Life

The Realities of Dying Alone

This is probably the most serious post I have ever written. You should not treat the content in it lightly. For context, think of how women you casually date love to shame you into committing to them! Some even pull out the big guns and ask you if you aren’t afraid of dying alone. Some women seem to even have a proper routine around that. One painted a drab future of me where I would be rotting in my nice apartment, only to be found when the stench gets noticed by some curious neighbor. That’s what I got for replying, “Nah, I’m good” to replying to some woman’s request of whether I’d like her to be my girlfriend.

The fear of dying alone seems to be rather common among women. This is not that surprising, considering that they need support more than men do. This is not some misogynist statement. All it takes to realize this is watching a woman who tries, on her own, to clumsily move an object you could easily pick up. In my neighborhood I recently saw a strong, empowered woman with a feminist haircut struggle mightily with moving a piece of furniture from her nearby parked car into a building. She looked around, hoping for a chivalrous white knight to help her, but all I could think of was, “You got this, girl!” This was certainly another lesson for that woman that taught her that she is quite helpless. I think that one conclusion women draw from their experience with helplessness is that they will be fine if they have other people around. Sure, you can surround yourself with as many friends and children as you want. Yet, the outcome is that you are likely to die alone anyway.

In society, the topic of death is stigmatized. We are all young, healthy, and forever beautiful, it seems. The fear of death has gotten so rampant that we are wrecking the world economy when a bunch of boomers with preexisting conditions die of a flu-like disease. In the end, you won’t avoid the inevitable. You will die. Let me tell you how this will likely go down for you.

Because we have destroyed the family unit in the West and inter-generational living has completely disappeared, you will, at best, only have your immediate family around you anyway. However, how likely is it that your children will be around and wait for you to die? Have you ever been to a retirement home? Those are truly dreadful places. The typical inhabitant gets a quick visit on Christmas, and maybe one on Easter or their birthday, and that’ll be it. We push our elderly out of sight, out of mind.

If you don’t die of an accident, your death is also likely to be slow and somewhat drawn-out. If you’re very lucky, you may indeed have your spouse sitting next to you and holding your hand for days on end, until you finally pass on. More realistically, though, your dying, married future self may only get a few more frequent visits and your spouse may very well not be in the room when you die.

So, how does it actually work to die in a nursing home? I bet there are plenty of places where one of the third-world immigrant workers who serve shitty ready-made food to the residents simply informs the medical staff if a resident has died overnight. In more humane places, there is staff to physically accompany you during your last few days. I only know of this because my ex-wife did that as a part-time side job during her studies. Officially, I think she was an assistant nurse. Whenever someone at an elderly home was about to near the finish line, they would call her and if she was available, she’d do shifts where she simply sat next to a dying person, holding their hand and trying to comfort them.

Looking back, I think I should have asked her a bit more about this, but from what I gather, she wasn’t the only one doing it, and she normally also had more than one resident to comfort. Some of the stories she told were indeed rather heart-wrenching. Among others, it’s very common that those dying elderly have not had visitors for months. They would also tell her whatever they would have liked to tell to their spouse or children before they pass away, often with tears in their eyes.

What also stuck with me was the desire for any physical contact I was told about. She mentioned that she got training on how to get out someone’s grip in a non-confrontative manner. For context, it sometimes happened that she had to leave the room of one resident to sit next to someone else who was also dying. Then, that person might grab her wrist with all their remaining strength. Using martial arts techniques at that point is not the right way, though. Instead, you’d release the grip while comforting the resident.

She also mentioned that some of the elderly men she comforted broke into tears. When comforting one guy in his mid-80s by taking his hand into both her hands, he started crying and told her that he can’t even remember when the last time was that his wife showed any kind of physical affection. He estimated that it might have been over twenty years.

With many of those deserted elderly, desperation was a constant theme. Some, men and women alike, offered her gifts and money if she stayed for a bit longer. Of course, she was not allowed to engage in such deals. Yet, she was so shaken by some of the encounters that she sometimes put in extra work for free for hours to stay with some dying octogenarian who had nobody else to listen to him or her anymore. Needless to say, this job took quite a toll on her and from what I gathered, turnover was quite high because very few of the young women that were hired for that kind of position could deal with the emotional stress they were exposed to very well.

Most of us will likely end this way, due to how we have re-organized society. We push our elderly out of sight. The way things are going, it’s quite likely that having a young, female student comfort you in your dying days will only be part of the package in better nursing homes. It will be more common that Jamal, in the United States, or Mohammed, in Europe, will haul your stiff, dead body onto a gurney during his morning shift. This is likely to happen regardless of whether you are a single man, married with or without children, or divorced. In your dying days society will care as little about you as it cared when you were alive. However, plenty of your supposed friends as well as relatives will attend your funeral, abusing it as an opportunity for virtue signaling.


Did you enjoy this article? Great! If you want to read more by Aaron, check out his excellent books, the latest of which is Meditation Without Bullshit. Aaron is available for one-on-one consultation sessions if you want honest advice. Lastly, donations for the upkeep of this site are highly appreciated.

9 thoughts on “The Realities of Dying Alone

  1. I guess we’ll need a serious discussion about suicide.
    EXIT here in Switzerland is a step into the right direction, but too tied to medical conditions. If you ask me, committing suicide should be treated in a much more liberal way. There ahoukd be a right to do it. “My body my choice” can be applied here, too. (Disclaimer: I don’t accept this particular argument in defense of abortion, I’m just saying that it goes into the se direction.)

    1. “My body, my choice” makes much more sense as a logical reason for suicide as opposed to the hamstering that underlies the mainstream logic for abortion.

    2. @Neutralrandomthoughts: „If you ask me, committing suicide should be treated in a much more liberal way.“ I whole-heartedly agree. Especially here in Germany. Germans take great issue with personal responsibility and individual freedom. And they love to engage in wimpy (pseudo-) ethics and to butt-lick their authorities. (Das hierzulande herrschende Bettnässer- und Betschwestertum, die hängengebliebene Pfaffenmoral, die Ein-Stück-Weit-Betroffenheit, die Ja-Aber-Mentalität und die Autoritätshörigkeit bilden auf die Dauer ein gar zu enges Koset. Mei, man möcht’ spei’n. [To the non-german speakers: Just me ranting about the kind of retardations that are uniquely german, I fear.])

      At least this ridiculous law criminalizing the “businesslike promotion of suicide“ of 2015 (a great year in german politics indeed) has been done away with recently:

      https://www.focus.de/gesundheit/news/bundesverfassungsgericht-entscheidet-sterbehilfe-paragraph-217-muss-ueberarbeitet-werden_id_11705001.html

      I don’t even wanna know, how many poor souls had to drag on under disgraceful, insufferable conditions and/or to die an unnecessarily painful and miserable death because of this moronic law. And of course, the churches of Germany are bitching about this recent decision.
      By the way: for the first 10 mins of this video the narrator provides an interesting suicide-with-gun-to-the-head simulation (in german) (don’t get me started on the german weapons law):

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnGVu4YA2uw

      One comment nails it: „The intro pretty much describes my pension plan.“ LOL! Yeah, I get the feeling Cem, Ahmad, Ayse, Fatima, Mamadou, Dubaku, Kevin-Dustin and Chantal will most likely not pay my bills once I am old and frail.

  2. I think this hearkens back to your piece about the importance of accepting everything. Truth is, very few people if anyone actually gives a damn about any given person. While Karen’s grandaddy is in the nursing home getting stripped down and hosed every other day in assembly line fashion, for example, she is out doing her civil duty promoting cultural enrichment.

    1. @Pickernanny
      We in good old $haremoney actually have an expression for Karen’s attitude: Fernstenliebe. I think it emerged rather recently in rightwing circles (after our mad queen opened the borders for all the highly esteemed gentlemen from the Levant and Africa ca. 4.5 years ago). Let me try to translate it: There is the word „Nächstenliebe“ (charity/altruism/brotherly love) which consists of „Nächsten“, which could be translated with neighbor or the person closest to one and „Liebe“, i.e. love. (Cf. „Love your neighbor as yourself.“)

      Your „Fernster“ would be your farthest, i.e. some low IQ scumfuck from a third world shit hole that you have nothing in common with and whose interests are opposed to yours. Who only came to Germany to grab some pussy and welfare money. And to pester you with his primitive culture/religion (if he is not busy mugging/stabbing you).

    2. Thank you very much for this important article! There is a lot in it, I will take a while to digest it all. „For context, think of how women you casually date love to shame you into committing to them!“ Coincidently Stardusk and his guest where adressing this very point at his latest podcast (URL with timestamp):

      https://youtu.be/MaYxhRQLgJM?t=2618

      „The fear of dying alone seems to be rather common among women.“ Yet many of them are such nasty, disagreeable cunts, when it would be so easy to keep their man around. (Don’t be a nasty, disagreeable cunt. Should be easy enough.)

      „More realistically, though, your dying, married future self may only get a few more frequent visits and your spouse may very well not be in the room when you die.“ I never thought about it this way, but it seems obvious now that you point it out.

      „What also stuck with me was the desire for any physical contact I was told about.“ LOL, even norm-fags will die as FAs and incels. (SCNR; it is actually too serious a topic for such „egdy“ shitlordery. But there is a sad truth behind it. Death really is the great equalizer even before it arrives.)

      „Yet, she was so shaken by some of the encounters that she sometimes put in extra work for free for hours to stay with some dying octogenarian who had nobody else to listen to him or her anymore.“ One would now think this might have led to some deeper insight within her, to somehow transform her in a positive way. But from what I understand (from former post of yours dealing with your first marriage) she pestered you with the usual BS that females torment their partners with: endless nagging out of petty reasons. Undeserved emotional terrorism.

      „This is likely to happen regardless of whether you are a single man, married with or without children, or divorced.“ With this revelation one of my main reasons (maybe THE main reason) to some day get a wife and children after all seems to go out of the window. Never was very fond of this idea to being with. Now, if a man somehow could get children on his own, raising kids might overall give more than it takes. But to deal with a woman for decades in order to do so is just too much. Again, an excerpt from Stardusk’s latest Podcasts (URL with timestamp):

      https://youtu.be/MaYxhRQLgJM?t=2976

      I also have to think of the poor fuck, who runs this blog: http://marriageispurgatory.blogspot.com/

      This is what he has to say on this topic: „Marriage is the worst decision I have ever made for myself. I’ve had years to sort this out, and I can definitively say that, aside from my son, marriage has provided me nothing I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. More importantly, it has robbed me of nearly everything that made my life worth living, and given me little else than problems in return.“

      Thanks again for this post! The mere act of reading these truths, i.e. of facing them in their written form, brought a certain degree of liberation and relief. But yeah, I have some more introspection and digestion to do.

  3. C’est pourquoi Lao Tse a écrit “Quatre générations sous un même toit.”

    That is why Lao She wrote “Four generations under the same roof”. It becomes a catchy phrase, expressing the deep value that East Asians attribute to union of families.

    1. Well, in Singapore the proportion of Chinese in nursing homes exceeds their proportion in the general population. 96% (according to one paper I found when I did a cursory search) vs 76%. The Malays are known to have stronger family bonds than the Chinese and the nursing home statistics bear this out at least.

Leave a Reply to Cuong Quoc Vu Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.