At some point during childhood, you realize that one day the people around you will no longer be there, and that eventually you won’t either. No one recalls worrying about being born but we do have a lifetime to think about death. Is it destiny or chance? Do we fear it, confront it or rise above it? And just what about it unsettles us so much?

I don’t want to miss out!

Jia Jia: I’m terrified of death. There’s the fear of a painful dying process and then the fear of death itself. Death isn’t scary per se, but I love being a part of the world. No moment’s ever the same. Things big and small are beautiful, and the future is never predictable. I hate missing out on stuff. When you die, the world goes on without you.

Maybe it’s because I’m egotistical

Buffy: When I was a child, I was not afraid of death. I grew up horse riding and would gallop around and take crazy risks, jumping over ditches and hedges on my horse. Whenever I approached a particularly risky situation or was anywhere more remote, I just used to think, “well the worst that could happen is that I could die,” and this thought gave me enormous comfort.

Things have changed. I am now terrified. I wonder if it’s not death itself, but rather the things I want to do and simply the fear of losing life.

I often think of Anne Frank who said something along the lines that she was not afraid of death, but she was afraid of never having been in love.

I think I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid of not having expressed everything that I felt needed to be expressed.

Looking at the evidence, I suppose that my ego is growing and becoming ever more delicate as I get older. As a child, certainly, I was more selfish. But I think my ego was smaller. I had a basic instinctual feeling of being part of life and death, and nothing was ever separated. Now, I feel that even work that I don’t want to do threatens my life. By my life, maybe, I am referring to my ego?

Perhaps, it is just the age of experience as William Blake would term it. Later, I will return to innocence as he suggests. Oh, and also, I am not saying that Anne Frank is a terrible egoist! Just, I wonder if having “dreams” and “hopes” etc., makes it harder to cope with the facts of life and death?

Also, is procrastination an expression of a fear of death?

Serena: Speaking of ego, I want to share a Scientific American article, “Why We Can’t Imagine Death,” that I came across back in 2008: “[My] position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them,” writes Jesse Bering. “According to Anthropologist H. Clark Barrett, comprehending the cessation of the mind, on the other hand, has no survival value and is, in an evolutionary sense, unnecessary.”

If I died tomorrow, I’d be happy about how I have lived. Even though I wouldn’t have cured cancer, what’s important for me is that I’ve in small ways touched the lives of people I cared about.

I also think it’d be hilarious to get all my exes together in one room at my funeral.

Just let go

Persephone: I don’t think I’m scared of death either. I kind of think of it as evaporating into the atmosphere like in Philip Pullman and our atoms being recycled. I suppose I’ve always had the big picture in mind. The “burial shrouds don’t have pockets”/ “nobody will care about this in 100 years time” type of thing.

If I could take any of it with me, I’d probably think differently.

But it’s not like you can convert your millions into cabbages to eat in your afterlife or swap fame for an extra comfy bed (in heaven/ hell/ purgatory/ wherever you go).

So the material stuff isn’t very important. Actually, the more I own, the more stressed I become. I do think though that if you were some sort of artist, you could touch people throughout the ages, and that’s lovely. Money, fame, “success,” status—none of these things really count in the end. Everyone has the same destiny—death. It really is the great equalizer.

There are lots of things I want to do, and lots of things I’m curious about. So I always try to push myself to do new things, go outside of my comfort zone, and live like if I died tomorrow, I’d be content with what I’ve done up until now. And everything would be in order.

I remember Natasha Richardson’s accidental death really bringing home the fragility of life. She went to my school, and she was living a seemingly happy and blessed life. And then puff. Gone in an instant. I knew life was precious before, but somehow that really hit home. Everyone could go just like that in an instant. Very humbling. So I try not to have too much of an ego about things and remember it’s just pretty amazing to be alive.

Not before my time

River: When I was in grade 4, a girl in my class named Laura offered to read my palm. Laura was (is) one of those beautiful girl-next-door types complete with freckled nose, brown braids and a huge dose of confidence. She was popular, and to my meek younger self, Laura was the epitome of cool. So despite my absolute fear of fortune telling activities of all kinds, I tried to be cool about it. We were sitting on our butts on this terrible grey carpet waiting for “music” class to start (the air-quotes should signify how awful we were at violin).

Laura takes my right hand, and she squints at the lines of it before telling me, nonchalantly, that “if you take one path in life, you’ll live to be 30, but if you take another path you’ll live to be 80.”

I used to hide under a blanket in our family room and cry for a year after that because I would count the years until I was 30 and realize that it wasn’t a whole lot of years.

Since then, I’ve lost my dad to cancer and my grandmother (my favorite person in the whole world) to old age. I was there when my dad died at the hospital. It is still a very painful memory, because I am pretty sure he didn’t want to go. My grandmother, on the other hand, was 96, and though she didn’t want to at first, I know she decided to leave on her own terms.

When I turned 30 this year, I found myself reflecting a lot on death. I still wonder whether Laura’s prediction might come true. I didn’t die right when I turned 30 but will it happen before I turn 31? I try to remember that every day could be the end. I’ve taken to never forgetting to tell my boyfriend I love him when we part ways, even when I’m really mad about something.

Am I afraid of death? Not really. I believe (vaguely, very very vaguely) in an afterlife of some kind or at least some ability to stay close to the people we love. But I’m sad at the prospect of missing out on certain experiences.

I want to get married. I want to have children. I want to travel. I want a dog.

I am not afraid of death, but rather that I won’t get enough done before I die.

In any case, providing I’m healthy and happy, I really hope I die at 80 rather than at 30 and that I’ll go the way my grandmother did. Unafraid. Hope, though, is just the bright silver lining around Fear.

It’s not about me but my loved ones

Monica: I used to pray everyday when I was a young child that I would die before my parents—as a world without my parents seemed to have no meaning. But the moment I truly found love—when I met my boyfriend, the fear of death resurfaced. I feel exactly like you expressed, River: “I am not afraid of death, but rather that I won’t get enough done before I die.” I want to live in order to love and be loved by the love I found.

Ahalya: I think the fear of death is something that has started to afflict me recently. As a child, I was mostly fearless about this sort of thing and enviably free of burdens. Now, however, I have so many more anxieties than I used to have.

I guess this is the curse of adulthood and over-thinking (at least it is in my case!).

For example, I used to fly internationally very often and never used to be scared of flying. I did get terribly airsick, but I didn’t have any fear of the plane crashing/death, etc. Nowadays, however, I have acute flying anxiety, and this is certainly linked to fear of death. I think I realize now how many lives would be affected if I died—not to sound egotistical, but it’s true! And I think through those consequences more deeply now than I did as a child, which compounds my feeling of anxiety and panic.

In general, picking up on River and Monica’s comments about losing a loved one and appreciating the person you’re with/ living in the moment, I am definitely in the same boat. When I was 12, on summer vacation and rushing to the airport with my family to catch a flight to India, one of our good friends who saw us off had a sudden heart attack right outside our doorstep. We sent for an ambulance but had to rush off to the airport, since we were running very late. After an agonizingly long flight, we found out that he had died on the way to the hospital. That image still haunts me.

Now that I’m married, I am always gripped by fear that I will lose my husband. I do think you need to appreciate the person you love and live each moment like it’s your last. Sounds very cliched, but I believe in that strongly.

Concluding thoughts

Jia Jia: It seems that the fear of death prompts us to be worried about the future in general. The big “what if” this happens then that happens and then the unthinkable happens.

Is this ultimately about not wanting to lose control? We’re trying to map the future but are freaked out that cause and effect seem to be so erratic.

The rational mind breaks down when logic fails to predict life. Ironically, if I apply too much logic, things become even scarier because death starts to feel like destiny. I sometimes psyche myself out with cosmic karma thinking that if I enjoy things now a lot, I’ll be in for more suffering later to balance things out.

But really, that’s one layer of psychological complication that I don’t need.

Do you fear death?

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By Ahalya, Buffy, Jia Jia, Monica, River, Persephone and Serena
Image of tarot cards by Yoshitaka Amano