One of the more difficult aspects of being an atheist, at least from an outsider’s perspective, is dealing with death. How do we face the end of our own lives? How do we comfort others who have lost a loved one?
Last year, Lori Lipman Brown, the former executive director of the Secular Coalition for America, lost her father Mel. He was a wonderful activist whom I had the pleasure of knowing for several years.
She just published a piece in The Humanist reflecting on his death a year later. It’s beautiful on its own terms, but I wanted to highlight one part of it in particular.
She shares one of the emails she received shortly after he died and it’s such a great example of how we can be a source of comfort for others without using religious platitudes. (follow link for letter text)
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Well now, the TRUTH of the matter is that we are ALL conceived, IF we are lucky we are born alive, we grow up, we age and then we die.
Sadly some will succumb to Illnesses, cancers, accidents, murders, etc, etc, but STILL Death stalks and takes us all eventually.
I HAVE lost ones very very dear to me, grief and grieving ARE a part of the Processes of LIfe and there IS NO escaping them at all.
The living may comfort the living, but those who have/are suffered/suffering from the Loss MUST grieve in their own particular way that is as Individual to them as Day is to night.
" Death is merely like it was before you were conceived, there was NOTHING, you knew NOTHING, You saw NOTHING, you heard nor Felt NOTHING, you WERE NOTHING." -William Anthony, 2020.
Triphid
Level 9
Mar 24, 2021
5
bbyrd009
Level 7
Mar 24, 2021
2
Thanks for the link.
I don't see a link.
freeofgod
Level 8
Mar 24, 2021
3
@freeofgod it’s a disease! Or maybe he is questioning or testing his faith. Kind of the same reason homophobes spend so much time on gay websites and watching gay porn! 
"faith" as a noun, arg
@freeofgod "agnostic" is a term that ppl define differently, i guess? More or less like "God" i guess too. Anyway, point being that "gnostic/agnostic" orig had zero to do with the q of Yah's "existence," which lets admit no one has any "objective evidence" for anyway right
i love God and believe in Him myself, even if we are talking about a diff God than you have likely defined, in order to even ask that q; making you the gnostic, wadr
if you have determined that there is no God, why are you on an agnostic site? One might ask
hope you arent taking this wrong, imo its all in our heads anyway 
@freeofgod well, the "God" i believe in cannot be defined, certainly not the anthropo...personified Olde White Guy with a Long White Beard...actually you would (in a sense) be a better definition than that imo, "...you are Elohim" and all that?
So to be a little clearer, i hate religion as much as you do, maybe more, if that helps any. I "love and believe" but i also "hate and disbelieve" some days, too, usually bc i have once again defined Yah i guess, nothing but grief there imo
notice how the NT is basically a record of the implosion of a theocracy? YHWH (their vowels, more like AEOU to us, translated) is prolly not meant to be the concept that we have been presented, let's say; the Monty Python version i kinda like though
we like to "define" shit, right, and then live or die by that definition?
@freeofgod so fwiw if you were to define your concept of Yah--"God is going to judge me, God is going to send me to heaven/hell" whatever--i could maybe point out the vv that call those into question, if you like; bc that is all bullshit, not in the Bible anywhere
or iow what "god" are you "freeof?" What if He never existed anyway; are you still free of Him? Then that is the God i believe in, which i guess makes no sense huh
I consider myself a realist as much as an atheist. That said, death like life is just part of “the circle of life.” Cannot have one without the other. Comfort? I enjoy and share the memories I have with the person and encourage others to do the same. Celebrate their life, not dwell on their death.
Barnie2years
Level 8
Mar 24, 2021
6
No one here gets out alive.
KKGator
Level 9
Mar 24, 2021
6
@KKGator well, you and all the scientists you care to corral cannot find something like 95% of the universe; we call what we can't find "dark" whatever, "matter" or "energy," but labelling it doesnt mean we know what it is. And the "95%" is kinda being played with some now i guess, but essentially still correct
@KKGator or you might even proceed from "Neither of us were talking about the known or unknown universe." are you sure? Not that im even necessarily disagreeing with you ok, but meaning to point out that your declaration, as put, assumes certainty/knowledge based upon--in this case--your possibly erroneous or incompete definition of "known or unknown universe," which frank is obv a part of eh?
and again i don't mean to imply that you are "wrong" necessarily, but that you have eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge which is after all what most ppl, westerners particularly, tend to do. We reason according to what is now known as the Hegelian dialectic, which implies a winner and a loser, etc, and most of us simply cannot fathom any other way to reason, having been steeped in it from birth; it requires that one become gnostic, too, and saying "i don't know" becomes an admission of ignorance, or less-than?
Nobody lives on except in the memories of those still alive...it's not different in any way for Anyone!
AnneWimsey
Level 9
Mar 24, 2021
8
Now, everyone is on a tree of lineage data filed somewhere. So you will live on the web until the web dies.
@Beowulfsfriend i find that rather depressing & i hope they miss(ed) me
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