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 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 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.

My grandmother. She was 96. She saw India’s Independence, and lived through the Bengal famine of 1943. What a life! She died in peace surrounded by family though.

When I was a young teen, I watched my grandparents’ neighbor die of a heart attack in his boat. He leaned over - I thought to get a life jacket or something - and his boat just kept circling backwards. Not much to say. It took the ambulance over an hour to arrive. There was a very small pool of blood, maybe 2-3 inches in diameter, on the floor of the boat.

That’s it. Nothing exciting or traumatic.

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.

Yes, but not a person. I was 14, coming back from school, and I saw a kitten bleed to death. I kept walking on my way to home, but it saw us, and kept following and purring at us, limping in pain, maybe asking for water and aid, after it was probably hit by a car, or bitten and thrown around by dogs. It’s flesh wasn’t gouged or anything, there wasn’t anything gory about it, but it was bleeding profusely. I did nothing, because I wasn’t able to process what happened, and continued my way back home.

Yep. I held my father’s hand when he died. When it was over I hugged him and told him we’d be okay on our own now and that we’d manage.

I was mostly right. Mostly. The waves came and went and I thought I’d be over the worst - but now, a year later I sometimes miss the guy with a pain that feels like it will never end in that moment.

I planted a tree and put a bench under it at the end of a small valley where I now own some meadows and where we used to go together and chop firewood. When it gets too bad I take my dog up there and sit down and tell my dad what’s going on.

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

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.

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 watched my grandfather die when they took him off life support. Also had a cat die in my arms. Cannot recommend either experience.