Atheists, how do you deal with death of a loved one?

Question

How do you do it? When everyone around you is trying to console you telling you they're in a better place when you know they are not. If i had just lost someone only for the people around me to be telling me that god will take care of everything, i would go insane. In my heart I hate the facts of what I believe but I would rather have it and hate it than not accept it and live a life of a dream world lie. So how do you cope when others find it so easy by knowing god is in their life?

Just a question as to how you accept it overall. If you do believe in god, as much as the fact of them not being there for the rest of your life pertains, you know that someday you will be reunited. So what kind of closure is there for an atheist?

well i highly doubt mourning over a loved one is codependent. It would be heartless to get up and move on as soon as they die.

Answer 1

Mourn, same as everyone. We just accept that a giant invisible man can't do anything special like raise them from the dead or otherwise bring them back.

Answer 2

Well my Dad died this last Saturday and i do not believe in God, he did. How do i deal, well im not completely sure as it is a very new wound. I guess my thoughts have been, "well if there really is a heaven then he is happy and with my other loved ones". I console myself with the fact that even with no afterlife he is better off than he was. He had little to no friends left, he lived with my grandfather and had no job or money. At least Death is a final thing. No more pain, no suffering. Now i just have to sign the papers to allow them to cremate him which is probably the hardest thing i think i have ever had to do. It is so final. When others tell me he is in a better place, i say "yeah he is" we can each decide where that is. In a time like this i am not going to critisize my family for believing in God. There is no reason to argue such a thing at such a sad time.

Answer 3

I mourne. Mourning isn't reserved for the religious. I know that I spent good, quality time with my dad, who died two years ago, and I miss him daily. I don't believe I'll see him again (he was a religious, faithful man, I'm an atheist) but that doesn't make me sad because I don't believe there's an afterlife, so being sad about it would be a waste of time.

I cried... I cried A LOT. I still cry occasionally because my dad and I were close. But dreaming of seeing him again would make me even more sad because I'm not looking forward to dying (leaving my son and husband) just so I can see my dad and other deceased friends again.

Were my son and husband to die, I'd sure as heck WISH there were an afterlife, but believing there isn't one, I'd just be sad... I'd probably have hella bad days thinking of them, but I'd survive somehow.

Knowing there's a god doesn't prevent death or make it any easier to deal with. My mom is in CONSTANT pain and she's a very faithful woman. She's counting the days until she dies so she can be with my dad again. I just can't live my life like that.

Answer 4

This is easy. You don't know they are not in a better place. I am atheist and I entertain the thought that I may be wrong. You are committing the same mistake most religious people make. You are confusing knowledge with belief. Understand, there is one absolute fact about all religions, they are only beliefs. NO ONE knows who is right until the end. So when someone I love dies (and they have) I realize that death and the after life is something that I can do nothing about. So I don't waste my time thinking about it. Instead I remember the person for who they were. If they were happy with their life, I am happy for them because its not what you do after your life is over, its what you do during your life that counts.

Answer 5

Hmmm. Depends. I watched my mother in law get gravely ill, angry about it all, and then sat deathbed watch for two days before she finally passed. For me the closure was her death, because she had said that she'd rather not live if her life was going to be so compromised. The grieving was mainly done earlier.

You tend to block out the well meaning voices and just nod and smile at them; luckily most of her friends knew she was not religious nor were any of her family, so those sentiments were few and far between.

In every case but one, deaths around me have come as the result of long and painful illness. Just knowing they no longer hurt was enough for me.

Otherwise, grieving is the same - you cry, you miss them, you remember the good things and then time heals it all.

Answer 6

Mourn and move on, just like every other loss and disappointment in life. I believe the idea of god, and organized religion in general, is a way of avoiding the responsibility of emotions and rational thought.. if I'm sad, I work to get happy. If someone's dead and they're going into the ground - I think Christians have a difficult time accepting how we "deal" with things because they can't, but for me it's really simple. god isn't going to take care of things, people are. If someone's buried, they rot in the ground, if they're cremated, their ashes stay where they're put, it's really that simple..
don't know what else to tell you.

hope this helps/good luck

Answer 7

I really, really don't mean this to sound as harsh as it's going to...because I've lost quite a few people close to me when I was younger and even 12 years down the road I find myself grieving pretty hard.

But with the way this world is going, just about anything is "a better place". I don't have any religious friends, so I don't get told they're in Heaven or anything.

What I don't like is adults telling little kids lies about death. Or uncertainties. "They went to sleep and never woke up again"? That's kind of mean to tell a little kid, especially if they're already scared of the dark!

Answer 8

comparable as another human and animal, grieve, experience poor, circulate in the process the '5 stages' and at last circulate on and attempt to stay your existence there are a lot atheists who do have self assurance in issues like the afterlife, reincarnation etc its in basic terms god/goddess/writer/greater being, and all of the non secular storys that circulate alongside with all that that an atheist doesnt have self assurance you endure in ideas them, for who they have been, how chuffed you have been with them, etc etc and you hold that i dont see it from now on or much less puzzling than that is for everyone else dying is between the flaws enormously a lot no you are able to nevertheless 'deal' with

Answer 9

I am not really an atheist, but I would like to think that there is a better place. When my parents died I just cried and cried. It is not easy to listen to a lot of religious people telling you that they are in a far better place and that they will be happy forever. Wen someone you love dies there is a huge hole in your life. i was brought up in a religious family but when I married it was to a man who did not believe in God. I gradually came round to his way of thinking, but our children have all been brought up to believe in what they want to believe in.

Answer 10

When they're gone they're gone. What's to understand. We will miss a loved one. We just don't pretend that they're in some fairy-dream world. They are just gone the same way we all will be at some point. Life goes on for the living. A loved one's death is a reminder to get on with life while we have it.

Answer 11

Even when I was a Christian I hated people telling me my loved ones were in a better place. Dead is not a better place. My mother just died in April. She died of cancer. Everyone just said that it was a blessing that she didn't suffer longer. I agreed. She wasn't an atheist, but she wasn't religious, and we had a nice memorial service and her friends spoke and I gave her eulogy. We were there for each other...friends and family. That's what it's all about...the ones that are left.

atheist