Are you afraid of Death?

there's a poker player who wrote a book "Die with Zero" when i go I wanta have nothing, leave nothing

Ask not if you are afraid of death, ask if you are afraid of life. - KFJ

i guess the older the get the more i don't fear the inevitable.

In this clip, Larry King says that he has "a fear of not existing." I guess that's how I'd put it, too. But I'll add that I don't constantly feel that way. Sometimes I am not afraid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kbBIWnVjpA&t=5m35s

i always think of something i heard michael shermer say (i think he was quoting someone else, but i'm too lazy to look it up): i didn't mind not being alive before i was born, and i doubt i'll mind not being alive once i'm dead.

i don't mind encroaching death & it seems to bother me less and less now that i'm on the back end of my life. i won't claim this is a universal experience, but for me middle age has mostly brought a calm general acceptance of my life and the way things are for me.

i do absolutely worry about being old and broke or old and crazy or old and sick and feeble with no one to help me. that i worry about all the time.

but death doesn't bug me at all.

When it happens, it happens.

Nine months ago I was feeling some chest pains so my wife took me to the hospital. In the emergency room, they were prepping me for an EKG when I passed out, suffering a full-blown heart attack.

They performed CPR on me for 45 minutes, using the defibrillator 9 times. They informed my wife that I probably wasn't going to make it. Even after they finally restarted my heart, they told her my chances were still slim, and if I did wake up, I probably wouldn't be the same guy she knew.

Six days later I woke up in the ICU, wondering what'd happened to me. I had no memories of anything since I'd passed out in the emergency room. No dreams, no white light, nothing. Fortunately, they'd kept my heart beating with CRP the entire time it refused to beat on its own, so there was always blood to my brain, and I suffered no bad effects in that area. But I was sore as hell, feeling like I'd been run over by a truck.

We all wonder what it would be like to die, and my experience made me realize that if they hadn't pulled me back from the brink, just passing out in the emergency room would've been my death experience. Much less momentous than I imagined it would be.

Since then the possibility of my death seems much more real to me, but oddly, I seem to be less afraid of it happening. I now wonder if there's a more painful or troublesome death in my future, from something like cancer or alzheimer's, and if I'm going to wish something else had happened.

Yes, but I don't dwell on it much.