Witnessing death.

fragmaster09

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i saw a Gerbil die once, it was very old and thin, it was breathing it's last, yawning as it went, i didn't freak out, sat there, at 14 years old, said goodbye, let it go, let out a few tears(pets get so close to your heart), and got on with my life, it was, sad, and i felt kind of sad even now, but there's no use crying over spilled milk
 

Formica Archonis

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Nov 13, 2009
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Xeros said:
Simple question: Have you ever seen someone die with your own eyes?
Yes. Loved one, nonviolently. She was breathing when I took hold of her hand and not breathing when I let go.

Xeros said:
How did you react?
Similar to the deaths of other people very close to me, actually. The changes tended to be further down the road, and not where I expected. It's quite odd when you suddenly have a violently bad reaction to a comment you thought little of before, and don't realize it until you're in the middle of the reaction.
 

ROBOcity123

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Xeros said:
Simple question: Have you ever seen someone die with your own eyes? How did you react?

While walking to my friend's house yesterday morning, I watched a woman get hit by car, fly 10 feet in the air, and slam into the ground. This happened not even 5 feet in front of me, and the piece of her skill with her hair attached to it landed even closer. My friend's and I have made countless jokes, and mockeries on the subject of death. In fact, it was one of the ways I'd coped with the death of my best friend. However, until now, I'd never witnessed death with my own eyes. Surprisingly, and even somewhat worryingly, it didn't phase me one damn bit.
I've witnessed 3 people slowly die and I feel that is much worse. It's like holding a dead flower or watching it wilt to death only obviously much worse. Believe it or not one of the most traumatic death I have ever seen was a kitten . My little sister drowned it in a pond (she was 2) and it just lay there looking lovingly into my eyes and gasping for air, it was really fucked up and that moment lasted forever. Death is beyond terrible, and nothing is worse than cancer.
 

Morkel

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I've witnessed a couple of incidences where a wildebeest and a warthog was killed by a pride and a single lion respectively. And yes, this was in the wild. It was a really weird feeling watching one creature killing another creature in such a brutal way. The wildebeest lived on for about an hour while the lions nibbled at it, but it succumbed eventually. I will probably remember that for the rest of my life. The sound of bone crunching, the wildebeest thrashing in the tall grass, the smell of raw meat and blood followed by the unmistakeable stench of death. The lions growling at each other as they tore pieces of flesh from the still living wildebeest. And the fear of the lions noticing us and diciding to take us as dessert.
 

IceStar100

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Jan 5, 2009
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Xeros said:
Simple question: Have you ever seen someone die with your own eyes? How did you react?

While walking to my friend's house yesterday morning, I watched a woman get hit by car, fly 10 feet in the air, and slam into the ground. This happened not even 5 feet in front of me, and the piece of her skill with her hair attached to it landed even closer. My friend's and I have made countless jokes, and mockeries on the subject of death. In fact, it was one of the ways I'd coped with the death of my best friend. However, until now, I'd never witnessed death with my own eyes. Surprisingly, and even somewhat worryingly, it didn't phase me one damn bit.
Your not odd or anything. Rape victim sometime feel nothing. It could be becuase it out of you care circle or could be you mind trying to stay sane.
 

shwnbob

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I walk to school everyday and have to walk on a narrow street to get to the college so I see a ton of roadkill (the worst being a half crushed cat that was just recently killed.) I've seen two dead bodies (both at funerals.) And my friends tricked me into seeing that video of a politician (I think he was at least) shoot himself in the head on camera. It was...different.
 

Realitycrash

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Car-crash. Two cars doing 40Mph hitting eachother full-frontal. Noone was wearing seatbelts, only one out of four survived. I was six, and me and my dad were on a vacation in Spain. We were wandering along a local road on the way into town.
I still remember their faces..Blue and broken, with blood everywhere. I think it's the cause of my slight autophobia (what, not a correct word for "scared-of-cars"? Well, BITE ME!)
 

LarenzoAOG

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I've seen a few family members die of sickness, and my first dog Felix get put to sleep.
 

GamerPhate

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Xeros said:
Simple question: Have you ever seen someone die with your own eyes? How did you react?

While walking to my friend's house yesterday morning, I watched a woman get hit by car, fly 10 feet in the air, and slam into the ground. This happened not even 5 feet in front of me, and the piece of her skill with her hair attached to it landed even closer. My friend's and I have made countless jokes, and mockeries on the subject of death. In fact, it was one of the ways I'd coped with the death of my best friend. However, until now, I'd never witnessed death with my own eyes. Surprisingly, and even somewhat worryingly, it didn't phase me one damn bit.
Humor is the main way people deal with uncomfortable subjects to ease the pain. As far as not feeling anything, you didn't know the person personally, so there is probably little connection to the importance of this person's life to you. I am fairly sure if it was your mom, the jokes might not come flying as fast. But it is a bit sad these days, we are so desensatized to gore and violence by tv, games, and the internet, that there is a level of detachment.

Somehow I think you told yourself she will just respawn, heh. Woah, that makes me think, do people view other people they interact with that have no outside bearing to the task at hand, such as a cashier or fast food attendant, as NPCs? Unimportant characters that have no real bearing on anything? But once you get to know them outside of their setting and they join your party so to speak, only then do they become signifigant?
 

MorsePacific

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I witnessed a car crash that killed a girl at my high school on impact, but didn't know who was in it or if they had died until a week later.

I kind of didn't react at all. Just took it at face value. Had school been in session I would have been forced to see a counselor, but I don't think it would have done anything.
 

Pig Mazurka

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Mar 28, 2011
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Either one or two years ago (14 at the time) I watched a new born kitten die slowly on my porch. The saddest thing I've seen so far in my life. Probably cried for more than an hour.

If I were in your position I'd probably be frozen on the spot if I saw that happen, and I'd probably go insane afterwards as well. To say the least, my mind wouldn't take it very well.
 

Knusper

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I remember a BBC documentary where they showed a man breathing his last, but other than that, no. When my grandfather died I never saw the body, only the ashes.
 

GamerPhate

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Realitycrash said:
Car-crash. Two cars doing 40Mph hitting eachother full-frontal. Noone was wearing seatbelts, only one out of four survived. I was six, and me and my dad were on a vacation in Spain. We were wandering along a local road on the way into town.
I still remember their faces..Blue and broken, with blood everywhere. I think it's the cause of my slight autophobia (what, not a correct word for "scared-of-cars"? Well, BITE ME!)
Actually, what you are experiencing is likely Post Tramatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to a certain degree. I am not a psychologist, but I study a bit of human thought and processes, but only a doctor can say YES this is what you have. But basically, people that witness or even worse, live through a tramatic experience like that often carry a new sense of perception on the world. It leads to extreme depression, isolationism, and elevated fears about doing things similar to what was witnessed. Sometimes it gets worse, and the only way people are able to deal with it is to develope an obsessive compulsive disorder to decrease the stress of life. It starts out small and simple, some people would maybe never take the highway again for example, or others might have to lock the doors 10 times and check their seatbelt a dozen times throughout the car trip. Others attempt to treat both conditions with self medication, that sometimes is effective, but often leads to more problems if a compulsion about the drug-use becomes evident.

Which brings up another issue close to my heart, public health care. Most Americans have fairly low levels of health compared to the rest of the devloped world. I am not just talking about weight and smoking but particularly mental health. And mental health is just as valid as cancer or other diseases, as you might have something happen to you while you are driving and hit someone, like pass out of have a seizure. But with mental health, you might go out and go on a rampage killing many more people, on purpose! But mental health is a stigma in the workplace and society, and is considered taboo to your medical records to be deemed to have some ailment. But where I am getting with this, is that America spends so much money on "fighting crime" domestically and internationally, that it often forgets to treat the source of the problem. We are very reactive to situations, such as we fix a problem AFTER it has become a disaster, instead of being proactive and stopping the problem from getting worse. But really, we NEED some sort of health care reform before it gets too late.

Last note, I think most people are suffering from some level of sociopathic disorders. Here is wiki's version:

sociopath so·ci·o·path (sô'sç-ə-pâth', -shç-)
n.
A person affected with an antisocial personality disorder.

Most people don't really get along with people if they don't know them. What that means in a liberal way, is that the don't think about the ramifications of their actions to society. And in fact, apathy is making a choice. Doing nothing, is doing something. It was an active choice not to react. But basically not caring through apathy, is similar to not carrying about society by your actions. So in a way, we all need a bit of help.
 

GamerPhate

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Pig Mazurka said:
Either one or two years ago (14 at the time) I watched a new born kitten die slowly on my porch. The saddest thing I've seen so far in my life. Probably cried for more than an hour.

If I were in your position I'd probably be frozen on the spot if I saw that happen, and I'd probably go insane afterwards as well. To say the least, my mind wouldn't take it very well.
I came home one day and found a tiny black and white kitten dead and still in my front yard. I let it stay there for a day to see if anyone would claim it, but I think it ended up being stray. People told me to just dump it into a trash dumpster, but I couldn't do it. I took it to a vet and paid like $30 bucks i think it was to have it cremated and its ashes spread into an animal cemetary. I am also a penny pinching bastard, so this was quite a reach for me. However, it felt like the right thing to do.
 

Electrogecko

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My cat was looking right into my eyes when he went.

I attempted to save a bird that my brother shot with an airsoft gun. It died right there in front of me.

As for humans, no, outside of documentaries, I've never witnessed a death and have only seen a couple of bodies.
 

Jason Danger Keyes

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Mar 4, 2009
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I saw a little kid get hit by a truck in a parking lot. I remember the plummeting in my stomach as he broke away from his mother's grasp at a run. I remember him appearing as if from nowhere from between two parked cars. I remember the sound as the grill of the truck hit him, and again as his head hit the pavement, and then the only thing anyone could hear was his mother screaming.

The driver didn't realize what had happened right away, but when he did I could see that something in him had died that day as well.

I was holding out hope beyond all hope that the kid would be alright, but when the ambulance showed up and didn't rush off, I knew all I needed to know.

To this day I have a mini panic when I see kids running in parking lots, and to an extent even adults. Parents out there: hold on to your kids until you can get them in the car.
 

curty129

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Jul 24, 2009
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I saw (through a gate) a fat child bending over to pick something up, with his head poking out into the road, but as I was walking from a partciular angle, he disappeared from my view for a few seconds and I heard a big "Thump!" as I walked through the gate. He was on his ass and a bit further in the road, wailing like Cartman, and no car in sight. I checked out his face and such, and he didn't have a scratch or dirt mark on him.

That's about as close as I've ever seen death. I'm pratically scarred for life.

Oh, no. I forgot. And now I feel like I dick. I have the image of my brother on his final day of life (He was 13, which to me at the time seemed very old; I was five), and I was pestering him to play "Guess Who?" with me, with my family still around trying to say their goodbyes. I didn't register that he was 'leaving forever', I don't think. And it's the only memory I have of him. So I'm not particularly attached.

The next day, he was on a double bed, dead, and my family started crying, my dad picking me up in his arms. I was baffled for a moment and asked my dad: "Why's everyone crying?" to which he replied something like "Because this is a sad moment.". I was still confused, about to ask "Why?", then I burst into tears too. Later, we had an open casket ceremony where everyone let a fuckton of either black, white, or red balloons into the air. It was a mix of two of those colours. It was very pretty.

I'm not feeling very articulate today :|
 

ButterFunky

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May 12, 2010
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Saw an old man jump off a 40 storey building, landing on a car. I was around 5, at the swimming pool, enjoying my innocent, carefree youth when that happened. Now, because of his death, I lost it. That and I saw my rabbit jump to its death on the same building, landing on a lamppost, we never saw its head.
 

trollnystan

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Dec 27, 2010
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Xeros said:
Simple question: Have you ever seen someone die with your own eyes? How did you react?

While walking to my friend's house yesterday morning, I watched a woman get hit by car, fly 10 feet in the air, and slam into the ground. This happened not even 5 feet in front of me, and the piece of her skill with her hair attached to it landed even closer. My friend's and I have made countless jokes, and mockeries on the subject of death. In fact, it was one of the ways I'd coped with the death of my best friend. However, until now, I'd never witnessed death with my own eyes. Surprisingly, and even somewhat worryingly, it didn't phase me one damn bit.
My grandmother died recently and I was with her when she went. She just fell asleep and never woke up. Other than that I've never experienced death.[footnote]I'm not counting the time the train I was on hit a woman. Never saw a thing.[/footnote]

In your shoes I'd probably be pretty upset, but then I'm very sensitive - too sensitive some say - to things like that. I make jokes about death too but if I saw something like that I would probably go puke in a corner, and have a bit of a cry. Then, after a while, I'd get over it. Like other's have said, you didn't know this woman and everyone has different levels of emotional vulnerability. I do hope you thought for half a second, "Poor woman" though.

EDIT: If we're counting animals, I saw my grandfather's dog kill a white kitten when I was six. I still remember the way it dragged its way over the yard, its back legs limp and red with blood. I cried all day.