Please don't die on me tonight!!

Nope, not planning on it. Deliberately haven't read what anyone else has posted. Have a more than odd attitude to death. Don't do sympathy (at least not how most people would define it). Bear this in mind when reading the following.

Life is for living. The whole point of living, surely, is to be happy? What's the point of living & being miserable? So some of your friends are dead? So what? Are they gone?

Hell, no! For a start, they still live in your memory. Oblivion is that no one cares when you die. If there are people who will remember me kindly when I am no more, my life wasn't wasted. Even assuming that the atheists/objectivists are right & that there is no afterlife.

Now neither of us believe that, right? So your friends, now on the other side of life, are probably wishing they could give you a quick thump for being an idiot...

Maybe not. Let me go back a bit. "What's the point of being miserable?" Actually, RR, you don't sound miserable & importantly you also don't use the word. Misery is not a pleasant place, but sad? Well sad implies remembrance, I always think, & moreover implies memories of good times (sad = regret, right?). Well, the good times are no more gone than your friends. Just temporarily displaced, if you see what I mean. You'll catch up with 'em sometime! ;)

The "real deal" isn't death. As you've correctly identified, it's how you deal with it. Sadness is natural. It can even be pleasant (sadness & melancholy sort-of go together - both are gentle sorts of emotion). Everyone gotta go. I may be immortal (well, so far anyway...), but no-one else is. So we two must part sometime? It's only a big deal if you think I'm going to Hell & never the twain shall meet again, surely?

Friends, real friends, don't die. It's just that once in everyone's life we are forced to move town. The bummer is that, in those circumstances, the phone lines are always down & the mail always gets redirected to the guy in NY/London with the same name, which makes it kinda hard to keep in touch... Don't even think about e-mail! ;)

The problem here is loss, rather than death. If a ship at sea during a storm loses its anchors, it drifts. Your problem, I think, is that you feel that you're drifting. You're not. You've just lost a couple of anchors. You've still plenty to spare, not least demonstrated by the fact that you can come to Mudchat & talk. What you struggle to realise is that you've lost no anchors at all. Your friends are still there, they still love you; virtues, faults, & all. It's just that it's harder for you (not them) to feel the ties now. They're still there. So are those (friends & ties both) that you can still feel. Be happy for their sakes (all of 'em). Most especially, be happy for your sake!

Chin up, & nils illegitimus carborundum

R