, in all things, if nature do not help a little, it is very hard for art and industry to perform anything to purpose. I am in my own nature not melancholic, but meditative; and there is nothing I have more continually entertained myself withal than imaginations of death, even in the most wanton time of my age.

One of Montaigne’s most timeless and timeliest points strikes at the heart of our present productivity-culture, reminding us that the whole of life is contained in our inner life , not in the checklist of our accomplishments:

We should always, as near as we can, be booted and spurred, and ready to go, and, above all things, take care, at that time, to have no business with any one but one’s self: — ‘Quid brevi fortes jaculamur avo Multa?’ [‘Why for so short a life tease ourselves with so many projects?’ — Hor., Od., ii. 16, 17.]

He presages the “real artists ship” mantra Steve Job made famous five centuries later:

A man must design nothing that will require so much time to the finishing, or, at least, with no such passionate desire to see it brought to perfection. We are born to action: ‘Quum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus.’ [‘When I shall die, let it be doing that I had designed.’ — Ovid, Amor., ii. 10, 36.] I would always have a man to be doing, and, as much as in him lies, to extend and spin out the offices of life; and then let death take me planting my cabbages, indifferent to him, and still less of my gardens not being finished.

The essence of his argument is the idea that learning to die is essential for learning to live:

If I were a writer of books, I would compile a register, with a comment, of the various deaths of men: he who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live. […] Peradventure, some one may object, that the pain and terror of dying so infinitely exceed all manner of imagination, that the best fencer will be quite out of his play when it comes to the push. Let them say what they will: to premeditate is doubtless a very great advantage; and besides, is it nothing to go so far, at least, without disturbance or alteration? Moreover, Nature herself assists and encourages us: if the death be sudden and violent, we have not leisure to fear; if otherwise, I perceive that as I engage further in my disease, I naturally enter into a certain loathing and disdain of life. I find I have much more ado to digest this resolution of dying, when I am well in health, than when languishing of a fever; and by how much I have less to do with the commodities of life, by reason that I begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, by so much I look upon death with less terror. Which makes me hope, that the further I remove from the first, and the nearer I approach to the latter, I shall the more easily exchange the one for the other.

With a philosophical lens fringing on quantum physics, Montaigne reminds us of the fundamental bias of the arrow of time as we experience it:

Not only the argument of reason invites us to it — for why should we fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be lamented? — but, also, seeing we are threatened by so many sorts of death, is it not infinitely worse eternally to fear them all, than once to undergo one of them? … What a ridiculous thing it is to trouble ourselves about taking the only step that is to deliver us from all trouble! As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so in our death is the death of all things included. And therefore to lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago. … Long life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.

He returns — poignantly, poetically — to the meaning of life :

All the whole time you live, you purloin from life and live at the expense of life itself. The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death. You are in death, whilst you are in life, because you still are after death, when you are no more alive; or, if you had rather have it so, you are dead after life, but dying all the while you live; and death handles the dying much more rudely than the dead, and more sensibly and essentially. If you have made your profit of life, you have had enough of it; go your way satisfied.

Half a millennium before Carl Sagan, Montaigne channels the sentiment at the heart of Pale Blue Dot :

Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil as you make it.’ And, if you have lived a day, you have seen all: one day is equal and like to all other days. There is no other light, no other shade; this very sun, this moon, these very stars, this very order and disposition of things, is the same your ancestors enjoyed, and that shall also entertain your posterity.

He paints death as the ultimate equalizer:

Give place to others, as others have given place to you. Equality is the soul of equity. Who can complain of being comprehended in the same destiny, wherein all are involved?

The heart of Montaigne’s case falls somewhere between John Cage’s Zen philosophy and the canine state of being-in-the-moment :

Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life.

He concludes with an admonition about the solipsistic superficiality of death’s ritualization:

I believe, in truth, that it is those terrible ceremonies and preparations wherewith we set it out, that more terrify us than the thing itself; a new, quite contrary way of living; the cries of mothers, wives, and children; the visits of astounded and afflicted friends; the attendance of pale and blubbering servants; a dark room, set round with burning tapers; our beds environed with physicians and divines; in sum, nothing but ghostliness and horror round about us; we seem dead and buried already. … Happy is the death that deprives us of leisure for preparing such ceremonials.

Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays is now in the public domain and is available as a free download in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg .

Public domain illustrations via Flickr Commons

— Published December 12, 2012 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/12/12/montaigne-on-death-and-the-art-of-living/ —

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Essays About Losing a Loved One: Top 5 Examples

Writing essays about losing a loved one can be challenging; discover our helpful guide with essay examples and writing prompts to help you begin writing. 

One of the most basic facts of life is that it is unpredictable. Nothing on this earth is permanent, and any one of us can pass away in the blink of an eye. But unfortunately, they leave behind many family members and friends who will miss them very much whenever someone dies.

The most devastating news can ruin our best days, affecting us negatively for the next few months and years. When we lose a loved one, we also lose a part of ourselves. Even if the loss can make you feel hopeless at times, finding ways to cope healthily, distract yourself, and move on while still honoring and remembering the deceased is essential.

5 Top Essay Examples

1. losing a loved one by louis barker, 2. personal reflections on coping and loss by adrian furnham , 3. losing my mom helped me become a better parent by trish mann, 4. reflection – dealing with grief and loss by joe joyce.

• 5. ​​Will We Always Hurt on The Anniversary of Losing a Loved One? by Anne Peterson

1. Is Resilience Glorified in Society?

2. how to cope with a loss, 3. reflection on losing a loved one, 4. the stages of grief, 5. the circle of life, 6. how different cultures commemorate losing a loved one.

“I managed to keep my cool until I realized why I was seeing these familiar faces. Once the service started I managed to keep my emotions in tack until I saw my grandmother break down. I could not even look up at her because I thought about how I would feel in the same situation. Your life can change drastically at any moment. Do not take life or the people that you love for granted, you are only here once.”

Barker reflects on how he found out his uncle had passed away. The writer describes the events leading up to the discovery, contrasting the relaxed, cheerful mood and setting that enveloped the house with the feelings of shock, dread, and devastation that he and his family felt once they heard. He also recalls his family members’ different emotions and mannerisms at the memorial service and funeral. 

“Most people like to believe that they live in a just, orderly and stable world where good wins out in the end. But what if things really are random? Counselors and therapists talk about the grief process and grief stages. Given that nearly all of us have experienced major loss and observed it in others, might one expect that people would be relatively sophisticated in helping the grieving?”

Furnham, a psychologist, discusses the stages of grief and proposes six different responses to finding out about one’s loss or suffering: avoidance, brief encounters, miracle cures, real listeners, practical help, and “giving no quarter.” He discusses this in the context of his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis, after which many people displayed these responses. Finally, Furnham mentions the irony that although we have all experienced and observed losing a loved one, no one can help others grieve perfectly.

“When I look in the mirror, I see my mom looking back at me from coffee-colored eyes under the oh-so-familiar crease of her eyelid. She is still here in me. Death does not take what we do not relinquish. I have no doubt she is sitting beside me when I am at my lowest telling me, ‘You can do this. You got this. I believe in you.’”

In Mann’s essay, she tries to see the bright side of her loss; despite the anguish she experienced due to her mother’s passing. Expectedly, she was incredibly depressed and had difficulty accepting that her mom was gone. But, on the other hand, she began to channel her mom into parenting her children, evoking the happy memories they once shared. She is also amused to see the parallels between her and her kids with her and her mother growing up. 

“Now I understood that these feelings must be allowed expression for as long as a person needs. I realized that the “don’t cry” I had spoken on many occasions in the past was not of much help to grieving persons, and that when I had used those words I had been expressing more my own discomfort with feelings of grief and loss than paying attention to the need of mourners to express them.”

Joyce, a priest, writes about the time he witnessed the passing of his cousin on his deathbed. Having experienced this loss right as it happened, he was understandably shaken and realized that all his preachings of “don’t cry” were unrealistic. He compares this instance to a funeral he attended in Pakistan, recalling the importance of letting grief take its course while not allowing it to consume you. 

5. ​​ Will We Always Hurt on The Anniversary of Losing a Loved One? by Anne Peterson

“Death. It’s certain. And we can’t do anything about that. In fact, we are not in control of many of the difficult circumstances of our lives, but we are responsible for how we respond to them. And I choose to honor their memory.”

Peterson discusses how she feels when she has to commemorate the anniversary of losing a loved one. She recalls the tragic deaths of her sister, two brothers, and granddaughter and describes her guilt and anger. Finally, she prays to God, asking him to help her; because of a combination of prayer and self-reflection, she can look back on these times with peace and hope that they will reunite one day. 

6 Thought-Provoking Writing Prompts on Essays About Losing A Loved One

Society tends to praise those who show resilience and strength, especially in times of struggle, such as losing a loved one. However, praising a person’s resilience can prevent them from feeling the pain of loss and grief. This essay explores how glorifying resilience can prevent a person from healing from painful events. Be sure to include examples of this issue in society and your own experiences, if applicable.

Loss is always tricky, especially involving someone close to your heart. Reflect on your personal experiences and how you overcame your grief for an effective essay. Create an essay to guide readers on how to cope with loss. If you can’t pull ideas from your own experiences, research and read other people’s experiences with overcoming loss in life.

If you have experienced losing a loved one, use this essay to describe how it made you feel. Discuss how you reacted to this loss and how it has impacted who you are today. Writing an essay like this may be sensitive for many. If you don’t feel comfortable with this topic, you can write about and analyze the loss of a loved one in a book, movie, or TV show you have seen. 

When we lose a loved one, grief is expected. There are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Discuss each one and how they all connect. You can write a compelling essay by including examples of how the different stages are manifested in books, television, and maybe even your own experiences. 

Death is often regarded as a part of a so-called “circle of life,” most famously shown through the film, The Lion King . In summary, it explains that life goes on and always ends with death. For an intriguing essay topic, reflect on this phrase and discuss what it means to you in the context of losing a loved one. For example, perhaps keeping this in mind can help you cope with the loss. 

Different cultures have different traditions, affected by geography, religion, and history. Funerals are no exception to this; in your essay, research how different cultures honor their deceased and compare and contrast them. No matter how different they may seem, try finding one or two similarities between your chosen traditions. 

If you’d like to learn more, our writer explains how to write an argumentative essay in this guide.For help picking your next essay topic, check out our 20 engaging essay topics about family .

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Writing about death is one of the hardest, most valuable things journalists do — here’s how to do it correctly. 

Alma matters: journalism resources for professors and students during the covid-19 pandemic.

Welcome to Alma Matters, a regularly updated feature on Poynter.org to assist educators and student media organizations.

Struggling and need advice? Have a tip or tool you want to share with others? Email me at [email protected] .

Reminder: All News University self-directed courses and webinars are free until May 31. Use the discount code 20college100 

One of the toughest rites of passage for young journalists is writing about someone who just died.

For many working journalists, interviewing distraught loved ones and grieving friends is a hard but necessary part of the job — and something we’re used to.

The nation’s student journalists are about to face this nearly alone.

The in-person support network that a college newsroom used to offer is gone, replaced by teleconferencing and texts.

Advisers and experienced student editors should be mindful of their staff members as the death toll for COVID-19 mounts, keeping an eye out not just on deceased community members but the students who are being asked to cover their deaths.

Here are my best tips for dealing with death. I hope you won’t need them.

A hard necessity

First and foremost, understand that writing about a person who has died is important and meaningful. You cannot skip this part of the job because it’s intimidating. Telling stories of people’s lives and deaths is a way that journalism connects humanity, and that’s more important now than ever.

An easy litmus test: Think of someone you truly hold dear, and imagine them dying (unpleasant, I know). Now imagine that a local TV station airs a long story about this person without ever talking to you. How do you feel about being excluded from this process to tell stories and celebrate the life of your loved one? Carry that thinking with you throughout your reporting process. It will help you always do the right thing.

Make a plan

If they haven’t already, student media organizations should get a plan in place. Consider:

• Who will write profiles of the deceased?
• Who will edit and fact-check them?
• Has your staff been briefed on how to deal with grieving sources?
• Will you treat students, faculty, staff, donor and alumni deaths the same or differently?
• Where will these stories reside? Are you creating a special page?
• Who will gather photos and perhaps audio/video?

Interview skillfully

Interviewing the bereaved is hard enough in person, but this time it’s going to be even harder without the body language and potential physical contact you can have with sources.

You should do it anyway.

Arrange a time and place for a phone call, Facetime, Zoom, or Google Hangout, or whatever technology you’re most comfortable with and are assured the other party can use. Encourage your source to pass the phone/device around and talk to as many loved ones as you can if there are multiple people at the home.

Loved ones congregating at one home may not happen now, so be sure to get as many names and numbers as you can from your initial source so you can call other people.

As with most journalism, a richer and more full story emerges as you talk to more people. Do not rely on texts or emails for these stories if at all possible. Really attempt personal connection, even if it’s virtual.

Where to start with sources

A cardinal rule of death writing is that you must talk to the family and friends — you cannot rely on loving social media posts or online funeral home memory books.

The best sources for stories about death are immediate family — spouses, children, parents. Start there and move outward toward siblings, friends, cousins and coworkers.

Call the funeral home. Often there’s a person designated there to be a contact for the family, and the funeral home will let that person know there’s a media inquiry into their loved one’s death. Some funeral homes understand the important role journalism plays in mourning; others don’t. Don’t be intimidated either way.

What to ask

Do research beforehand. Your list of questions should attempt to answer some basic biographical questions: the decedent’s birthplace/hometown, where they grew up, where they moved around to and settled or lived when they died, where they went to high school and/or college, their major, the date they graduated or were set to graduate, where they worked and in what industry, the name of their spouse(s), the year they got married, names and birth years of children. You should also ask about hobbies, interests, extracurriculars or volunteer work. The more questions about their life you have going into an interview, the smoother it will go.

Use other published material and social accounts to fact-check and backup your story.

Don’t forget the pictures

Get photos. Publish several. Write good cutlines on each one.

It’s preferable to ask for family photos than to take them from social media profiles, but you can also ask permission to use social photos. Sharing a photo on social media does not waive ownership, and it’s not an invitation for you to copy and republish it, experts say.

Style and accuracy check

As hard as it is sometimes, we always say that someone died, not that they “passed away” or “passed on.” You can certainly use this language in your questions, but when it comes time to write the story, stick to “died.”

Generally, obits and death stories focus on the positive parts of a person’s life. That’s generally OK.

Bear in mind that a project like this is an important historical work that may be kept in the family for generations to come. Often, this is the single bit of press a person will get in his or her lifetime.

Self-care matters

Despite what we might have heard from older generations of journalists, you shouldn’t tough this out alone. There’s absolutely no shame in having and sharing serious emotions around death, and your experiences as you gather news around that topic. You want to maintain a level of professionalism, but even the pros can become distraught on the job .

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma offers the tip sheet Covering Breaking News: Interviewing Victims and Survivors that’s worth reading in its entirety, and Poynter has this advice for self-care for journalists.

Here are highlights from the Dart Center’s tip sheet:

• Be transparent, calm and soft-spoken.
• Identify who you are, what organization you represent, what will happen with the information you collect from the interview, how it might be used and when it will appear.
• Tell them why you want to talk with them.
• If they are open to an interview, then proceed. If not, then leave your contact information with them and ask them to contact you anytime if they would like to talk.
• If they are not interested in talking, or willing to speak on the record, there will be another opportunity to find another source.
• Don’t patronize.
• Don’t ask “How do you feel?”
• Don’t say “I know how you feel,” or “I totally understand,”  because in most cases nobody truly knows what somebody else is going through.
• “So what you’re saying is…”
• “From what you’re saying, I can see how you would be…”
• “You must be …”
• Give ample time for the interview – you may need more time than you think.
• Record the interviews so you can always go back and listen – in case you missed something in your notes.
• Don’t take things personally. Sometimes sources may be going through interpersonal responses to trauma and may not be showing you signs in the interview of interaction – don’t take this personally, it may be the way they are dealing with the situation.

Don’t bottle up your feelings. Don’t forget that covering a traumatic event can impact you, too. Be sure to find ways to talk about the experience with your friends, family, adviser or editor. They may have covered something similar and/or can just be a listening ear. You should not keep your emotions bottled up; sharing your experience is one way of coping with witnessing and reporting on such a difficult event.

Send me your questions, ideas, solutions and tips. I’ll try to help as much as I can in a future column. Contact me at [email protected] or on Twitter at barbara_allen_

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• Books About Death

10 Touching Short Stories About Death, Grief & Loss

Updated 09/20/2023

Published 02/26/2022

Belinda McLeod, BA in Secondary Education

Contributing writer

Cake values integrity and transparency. We follow a strict editorial process to provide you with the best content possible. We also may earn commission from purchases made through affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more in our affiliate disclosure .

Death often plays an important role in literature. After all, it’s a universal experience and a driving force behind many actions. No one escapes from it, and death represents that vast unknown frontier that we will all one day explore.

Jump ahead to these sections:

Short stories about the death of a friend, short stories about the death of a family member, short stories about the death of a partner or spouse, funny short stories about death, short stories about death and love.

Because of this, most prolific writers eventually examine death as a theme in their work. Here are some short stories about death, grief, and loss written by some of the world’s most famous writers.

Please understand that we will be spoiling the plots of these short stories. If you would rather approach the literature from a fresh point of view, avoid reading the descriptions.

We’ve scoured short story anthologies to look for short stories about death. Please understand that some of these stories may be painful to read if you recently lost a loved one. Just as watching movies about death might be difficult for you, reading some of these stories may be a distressing experience. 

1. “The Death of Ivan Ilych” by Leo Tolstoy

“The Death of Ivan Ilych” examines what it means to live a good life and the inevitability of death. The short story/novella begins with the title character’s death and the reaction of his friends and family to it. 

Then, the plot shifts to 30 years before Ivan’s death and tells the story of the young Ivan – a man with misplaced priorities. A freak accident while hanging up curtains causes Ivan to consider his mortality, and the thoughts of death terrify him. He finally understands that the relationships he formed during his life were artificial. He has an epiphany while on his deathbed, and “in the place of death there was light.” The character then exclaims, “So that’s what it is! . . . What joy!” as he dies with a sigh.

Tolstoy is said to have written this story soon after his conversion to Christianity. He also wrote War and Peace   and Anna Karenina .  

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2. “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane

At the beginning of "The Open Boat,"  four survivors of a shipwreck are in a small dinghy in the middle of the sea. The small crew is in a precarious position because their boat can’t handle the rough waves, and they are forced to work non-stop to stay afloat.

While they have hopeful moments that rescue may be imminent, their struggle continues until they are finally forced into the cold water. Three of the four survive the ordeal.

The themes of this story are that nature is indifferent to the sufferings of man. However, our connections with others help us face the cruel, indifferent nature.

Stephen Crane’s best-known work is The Red Badge of Courage , a short novel that takes place during the American Civil War.

If you recently lost a family member, you may try to overlook the negative aspects of your relationships and the bad memories. However, some of these short stories on our list describe complicated relationships with those who died. Because of that, these stories aren’t for everyone. 

3. “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Ann Porter

Like other stories on our list, the central character in "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" is lying on her deathbed in this story by Katherine Ann Porter. In between moments of confusion and clarity, Granny Weatherall reflects on her current situation as well as her past life. The reader learns that the central character had been jilted at the altar by a man named George, but she later marries and has children with John.

Although it isn’t clear if Granny uncovers any mysteries of life on her deathbed, the reader learns about the role of denial in Granny’s life. Instead of wallowing in despair about lost loves, difficult relationships, and her daughter’s death, she ignores these heartbreaking experiences and moves on with life. 

4. “A Silver Dish” by Saul Bellow

Difficult familial relationships is one theme of "A Silver Dish." At the beginning of this story, the reader learns that Woody, a man in his 60s, has recently lost his father. He reflects on his history with his father and recalls an account when his dad stole a silver dish from Woody’s benefactor, who is paying his way through seminary. The crime forces Woody to leave school.

His reminiscences fast forward to his father’s deathbed when Woody prevents the old man from pulling the feeding tubes out of his arms.

Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. One of his most famous books is The Adventures of Augie March . 

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If you are new to grief from the loss of a spouse , you are probably reeling from your loss. Most grief experts advise widows and widowers to avoid making major decisions until at least a year following their loved one’s death.

Here are some short stories that discuss the death of husbands and wives. We also included the memoir of Joyce Carol Oates on our list.

5. “The Knowers” by Helen Phillips

In "The Knowers," technology exists that allows people to find out the exact date they will die. A wife decides to find out, much to her husband’s chagrin. 

As the couple grows old together, their relationship is enriched and strained by knowing the death date. 

Phillips graduated from Yale and is an associate professor at Brooklyn College. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their children.

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6. A Widow’s Story by Joyce Carol Oates

Please understand that this selection is a memoir instead of a short story. However, we decided to include it on our list because Oates is a highly praised short story writer, and A Widow's Story is her personal account of the loss of her husband of 46 years.

Some people struggle to find their purpose after the death of a spouse . If you face this dilemma, know that you are not alone.

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We apologize if you feel that this category is not appropriate. But, the fact is that people cope with death in different ways. So, here are some stories that present death in a somewhat lighthearted or ironic manner. Of course, our list of funny short stories begins with a little-known piece by Mark Twain.

7. “Is He Dead?” by Mark Twain

This play by Mark Twain was based on a short story the author wrote. In "Is He Dead?" , a French painter stages his death to increase the value of his paintings. He later dresses as a woman to keep his secret from the public.

Mark Twain is a pseudonym for Samuel Clemens. Twain/Clemens wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer  and numerous short stories such as the “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”

8. “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin

Please understand that this isn’t a typical heartbreaking story about losing a spouse. Instead, the main character in "The Story of an Hour" isn’t disappointed when she learns that her husband died in an accident. She reflects on her new freedom and hopes for a long life. However, at the end of the story, the widow sees her husband walk through the door. The woman dies of shock.

Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening , which has been described as a case study of 19th Century feminism.

Are you still trying to find that perfect story about death that describes your experience with loss and grief? We know that many of the stories on our list tell exaggerated accounts and over-the-top plots. Perhaps that’s why these stories are so popular and easy to find.

Here are a few more stories about death and love to consider.

9. “Wild Horses” by Rick Bass

In “Wild Horses,” Karen’s fiance drowns in the Mississippi River the day before their wedding. Karen blames the death on her fiance’s friend Sydney. Sydney, who breaks wild horses for a living, also feels guilt for witnessing the tragedy but failing to save his friend. Sydney attempts to “break” Karen from her grief while struggling with his own. 

Rick Bass is a writer and an environmental activist. He has a Bachelor of Science in Geology with a focus in Wildlife from Utah State University. 

10. “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner

The power of death is the theme for this rather macabre story by William Faulkner. In this "A Rose for Emily," a southern woman lives with her father, who refuses to let her marry anyone beneath her station. When the father dies, Emily refuses to give up his body for burial – insisting that her father wasn’t dead. She finally gives up her dad’s corpse for burial.

Later, a laborer comes into town and is seen spending time with Emily. Emily purchases gifts for the man, who neighbors assume will soon become her husband. However, the man disappears, and a strange smell emanates from the house.

Years later, Emily dies. The townspeople enter her home for services and break down a locked door. There, they discover the decayed corpse of the laborer who had gone missing. Near the corpse was a pillow with the indentation of a head and a long gray hair. 

This story by Faulkner is a popular choice for high school and college reading lists. Faulkner also wrote The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying .

What Does Your Favorite Author Have to Say About Death?

Since death is such a popular subject, consider looking at a list of works by your favorite authors to find a time when they broached the subject. You might also begin your search by finding quotes about death by your favorite writers.

Categories:

You may also like.

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10 of the Best Short Stories about Death

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Death is a common theme in literature, and many of the finest writers of short fiction have explored the fear, event, and aftermath of death using the short-story form. Below, we select and introduce ten of the very best classic short stories which have death as their theme, ranging from the Gothic and macabre through to the realist, naturalist, and modernist modes.

1. Edgar Allan Poe, ‘ The Masque of the Red Death ’.

Among Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous tales, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ is one of the shortest. In just a few pages, Poe paints a powerful picture of a luxurious masked ball, which is then interrupted and ultimately destroyed by the presence of a mysterious figure.

This 1842 story is about a mysterious disease or plague which kills the sufferer within half an hour, causing pain, sudden dizziness, and profuse bleeding. To avoid this terrible pestilence, a wealthy noble named Prince Prospero retreats with his retinue of a thousand of his friends and hangers-on to one of his abbeys.

We discuss this story in more detail in a separate post .

2. Henry James, ‘ The Beast in the Jungle ’.

In this longer tale from 1903 – it’s so long it is sometimes categorised as a ‘novella’ – Henry James uses his interest in delay to explore a friendship between a man and a woman which never turns into a romantic relationship because the man, John Marcher, fears that something terrible is going to befall him. What follows is one of James’s finest stories about death and how irrational fear of death at every turn can prompt us to hide away from living.

His stalwart and patient female companion, May, stands by his side and tries to help him make sense of this mysterious and imprecise threat which he feels hangs over him. Will this ‘beast’ lurking in the jungle of his unconscious ever be unleashed? Perhaps James’s finest example of a subversion of the traditional love story.

3. Kate Chopin, ‘ The Story of an Hour ’.

Some short stories can say all they need to do in just a few pages, and Kate Chopin’s three-page 1894 story ‘The Story of an Hour’ (sometimes known as ‘The Dream of an Hour’) is a classic example. Yet those three pages remain tantalisingly ambiguous, perhaps because so little is said, so much merely hinted at.

Chopin’s short story is, upon closer inspection, a subtle, studied analysis of death, marriage, and personal wishes. The story focuses on an hour in the life of a married woman who has just learnt that her husband has apparently died.

We have analysed this story here.

4. Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘ Markheim ’.

A year before Stevenson completed his short Gothic horror masterpiece, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , he wrote ‘Markheim’ (1885), a short story loosely based on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment , in which the title character murders a shopkeeper and is plagued by a series of ‘visions’ in the wake of this horrific deed. Are these ghostly apparitions, or the pricking of his own conscience? Following Poe and Dickens and others, Stevenson leaves the matter open to question …

5. Anton Chekhov, ‘ The Death of a Government Clerk ’.

This 1883 short story by the Russian master of the form focuses on Ivan Chervyakov, a government official, who sneezes upon one of his superiors while in the theatre. The stress of having committed such a blunder eats away at him and he ends up going home and dying of sheer embarrassment.

6. James Joyce, ‘ The Sisters ’.

The opening story in Joyce’s 1914 collection Dubliners , ‘The Sisters’ is narrated by a young boy whose friendship with a recently deceased Catholic priest, Father Flynn, starts to concern him as the narrator picks up rumours and whispers about the priest’s behaviour and reputation.

Did Flynn do something wrong? Joyce doesn’t tell us – but the boy’s dreams and nightmares suggest that he may have been aware of something improper concerning the priest’s actions but, being only a child at the time, he had repressed it.

7. D. H. Lawrence, ‘ Odour of Chrysanthemums ’.

If Joyce’s story is about the psychological fallout that might follow the death of someone we know, this 1911 story, one of Lawrence’s earliest stories, is about how a young wife gradually begins to fear the worst when her husband doesn’t come home after work one night.

The story focuses on a miner’s wife, Lizzie Bates, living among the mining communities of Nottinghamshire. When Lizzie’s husband doesn’t come home from his work down the mine, she is angry … and then worried. What has happened to him? We follow Elizabeth’s thoughts and fears across the course of one evening as she waits for her husband to return.

8. Katherine Mansfield, ‘ The Daughters of the Late Colonel ’.

Several of Mansfield’s best-known stories focus on death: see ‘The Garden Party’, her 1920 story about a young woman who is greatly shaken by the death of a man from the local village. This 1922 story also takes death as one of its main themes: it focuses on two sisters, whose father has recently died.

It’s largely plotless: the sisters make arrangements for the funeral, recall a visit from their nephew while their father was still alive, and wonder whether to fire their maid. Part of the power of the story is its understated switching between moments of comedy (told in flashback, the moment when their nephew, Cyril, tried to make their irascible and hard-of-hearing father understand what he is saying) and pathos (the two unmarried and middle-aged sisters cut an almost tragic figure). We have analysed this story in more detail here .

9. Zora Neale Hurston, ‘ Sweat ’.

Hurston (1891-1960) is perhaps best-known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God , a classic of African-American literature published in 1937. But she also wrote numerous classic short stories, and ‘Sweat’ is a fine example of her mastery of this short form.

This 1927 story is about an unhappy marriage between Delia Jones and her husband, Sykes, who brings home a rattlesnake one day to taunt his wife (who has an extreme fear of snakes). When the snake bites and kills Sykes himself one night, the story becomes an interesting exploration of death and a put-upon wife’s reaction to the demise of her husband.

10. Ernest Hemingway, ‘ The Snows of Kilimanjaro ’.

This 1936 short story is probably Hemingway’s best-known and most widely studied short story; it is also one of his longest. Originally published in Esquire magazine, the story focuses on a writer, Harry, who has travelled to Africa and is trying to change careers, from writing to painting. However, he fails to treat a wound and gangrene sets in, slowly eating away at him.

This story is about a myriad things, but one of the prominent themes is that of the artist, and how an artist (in this case, a writer) deals with failure, with all of the works that he knows he will never write, and with losing a handle on his craft. Hemingway wrote the story when he had fears about his own writing productivity and the story is, in some respects, autobiographical.

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| The Art of Living for Students of Life

15 Deep Insights about Death to Understand the Meaning of Life & Live Fully Alive

By Kyle Kowalski · 5 Comments

Death is very real in my life right now.

We said goodbye to a family member.

Kitty (yes, Kitty the dog—on the left of the photo) made it to 19 years old. My wife had her since Kitty was 8 weeks old (~7,000 days). And, she’s been a part of my life for the last 11 years (~4,000 days).

Kitty was a constant—we’d often joke that she would live forever. Even though the signs of old age first started appearing a couple years ago, it all still feels very sudden. It seems like we spent more time planning for death than thinking about what life would be like after death moving forward. The house is quiet. Energy is different.

All ends bring new beginnings and opportunities to reflect on life. I’m taking this time to really contemplate death—and therefore life.

While I don’t think it’s possible to fully mentally and emotionally prepare for a loss—the experience is so much deeper than any preparation could prepare you for—I felt called to organize my notes on death for the first time and see if there are themes / insights to help us live now.

Here’s what I discovered about death and the meaning of life.

15 Deep Insights about Death to Understand the Meaning of Life (& 75+ Death Quotes)

1. NATURAL — Death is a natural part of life’s cycle of development.

“ There is a certain limit to the appropriate length of any time in this world. Just as the fruits and vegetables are limited by the seasons of the year, everything should have its beginning, its life, and its ending, after which it should pass away. Wise people willingly submit to this order. ” — Marcus Tullius Cicero

• “ Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.” — Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech
• “ Death is one step in a continuous development. ” — Theodore Parker
• “ If life is good, then death which is the necessary part of life, is good as well. ” — Leo Tolstoy
• “ The more deeply you understand life, the less you grieve over the destruction caused by death. ” — Leo Tolstoy

2. WHOLENESS — The paradox is that death makes life whole.

“In the visible world of nature, a great truth is concealed in plain sight: diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites. They are held together in the paradox of ‘hidden wholeness.’ ” — Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

• “ Death is not the opposite of life.  Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.” — Eckhart Tolle
• “ It is truly a great cosmic paradox that one of the best teachers in all of life turns out to be death. ” — Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul
• “ To decompose is to be recomposed. That’s what nature does. Nature through whom all things happen as they should, and have happened forever in just the same way, and will continue to, one way or another, endlessly.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
• “ What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. ” — Richard Bach

3. SURRENDER & ACCEPTANCE — Surrender to nature, and accept that you just won’t get around to some things.

“Never postpone a good deed which you can do now, because death does not choose whether you have or haven’t done the things you should have done . Death waits for nobody and nothing. It has neither enemies, nor friends.” —Indian Wisdom

• “ All of us are going to go to our deathbeds with some very important parts of us still unexplored. ” — Alain de Botton
• “ If you want to be reborn, let yourself die. If you want to be given everything, give everything up.” — Lao Tzu ( Tao Te Ching , Stephen Mitchell Version)
• “If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you aren’t afraid of dying, there is nothing you can’t achieve. ” — Lao Tzu ( Tao Te Ching , Stephen Mitchell Version)
• “ Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. ” — Lao Tzu ( Tao Te Ching , Stephen Mitchell Version)

4. JUST VISITING — You are just a visitor on Earth.

“Who brought me into this world? According to whose command do I find myself at this exact place, during this particular time? Life is the remembrance of a very short day we spent visiting this world. ” — Blaise Pascal

• “ Remember, you do not live in the world, you only pass through it. ” — Leo Tolstoy
• “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. ” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
• “Regardless of your philosophical beliefs, the fact remains that you were born and you are going to die.  During the time in between, you get to choose whether or not you want to enjoy the experience. ” — Michael Singer

5. LENGTH — A certain amount of life has already passed, and you don’t know how much longer you will get.

“This is our big mistake: to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death. ” — Seneca

• “Any day is a good day for a midlife crisis. After all, you never know when it will be the middle of your life .” — Anonymous
• “ If I die in two seconds, I’m still alive in this one. ” — Ryan Holiday
• “ One day and again, who knows when, all will be over. You won’t be able to change a sentence of the story of your life.” — Gordon Marino, The Existentialist’s Survival Guide
• “ How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!” — Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
• “ Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five. ” — Attributed to Benjamin Franklin
• “Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that  there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return .” — Marcus Aurelius

6. DEPTH — Due to the unknown length of life, your best bet is to live deeply and fully.

“ What is important is not the length of life, but the depth of life. What is most important is not to make life longer, but to take your soul out of time, as every sublime act does. Only then does your life become fulfilled.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

• “ Life is long if you know how to use it. ” — Seneca
• “ If you are living every experience fully, then death doesn’t take anything from you.  There’s nothing to take because you’re already fulfilled.  That’s why the wise being is always ready to die.  It doesn’t make any difference when death comes because their experience is already whole and complete.” — Michael Singer
• “Just as when ample and princely wealth falls to a bad owner it is squandered in a moment, but wealth however modest, if entrusted to a good custodian, increases with use, so our lifetime extends amply if you manage it properly .” — Seneca
• “You’ve lived as a citizen in a great city. Five years or a hundred—what’s the difference? The laws make no distinction. And to be sent away from it, not by a tyrant or a dishonest judge, but by Nature, who first invited you in—why is that so terrible? Like the impresario ringing down the curtain on an actor: ‘But I’ve only gotten through three acts . . . !’ Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine. So make your exit with grace—the same grace shown to you. ” — Marcus Aurelius

7. PURPOSE — Living deeply and fully could simply be called living purposefully.

“Your life may be cut short at any time; therefore, your life should have a deep purpose, a significance that will not depend on whether it is short or long .” — Leo Tolstoy

• “It is bad not to have something for which you are ready to die .” — Leo Tolstoy
• “Everyone has a gift to share with the world, something that both lights you on fire internally and serves the world externally, and this thing— this calling—should be something you pursue until your final breath .” — James Clear
• “ (The Being-Values or B-Values ) are worth living for and dying for.  Contemplating them or fusing with them gives the greatest joy that a human being is capable of.” — Abraham Maslow
• “ No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for. ” — Martin Luther King Jr.

8. KNOW THYSELF — Have awareness of your essence and know yourself.

#1 Regret of the Dying: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” — Bronnie Ware

• “Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to ‘die before you die’ and find that there is no death. ” — Eckhart Tolle
• “ Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. ” — Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
• “It shouldn’t take death to challenge you to live at your highest level. Why wait until everything is taken from you before you learn to dig down deep inside yourself to reach your highest potential?  A wise person affirms, ‘If with one breath all of this can change, then I want to live at the highest level while I’m alive.  I’m going to stop bothering the people I love. I’m going to live life from the deepest part of my being.'” — Michael Singer

9. ART OF LIVING — Awaken the art of living to understand the art of dying (and vice versa).

“ The art of living is based on rhythm — on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death . By acceptance of  all  aspects of life , good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’  metamorphosis .” — Henry Miller

• “ One learns the art of dying by learning the art of living : how to become master of the present moment.” — S. N. Goenka
• “We should get ready for death, because it will come, sooner or later. The best thing to do is to live a good life. If you live a good life, you should not be afraid of death.” — Leo Tolstoy
• “ Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly .” — Marcus Aurelius
• “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived . I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life , to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…” — Henry David Thoreau

10. TODAY — A single day is a fractal version of a full lifetime.

“The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusions in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work. ” — Lao Tzu ( Tao Te Ching , Stephen Mitchell Version)

• “When you have doubts about what to do, just imagine that you might die at the end of that same day , and then all your doubts will disappear , and you will see clearly what your conscience tells you, and what is your true personal wish.” — Leo Tolstoy
• “ One day is equal to every day. ” — Heraclitus
• “ How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. ” — Annie Dillard
• “Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life .” — Seneca
• “ Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.” — Mahatma Gandhi

11. UNBUSYNESS — Busyness is one of the biggest distractions from living.

“ No one will bring back the years; no one will restore you to yourself. Life will follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check its course.  It will cause no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a king’s command or a people’s favour. As it started out on its first day, so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. What will be the outcome?  You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available for that. ” — Seneca

• “ He who hurries has one foot in the grave. ” — Moroccan saying
• “ I worry that I’ll face my death and realize that my life got lost in this frantic flotsam of daily stuff. ” — Brigid Schulte
• “When will we find time to do what we love? When things calm down, when the visitors leave and the trips we have planned are finished … and this busy project is wrapped up and the kids are grown up and we’re retired? Maybe when we’re dead there will be more time. ” — Leo Babauta
• “ Death is nature’s way of telling you to slow down. ” — Anonymous
• “It’s hard to think about the fact that we’re going to die; it’s unpleasant, so we constantly seek ways to distract ourselves from the awareness of our own mortality . Speed, with the sensory rush it gives, is one strategy for distraction.” — Mark Kingwell
• “ It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return.” — Seneca

12. PRESENCE — Life only ever exists in the present moment.

“The longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing.  The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose. ” — Marcus Aurelius

• “ At any time each of the moments of which life consists is dying … that moment will never recur . And yet is not this transitoriness a reminder that challenges us to make the best possible use of each moment of our lives? It certainly is, and hence my imperative:  Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now. ” — Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
• “If you’re reconciled with death or even if you are pretty well assured that you will have a good death, a dignified one, then every single moment of every single day is transformed because the pervasive undercurrent—the fear of death—is removed . . . . I am living an end-life where everything ought to be an end in itself, where I shouldn’t waste any time preparing for the future, or occupying myself with means to later ends.” — Abraham Maslow
• “Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately. ” — Seneca

13. FINAL REVELATIONS — Know that some things won’t be revealed until the verge of death.

“ Many people don’t realize until they are on their deathbed and everything external falls away that no thing ever had anything to do with who they are. In the proximity of death, the whole concept of ownership stands revealed as ultimately meaningless. In the last moments of their life, they then also realize that while they were looking throughout their lives for a more complete sense of self, what they were really looking for, their Being, had actually always already been there, but had been largely obscured by their identification with things, which ultimately means identification with their mind.” — Eckhart Tolle

• “ In our final moments we all realize that relationships are what life is all about. Wisdom is learning that truth sooner rather than later. Don’t wait until you’re on your deathbed to figure out that nothing matters more.” — Rick Warren,  The Purpose Driven Life
• “Doesn’t the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, if at all, only at its end, on the verge of death? And  doesn’t this final meaning, too, depend on whether or not the potential meaning of each single situation has been actualized to the best of the respective individual’s knowledge and belief? ” — Viktor Frankl
• “When there is nothing to identify with anymore, who are you? When forms around you die or death approaches, your sense of Beingness, of I Am, is freed from its entanglement with form: Spirit is released from its imprisonment in matter. You realize your essential identity as formless, as an all­-pervasive Presence, of Being prior to all forms, all identifications. You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. That’s the peace of God.  The ultimate truth of who you are is not in I am this or I am that, but I Am. ” — Eckhart Tolle

14. BEYOND DEATH — Contemplate what may happen after death.

“ The gift we receive on the inner journey is the knowledge that death finally comes to everything—and yet death does not have the final word.  By allowing something to die when its time is due, we create the conditions under which new life can emerge.” — Parker Palmer

• “ The recognition of the impermanence of all forms awakens you to the dimension of the formless within yourself , that which is beyond death. Jesus called it ‘eternal life.’ ” — Eckhart Tolle
• “The more spiritual a life a person leads, the less he is afraid of death. For a spiritual person death means setting the spirit free from the body. Such a person knows that the things with which he lives cannot be destroyed.” — Leo Tolstoy
• “ To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. ” — J.K. Rowling
• “ Death is a liberation of the soul from the material personality in which it existed in this world.” — Leo Tolstoy

15. OVERCOMING FEAR — It is possible to truly overcome the fear of death while you are alive.

“ Learn to live as though you are facing death at all times, and you’ll become bolder and more open.  If you live life fully, you won’t have any last wishes. You will have lived them every moment. Only then will you have fully experienced life and released the part of you that is afraid of living. There is no reason to be afraid of life. And  the fear will fade once you understand that the only thing there is to get from life is the growth that comes from experiencing it.   Life itself is your career, and your interaction with life is your most meaningful relationship.  Everything else you’re doing is just focusing on a tiny subset of life in the attempt to give life some meaning.  What actually gives life meaning is the willingness to live it.  It isn’t any particular event; it’s the willingness to experience life’s events.” — Michael Singer

• “ You should live your life so that you are not afraid of death, and at the same time do not wish to die. ” — Leo Tolstoy
• “ The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” — Attributed to Mark Twain
• “ People living deeply have no fear of death. ” — Anaïs Nin “ The level of fear you feel about death is the level of your understanding of life. ” — Leo Tolstoy
• “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important . Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” — Steve Jobs
• “Modern research suggests that the  transcendent state of consciousness is related to positive mental health —including positive changes in family life, reduced fear of death , better health, and a greater sense of purpose—as well as a motivation for increased altruism and prosocial behaviors.” — Scott Barry Kaufman, Transcend
• “ Less afraid of death as they get closer to it … From the perspective of a young person, such a statement may signal that somebody is not mentally stable, but for the person who has transcended this (life-death) duality, it may sound like wisdom .” — Gerotranscendence

What was most impactful for you? Have any other favorite insights or quotes on death?

Please let me know in the comments.

You May Also Enjoy:

• Write Your Own Eulogy — Then Live Up To It
• Learning to Live before you Die: “On the Shortness of Life” by Seneca (Essay Summary)
• How to Live a Good Life according to “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius (Book Summary)
• A Handbook for Living: “Enchiridion” by Epictetus (Book Summary)
• 25+ Art of Living Quotes to Inspire the Ultimate “Work” of our Lives

About Kyle Kowalski

👋 Hi, I'm Kyle―the human behind Sloww . I'm an ex-marketing executive turned self-education entrepreneur after an existential crisis in 2015. In one sentence: my purpose is synthesizing lifelong learning that catalyzes deeper development . But, I’m not a professor, philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist, scientist, mystic, or guru. I’m an interconnector across all those humans and many more—an "independent, inquiring, interdisciplinary integrator" (in other words, it's just me over here, asking questions, crossing disciplines, and making connections). To keep it simple, you can just call me a "synthesizer." Sloww shares the art of living with students of life . Read my story.

Sloww participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. When you purchase a book through an Amazon link, Sloww earns a small percentage at no additional cost to you. This helps fund the costs to support the site and the ad-free experience.

Reader Interactions

July 12, 2020 at 1:40 PM

Very sorry about the loss of your “kitty”

July 12, 2020 at 5:42 PM

My deepest condolences. It’s heartbreaking when a beloved canine family member dies. May your heart be comforted.

August 4, 2020 at 11:49 PM

Appreciate the support, Jeff!

Thank you, Emily!

February 23, 2023 at 1:14 PM

Michael Keller (Victoria BC) and I are teaching an extended form of the Integral Life Boat experience. This is an amazing and precious resource to deepen our own perspectives. I love your phenomenal capacity to distill knowledge and support it with relevant quotes

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Sheryl Sandberg’s essay on grief is one of the best things I’ve read about marriage

by Amanda Taub

When my closest friend got married a few years ago, I asked her if anything felt different after the ceremony. “Yes,” she said. “Realizing that my best-case scenario is now that I die first.” Her tone was flip, and we both laughed. But there was truth to what she said.

I love my husband so much that I hesitate to write about him — it feels unseemly, like bragging. It is impossibly painful to even imagine life without him: his presence is the source of my greatest joy in life, just as the idea of losing him is one of my worst fears. The best-case scenario is that I die first.

Sheryl Sandberg lost her beloved husband, Dave Goldberg, 30 days ago. To mark that occasion, she has written one of the best essays I have ever read about what it feels like to confront that terrible fear, and to deal with the profound grief that comes from losing someone you love. Her description of her grief since Goldberg’s death feels true not just as a statement of what it is like to lose someone you love, but also what it means to deeply love someone, and the value that our loved ones hold in our lives.

A childhood friend of mine who is now a rabbi recently told me that the most powerful one-line prayer he has ever read is: “Let me not die while I am still alive.” I would have never understood that prayer before losing Dave . Now I do. I think when tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe. Or you can try to find meaning. These past thirty days, I have spent many of my moments lost in that void. And I know that many future moments will be consumed by the vast emptiness as well. But when I can, I want to choose life and meaning.

Strangely enough, the perfect companion piece to Sandberg’s essay is not about loss, but about the joy of having children. Michelle Goldberg (no relation to Dave Goldberg) wrote in New York Magazine last week about what inspired her and her husband to grow their family.

“Not long ago,” she writes , “I learned the Arabic word Ya’aburnee . Literally, ‘you bury me,’ it means wanting to die before a loved one so as not to have to face the world without him or her in it.”

Goldberg realized that those words captured her feelings for her husband, and that having a child would be a way to bring more of him into the world — and a way to hold on to part of him if someday she lost him.

Goldberg and her husband now have two children, and they have enriched her life, she writes, in ways she would never have believed possible. “Before there was one person in the world for whom I would use the word Ya’aburnee , and now there are three.”

Reading Sandberg’s essay with Goldberg’s is a reminder that the pain of loss is a worthwhile price to pay for the joy of love and marriage. Although Sandberg’s husband has died, the life they built together still remains. Her essay closes with a moving promise to support what they built, and the children they had together, even as she mourns him:

I can’t even express the gratitude I feel to my family and friends who have done so much and reassured me that they will continue to be there. In the brutal moments when I am overtaken by the void, when the months and years stretch out in front of me endless and empty, only their faces pull me out of the isolation and fear. My appreciation for them knows no bounds. I was talking to one of these friends about a father-child activity that Dave is not here to do. We came up with a plan to fill in for Dave. I cried to him, “But I want Dave. I want option A.” He put his arm around me and said, “Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of option B.” Dave, to honor your memory and raise your children as they deserve to be raised, I promise to do all I can to kick the shit out of option B. And even though sheloshim has ended, I still mourn for option A. I will always mourn for option A. As Bono sang, “There is no end to grief . . . and there is no end to love.” I love you, Dave.

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Essay on Death

Is it reasonable to be afraid of death and how to treat it.

We shall all  die . I am not trying to be  apocalyptic  or something in my death essay; it is simply a statement of fact. Every  living being dies in the long run; however, there are a lot of possibilities to  postpone death . A man may live 20, 50, 80 or even 100 years; but no man can live, for example, 200 years. Thus,  death  is foreseeable for all of us, and there is nothing we can do about it.

And, perhaps, it is right. For there is some kind of unpleasant  fatalism  in being  indifferent to death ; I feel it as if a man who is really  indifferent to death  will be in the same way quite  indifferent to life . The will to preserve life is embedded in the innermost of our nature, and this, probably, can be compromised by the  absence of fear of death .

Thus, to my mind, we are all  afraid of death  for a good reason, for it helps us  stay alive . Who knows, maybe if we weren’t  afraid to die , we would be all too eager to do it in case of little problems that, normally, are considered to be too petty to be  causing depression .

Now, when we have figured out that it is reasonable to be afraid of death in this essay about death, the question arises how to treat death prudently? Death is a very delicate matter , so delicate that many people consider it to be of poor taste to mention it at all. But it exists and, however unpleasant this idea may be for some people, it is better to look at what you dislike, than to be surprised by it.

What is the  reasonable attitude towards death ? To everyone his own, as wise people say. It is hardly possible to invent a universal formula that would be correct for all people, but some things, I think, remain unchanged. Death is inevitable for all people; in the end, it is always the same, and the way you die doesn’t really matter as long as  you are dead . You have no power over it; yet, you have power over how you spend the entire life before it.

I treat the  inevitability of death  as yet another motivation to try and do as much as possible right now, for I know that the time of my life is limited and, no matter what actually awaits me after death, it would be something entirely different from what I am used to in life. There is no use  thinking about death  all the time; but thinking about the limited nature of time is useful. From this perspective, the only thing every person may try to ensure is not to be ashamed of his life…

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'She wanted to live a good life': Parents of Indian doctor raped and murdered on night shift

The rape and murder of a trainee doctor in India’s Kolkata city earlier this month has sparked massive outrage in the country, with tens of thousands of people protesting on the streets, demanding justice. BBC Hindi spoke to the doctor’s parents who remember their daughter as a clever, young woman who wanted to lead a good life and take care of her family.

All names and details of the family have been removed as Indian laws prohibit identifying a rape victim or her family.

"Please make sure dad takes his medicines on time. Don't worry about me."

This was the last thing the 31-year-old doctor said to her mother, hours before she was brutally assaulted in a hospital where she worked.

“The next day, we tried reaching her but the phone kept ringing," the mother told the BBC at their family home in a narrow alley, a few kilometres from Kolkata.

The same morning, the doctor’s partially-clothed body was discovered in the seminar hall, bearing extensive injuries. A hospital volunteer worker has been arrested in connection with the crime.

The incident has sparked massive outrage across the country, with protests in several major cities. At the weekend, doctors across hospitals in India observed a nation-wide strike called by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), with only emergency services available at major hospitals.

The family say they feel hollowed out by their loss.

“At the age of 62, all my dreams have been shattered," her father told the BBC.

Since their daughter's horrific murder, their house, located in a respectable neighbourhood, has become the focus of intense media scrutiny.

Behind a police barricade stand dozens of journalists and camera crew, hoping to capture the parents in case they step out.

A group of 10 to 15 police officers perpetually stand guard to ensure the cameras do not take photos of the victim's house.

The crime took place on the night of 9 August, when the woman, who was a junior doctor at the city's RG Kar Medical College, had gone to a seminar room to rest after a gruelling 36-hour shift.

Her parents remembered how the young doctor, their only child, was a passionate student who worked extremely hard to become a doctor.

“We come from a lower middle-class background and built everything on our own. When she was little, we struggled financially," said the father, who is a tailor.

The living room where he sat was cluttered with tools from his profession - a sewing machine, spools of thread and a heavy iron. There were scraps of fabrics scattered on the floor.

There were times when the family did not have money to even buy pomegranates, their daughter's favourite fruit, he continued.

"But she could never bring herself to ask for anything for herself."

“People would say, ‘You can’t make your daughter a doctor'. But my daughter proved everyone wrong and got admission in a government-run medical college," he added, breaking down. A relative tried to console him.

The mother recalled how her daughter would write in her diary every night before going to bed.

“She wrote that she wanted to win a gold medal for her medical degree. She wanted to lead a good life and take care of us too,” she said softly.

And she did.

The father, who is a high blood-pressure patient, said their daughter always made sure he took his medicines on time.

“Once I ran out of medicine and thought I’d just buy it the next day. But she found out, and even though it was around 10 or 11pm at night, she said no-one will eat until the medicine is here,” he said.

“That’s how she was - she never let me worry about anything."

Her mother listened intently, her hands repeatedly touching a gold bangle on her wrist - a bangle she had bought with her daughter.

The parents said their daughter’s marriage had almost been finalised. "But she would tell us not to worry and say she would continue to take care of all our expenses even after marriage," the father said.

As he spoke those words, the mother began to weep, her soft sobs echoing in the background.

Occasionally, her eyes would wander to the staircase, leading up to their daughter's room.

The door has remained shut since 10 August and the parents have not set foot there since the news of her death.

They say they still can't believe that something "so barbaric" could happen to their daughter at her workplace.

"The hospital should be a safe place," the father said.

Violence against women is a major issue in India - an average of 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022, according to government data.

The parents said their daughter’s death had brought back memories of a 2012 case when a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern was gang-raped on a moving bus in capital Delhi. Her injuries were fatal.

Following the assault - which made global headlines and led to weeks of protests - India tightened laws against sexual violence.

But reported cases of sexual assault have gone up and access to justice still remains a challenge for women.

Last week, thousands participated in a Reclaim the Night march held in Kolkata to demand safety for women across the country.

The doctor’s case has also put a spotlight on challenges faced by healthcare workers, who have demanded a thorough and impartial investigation into the murder and a federal law to protect them - especially women - at work.

Federal Health Minister JP Nadda has assured doctors that he will bring in strict measures to ensure better safety in their professional environments.

But for the parents of the doctor, it's too little too late.

“We want the harshest punishment for the culprit," the father said.

“Our state, our country and the whole world is asking for justice for our daughter."

Raped Indian doctor's colleague speaks of trauma and pain

Protest at indian railway station over alleged abuse of girls, india gang rape victim's death sparks outrage, the rape victim’s mum fighting for india’s daughters, what do delhi rape hangings mean for women.