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Comment by labrador | Hacker News Reader

I follow author Joyce Carol Oates on Twitter (we're about the same age) and she said something that liberated me. About memoirs she said something like "nobody reads them, not even your own family." I realized that was true because I know someone who wrote one and nobody cared. It freed me up so I could really get the message of Ram Dass in "Becoming Nobody."

I used to work in health care and once there was a patient, and old man, barely alive, groaning and getting ready for hospice. I didn't see any indication, like family pictures, that anyone visited him. The nurse told me "He used to be chief of surgery and head of this hospital." I thought, so this is how it ends for all of us no matter how high and mighty, dying alone, hopefully having made peace with our God.

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I had two related revelations.

First, all my most important pictures have people I care about it in them.

Second, I watched family-in-law going through old family photographs and discarding objectively wonderful but unmarked photos of people that no one could identify anymore, and heavily filtering photos of family members that were identifiable but no one still alive had known.

I had not put two and two together before that point, but even your own great grandchildren will not treasure photos of you and your exploits. And why would they? They are strangers. It is no different with myself and my own great grandparents, even if I wish otherwise.

It reframed the purpose of photography for me. In a sense its whole function is really as a memory aid, to help me recall good times, connect over shared memories, and strengthen my personal bond with friends and family.

I do really hope that “alone” is not the fate for everyone, although I haven’t figured out how that’s supposed to happen in an age where friends and family uproot and spread around the globe like leaves in the breeze.

I might have to reframe my photographic thoughts...

A long time ago (during the film era) I remember taking all kinds of photos on vacation. I would routinely take photos of mountains and rivers and other beautiful landmarks. But in the end, when I would get the batch of photos back from the lab, having people in the image made it more interesting, and people I knew much more so.

I wonder if time will invert things and the interest will revert back to the landmarks.

Personally I'm more interested in pictures of landmarks without people, and that's most of what I take pictures of (although I take some pictures of people as well).

I thought about this too. I am and only child and have no biological children. My stepsons were already 9 and 14 when we got married and they were never close to my parents and neither is my wife.

I will probably make digital copies of the pictures and get rid of most of them. But when I die, I have no allusion that anyone else will care. Honestly, my wife will probably be the last person who cares about my pictures.

May be this is why Bhagwat Gita suggests living like a Yogi. Dispatch all your duties, do everything but never get attached to anything, not even your kids.

नैव किञ्चित्करोमीति युक्तो मन्येत तत्त्ववित् | पश्यञ्शृण्वन्स्पृशञ्जिघ्रन्नश्नन्गच्छन्स्वपञ्श्वसन् ||5.8|| प्रलपन्विसृजन्गृह्ण्न्नुन्मिषन्निमिषन्नपि | इन्द्रियाणीन्द्रियार्थेषु वर्तन्त इति धारयन् ||5.9||

Those steadfast in karm yog, always think, “I am not the doer,” even while engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, moving, sleeping, breathing, speaking, excreting, grasping, and opening or closing the eyes. With the light of divine knowledge, they see that it is only the material senses that are moving amongst their objects.

Ancient Indians divided the life into 4 phases namely Brahmcharya(learning phase), Grihasth(family life), Sanyas(detachment), Vanprasth(leaving for Jungle).Last phase emphasised on living and dying alone in the Jungle away from family and fame. Modern Indians have lost these messages primarily because they have stopped reading.

Any resources (e.g. YouTube videos, books) you can suggest? At a challenging point in life and this resonates.

Winthrop Sargeant's translation of is very accessible: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-Winthrop-Sargeant/dp/93...

I can understand your pain. I too recently lost a loved one who passed away much young. Now I seek refuse in this book. I feel ashamed that I didn't read it despite being a Hindu till I turned 40.

You can refer to the following link. True philosophy begins at shloka number 2.11. However, I will recommend reading from the beginning to understand the context.

https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/

There was a tour of Grant Imahara's workshop two years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28633605

I was struck by how fantastic everything looked, this was what a dream workshop would look like.

However the man behind it was gone and it was inevitable that this amazing workshop would slowly wither away just like everything else.

This was the "best" case scenario - living on in a memory for maybe a few more decades

I did not know Grant Imahara had passed away.

I feel a big hole in my childhood now. May he rest in peace.

Grant is not the only Myth Buster to have died young.

Jessi Combs* also died recently setting a land speed record in a jet car.

* Edit: whoops, thanks for the correction

Jessi Combs not Kari Byron

It was Jessi Combs who died recently, not Kari Byron. There was good documentary on her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessi_Combs

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22687772/

They will read a memoir that you write about them. For instance, if you have a child, write a memoir about his/her childhood years from your perspective.

Thank you for your anecdote. It's interesting and valuable to think about.

What's frustrating to me in my own position in life is this feeling that so much is out of my control. So in a sense it's like seeing others stealing my life from me or some such thing. Through ignorance, or bias, or malice, or whatever the case might be, it's not knowing how to do what you'd like, even when it seems relatively modest.

So this perspective, of "preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life," has started to take on this other perspective. Frankly it makes me a bit angry, to read advice coming from people of relatively good social status, who have the privilege to write a book that garners attention because of their own vocation, to do an interview about their ability to do carpentry in their spare time, to have the resources for it. But what about the individuals shut out of those opportunities, whatever it is they wanted?

I'm not really sure what my underlying point is but the article and your story seem like complements to me, and touch on frustrations I have with society in general, and what I see as lost opportunities for having a life one sees as good. I have mixed feelings about articles like this because they never go further than the personal despair of those experiencing the despair, and not into the deeper issues. If dying peacefully means having a satisfying life, why are we so focused on the pain at the end, and not what gets them there, and what we can do differently?

It seems to me that the pain that accompanies euthanasia, suicide, and natural death are all the same pain at some level. And in all these cases the discussion is focused on that endpoint, not how to prevent it over the long run.

> It seems to me that the pain that accompanies euthanasia, suicide, and natural death are all the same pain at some level. And in all these cases the discussion is focused on that endpoint, not how to prevent it over the long run.

It’s the pain of loss. You can’t prevent loss.

I have a former colleague who published his memoirs after his retirement, which I eagerly read, and I’m glad I did.

Actually made me think random business memoirs could be a rich vein of untapped entertainment/edification.

Memoirs and autobiographies are often good, even when they come from everyday people. In general they are short, quick reads that are highly personal and offers their best stories, jokes, and lessons.

It's hard to explain but this feels like an AI generated comment. Either way I agree with the sentiment, more people should give this kind of non-fiction a try.

In my family we all have read grandpa's memoirs and has been a huge motivation. How much time would one spent to read them? For most of the people less than a weeks social media consumption time. I would write memoirs for myself but life has become easy and safe and busy but not meaningful for anyone in the past and hopefully in the future.

My grandfather wrote an autobiography (for family) and I found it interesting to read.

You have to really work at it to truly die alone. Someone somewhere is going to remember you fondly unless you were a complete asshole. This is often the fate of lifetime narcissists who no longer have the energy or presence of mind to maintain the façade. Even the most vicious of bigots have well-wishers at their funerals. You have to mess up hard to be less liked than a Fred Phelps type.

I make a point of thinking about those people I have known who have died from time to time and offering a prayer for them. The top of the list is a friend who died by suicide in college who it makes me sad to think that he’s mostly forgotten. Not because he was necessarily unique or special in some extraordinary way, but simply because he had once been alive.

I think living a long time can go a long way in increasing levels of 'alone' when you die. Age of death is probably the single most predictive variable for how many people attend a funeral.

Let's discuss someone that lives a long time above the median lifespan. Maybe 95. Almost all of their former classmates, colleagues, siblings, cousins, partners, and peers are either dead or too sick to travel to the hospital/funeral. They've likely had mobility, energy, or cognitive problems that reduced their involvement in the community over the last 15 years. Many people 20 or 30 years younger that they might have mentored, raised, or inspired will have passed. To someone 40 years younger or more they would have always been 'old' in their mind, and generational gaps would conspire to make them further apart socially.

Someone that dies younger than median will often have more hospital visitors and more funeral attendees by the simple fact that more of the people they knew in life are alive and healthy enough to travel.

The most attended funeral I ever went to was for a man who lived to almost 95.

He lived in the same town his whole adult life. Everyone his generation was dead but he had made so many friends, business relationships neighbors and acquaintances over the years it didn't matter. Also helps that he had 9 kids which equates to a lot of grand children and great grand children.

My dad is 95 and this is his experience. We just did a trip to California to visit his college friend; one of only two people from his youth still alive.

Not having kids also produces this dynamic. A childless person is less likely to have strong connections amongst the still-vigorous once they're very old.

Plenty of people don't die of old age or disease in hospitals.

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