Dealing with Death as an Atheist
By - Alyssa Ahrens
I will never forget the first time I heard my friend was gone. I had gotten a
message on Facebook, and it contained a three word message saying he was
dead. I didn't believe it at first. He was 19. I had just seen him recently,
talked to him, chatted with him. I was sure if I texted him, he would answer
and say it was a mistake. I never recieved a text back.
Of course, this is the first stage of grieving. I was in denial over him being
gone. I refused to believe. Yet, as I moved on to the other stages of grief, I
began to look at my friends still in the denial phase, and had a realization.
My religious friends never moved past the denial stage. They never could
accept that he was gone, and they will always cling to a part of him that,
quite simply, no longer exists.
If you ask a religious person where their lost loved one is, you will be told
she is in heaven. To them, death is not a goodbye, but a temporary
separation. They get comfort from knowing their loved one is still with them,
and there is no need to move past the first stage of grieving, because the
deceased is not truly lost.
For an atheist, death has a much more permanent ring to it. We know there
is no heaven, and we know our loved one is truly gone. While many of us
would love to think we will see our loved one again, and that the dead live in
a paradise free of suffering, we simply cannot believe it. So while your
religious friends pray and sing hymns about heaven, how does an atheist
cope with death?
According to the Kübler-Ross model, there are five stages of grief: denial,
anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Denial
This stage involves the process of learning of the death. Whether seeing it,
getting a phone call, or getting a three-word message, hearing of a death is
always a shock. "This can't be true." "They must have made a mistake." "I
just talked to him last week!" These words and more will be floating through
the mind of a griever in the denial stage. Our brains do not want to
comprehend the tragedy of a loss. As someone who needs evidence, this
stage often lasts up until the wake for me. It is hard to accept the loss of
someone until I see them motionless in the casket.
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