I held my 14-year-old dog when he was put to sleep. I wanted him to feel loved until the moment he was gone. Putting my sadness aside so he could truly feel comforted was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.

I’m an orderly in an OR that does organ procurements from donors. The patients are already brain dead or otherwise intubated, but still technically alive. When the doctors open them up and get to where the organs are, there is a brief moment of silence and a prewritten letter in their honor is read aloud. After that they are taken off of life support and the organs are ready to be taken. The most interesting part to me is watching the color fade from their intestines. It’s actually very fast from pink to gray.

I felt the very last heartbeat of my step-father while holding his arm, on his death bed. He died peacefully at 98 years of age.

I witnessed 5 police officers all hit a man on the ground with their tasers. Broad daylight.

Died on the scene of a heart attack. Apparently natural causes. The polices internal investigations found the police did no wrong, imagine that.

Unless you make enough money that you can regularly “donate” to the force, I suggest that you assume they are not there to help you and you protect yourself accordingly

I saw the immediate aftermath. Someone jumped off the 8th floor in an interior atrium after setting off the building fire alarm. I happened to look that way while evacuating and it took a moment to process what I was seeing.

Technically he was probably already dead, but a guy on a bicycle was killed by a van right in front of my house. I heard a crazy noise followed by screaming so I went out to see. The guy was lying still by the side of the road. His bike was mangled about 30’ down the road where it had been dragged in the undercarriage. And his groceries for dinner that night were scattered along the gutter.

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Saw the aftermath of a pretty bad motorcycle accident, with the rider receiving CPR. It was confirmed later by the news that they didn’t make it. I was stuck at a light and able to see the scene for a few solid minutes, but it really didn’t impact me heavily. Honestly it felt even less relevant than footage I’d seen before since I was having to actually drive and my attention couldn’t be put entirely on the accident.

In contrast, I was there for a friend putting their dog down. The amount of emotion everyone was going through was much more pronounced - you could physically feel the sadness around you.

Seeing death always has an uneasy aspect to it, but I think the real impact comes from social ceremony. We choose to feel pain over it as a way to heal, I think.

I was with my mother when she died. If I’d been five minutes quicker, I would have been with my father when he died. In both cases it was expected. There wasn’t anything particular profound about it. Life went on.

I was within 8 meters of someone dying twice, the second time I was less than 2 meters away.

The first was a truck driver with a load of cast iron pipes. Truck was on a slight angle, and when he undid the straps the load fell on him.

Second time was a load of stone going up a scaffold on a hoist, it hadn’t been secured properly and a guy cut through the exclusion zone and this 100kg stone window cill just…yeah. There wasn’t really a lot left of the top third of him.

I’ve had a lot of therapy about these and I still dream about the second one.

Yup, several times. The joys of working in healthcare.

When i worked in a hospital. My mom at home.

Not to be depressing… When i was 5 I sometimes slept in bed next to my mom. Woke up one of those days and she was already in rigor mortis. I touched her and she felt like an uncooked turkey, if that makes any sense. Took me a couple decades before I could actually handle an uncooked turkey or like, be around someone wearing her favorite perfume without almost fainting. Nobody knew exactly what killed her, maybe just sudden death syndrome.

If animals count, when i was about 6 my sister had a horse that slipped on the cement and when it managed to pull itself back up… I don’t think it’s totally accurate, but my memory is that its whole body was raining blood a few feet in front of me. Like I remember my vision being framed by blood dripping like a rainstorm from a cloud. Needless to say, it didn’t survive. I remember my dad using the hose to spray all the blood off the cement. I saw lots of dead pets over the years… Between all the wild animals and the back road that everyone sped on, most pets had short lifespans.

Anyway, I grew up through a lot of other fucked up stuff… And people wonder why I’m weird. And if you don’t want morbid answers, don’t ask morbid questions.

When I was a Boy Scout, one summer at camp, a bad storm had rolled in around 7-8pm. We had just finished dinner and made it back to our campsites when the administration decided to issue the alarm urging scouts to return to the central lodge due to sever weather being reported.

Us and another local scout unit were at a site situated at the top of a very large hill. Like, you’d get off a bike if you had to go up this thing. That kind of hill. As soon as the alarm sounded to get down to the central lodge, we booked it down the hill. As did the other scout unit from our area

A little wet but otherwise fine, all the scouts and staff from the area entered the lodge and sat on the benches. From my perspective, I heard some gasps, a thud, and some screaming for help. I had no idea what was going on initially. Came to find out that the troop leader of the other local scouts had lurched over and fell on the ground, apparently suffering from a heart attack.

All of us scouts, the leaders son included, had to sit there and watch a troop leader and father die before their eyes. It took the ambulance 30 minutes or so to get up to the campsite. The local scout administration performed CPR and did everything they could to keep him alive. He was probably dead soon after hitting the floor of the lodge.

I have never forgotten this and is one of the primary reasons I try to take care of myself. Dude was a large guy but a great leader based on what I saw of him. I felt bad for his troop and his family. I hope that family and troop managed to get closure.

I think the son was getting or had gotten that red arrow sash they give out for something scouts can do. Sorry, it’s been 20-years since I was in scouts.