nomy
Bluelighter
I was going to add this cheerful question to Treacle's thread about age and dying, but thought it deviated too much.
I was wondering how many of you have faced death, or for whatever reason you thought you were dying. How did you cope, what were your experiences in accepting death.
My experience is mild compared to most, but it was intense enough at the time, and life changing too.
I remember caving in Derbyshire way back before cars were invented....probably. The golden, absolute number one rule is to tell someone where your going, then report back as you return. We did this every time with no problems. So when we entered the final cave, we thought...naaaa, we'll be fine, this is an easy one, we don't need to tell anyone about this one. So of course the inevitable happened. Deep inside the cave at a place aptly called Chaos Cavern, we got well and truly lost. It was a huge chamber with loads of exits, and we just kept going in circles for what seemed hours. Our last torch batteries were fading, we had no food and just ordinary jeans and t-shirts. I remember a feeling of utter terror and panic with the knowledge that eventual death was highly likely as the cold krept in.
Nobody had a clue where we were. There were just two of us not expected back home for another week, and only 15 years old at the time. So there we sat smoking a fag in the increasing dark as our torches slowly faded. The stuff of nightmares really, but it was odd. The panic didn't last long after we accepted we would almost certainly die and was replaced with a bizarre calmness. And impressively we had even worked out how it would be....hypothermia. Probably the best way to go. So there we were, two 15 year old kids actually chatting about how we would take our clothes off to speed the hypothermia up. Which we didn't by the way. We didn't need to, it was too cold
Our torches eventually ran out and it was pitch black. But still no fear. Just more smokes, and more creeping cold. Then we noticed a faint glimmer in the dark, so we blindly ran towards it shouting, thinking it was other people. It wasn't. It was a boarded up exit that turned out to be 3 miles from where we were trying to get out. We had to tear this old door down, but as we came out into the sunlight and lay on the grass, it was a feeling like nothing I've felt since. Just a feeling of how valuable and precious life is, yet the knowledge that death is not so bad when you accept it. A feeling that has never left me. Mind you, the manner of dying is the thing that scares me.
In the grand scheme of things, that experience is mild compared to traumatic injury or illness, but I'm interested in how others cope with the prospect of what is perceived as imminent death.
I was wondering how many of you have faced death, or for whatever reason you thought you were dying. How did you cope, what were your experiences in accepting death.
My experience is mild compared to most, but it was intense enough at the time, and life changing too.
I remember caving in Derbyshire way back before cars were invented....probably. The golden, absolute number one rule is to tell someone where your going, then report back as you return. We did this every time with no problems. So when we entered the final cave, we thought...naaaa, we'll be fine, this is an easy one, we don't need to tell anyone about this one. So of course the inevitable happened. Deep inside the cave at a place aptly called Chaos Cavern, we got well and truly lost. It was a huge chamber with loads of exits, and we just kept going in circles for what seemed hours. Our last torch batteries were fading, we had no food and just ordinary jeans and t-shirts. I remember a feeling of utter terror and panic with the knowledge that eventual death was highly likely as the cold krept in.
Nobody had a clue where we were. There were just two of us not expected back home for another week, and only 15 years old at the time. So there we sat smoking a fag in the increasing dark as our torches slowly faded. The stuff of nightmares really, but it was odd. The panic didn't last long after we accepted we would almost certainly die and was replaced with a bizarre calmness. And impressively we had even worked out how it would be....hypothermia. Probably the best way to go. So there we were, two 15 year old kids actually chatting about how we would take our clothes off to speed the hypothermia up. Which we didn't by the way. We didn't need to, it was too cold
Our torches eventually ran out and it was pitch black. But still no fear. Just more smokes, and more creeping cold. Then we noticed a faint glimmer in the dark, so we blindly ran towards it shouting, thinking it was other people. It wasn't. It was a boarded up exit that turned out to be 3 miles from where we were trying to get out. We had to tear this old door down, but as we came out into the sunlight and lay on the grass, it was a feeling like nothing I've felt since. Just a feeling of how valuable and precious life is, yet the knowledge that death is not so bad when you accept it. A feeling that has never left me. Mind you, the manner of dying is the thing that scares me.
In the grand scheme of things, that experience is mild compared to traumatic injury or illness, but I'm interested in how others cope with the prospect of what is perceived as imminent death.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
