How to cope with the very moment when death will come for you?

I still have many years left to live and the mere thought of the finality of life leaves me paralyzed and apathetic to the point where I take sick leave from work. This is my curse. When death does come, I guess I will have changed enough emotionally, physiologically and biochemically to simply give up and cease to exist in a spiritual maelstrom of anger and hate.

Another person said it, but I’ll repeat: you don’t know.

People who provide hospice care will tell you that many people have a “good” day right before they die. After weeks or months of decline, they are suddenly lucid and communicative. Families think this is a sign of recovery, but the workers know it’s a sign of the end. The patient is normally gone the next day.

A good friend of mine died of cancer in April. He was diagnosed a bit over a year earlier, and he went through multiple windows of “you’re cancer free!” to “you probably have a month left.” And there were many days the pain was so severe that he wished he would die already.

Six months before he died, he’d tell me, “I think this is it. I don’t think my body can go on.” And then he’d keep going.

If people could tell, I think our culture and our medical systems would look very different.

Pain, fear and suffering is part of life and we are very resilient. What may seem unbearable in the moment will seam like nothing once it's passed. We endure plenty throughout life.

A heart attack is fairly quick. I would much prefer that to a long battle with dementia or certain cancers.

I've wavered between wanting to die in my sleep and not, but as of right now I'm back to wanting to be awake. Death is an experience we only have once. I don't think there will be anything left to remember the experience, but it would be cool to experience it nonetheless. Even things that are painful can be fulfilling experiences, and death is the final one.

But there is no point in worrying about it until it comes knocking. What you can do today is prepare your final will, and make your resuscitation-request known, and opt into donating your organs - but knowing how you'll feel about death once it nears is impossible.

You likely wont know when it is imminent, and you likely wont be able to reach for a gun when it does. Likely hospice workers will do their best yo minimise your suffering for you, so embrace your final moments when they come.

I’m worried I won’t be able to convince the dealers when I’m 88 that I am not a cop.

The idea of killing yourself because you may one day have a heart attack is bonkers but say you have some slow degenerative disease that’s a lot more understandable

I’ve had a NDE, it was calm, peaceful and I felt nothing but a mild sense of awe looking at what seemed to me to be a huge brightly glowing spark/orb that despite being impossibly bright didn’t hurt my eyes

To live is to suffer, you can’t avoid that but I don’t think actually dying is scary maybe if what leads you there is violent or painful that would be but actually crossing over? I don’t think that will be suffering

I'd say just try to make your last thoughts happy ones. Think about a happy memory

I've legitimately almost died twice now in my life and both times were pretty different from each other. The way that I look at it, you can't predict it and you can't control it so you shouldn't worry about it a whole lot.

I mean when, let’s say, I have one day, a week or a month left to live suffering from an illness

The likelihood you'll have any clue your going to die in such a short time as a month is extremely low. You're much more likely going to die in an instant through fatal injury or bodily failure like a heart attack or brain aneurysm. Lets say you live to 85 years old and are finally dying of something entirely predictable for old age like congestive heart failure or late discovered end-stage cancer. You're going to be long past having any energy or ability to do anything about without help.

If you actually get some kind of clear guidance you're going to die from a prolonged (meaning not instant) ordeal, you'll likely be in hospice where they will give you amazing narcotic drugs in whatever massive doses you need so you feel no pain and are simply swimming in dopamine as your body gives out.

The takeaway is, there's no point trying to spend your healthy hours trying to plan for something like this. No plan you can think of will be useful even in the extremely unlikely scenario, the conditions you imagine do happen.