The Personification of Death

It wants what it can't have--Life.

This is a subject that has been talked about before I'm sure. I've done some searches and found people discussing the mythology and stories of "Death" being an actual entity. Of course we've seen it represented in movies, such as Final Destination. My reason for this thread seeks to find actual stories where people knew they were about to die. It is my belief that everyone knows that indeed they will die, however their lives are cut short before they are able to talk and discuss the phenomenon of what is happening to them. Perhaps in a way to silence the witness?

Since you were born, it became jealous of your existence. It looked for an opportunity to smite your being. It hated the joy, the love, the eagerness of you to discover all the positive things in your life. Your friends, your family. It wanted these things for itself, and so waited for the right time to take it all away.

My dad passed away 8 years ago, still have him in my memory. October 4th was his bday, he would have been 63 years old. I still regret the day of not listening to my mom- "your dad is feeling ill, maybe you should call him"

Of course I didn't and brushed it off. I wasn't aware he was that close to death and had no idea he was suffering in anyway. He was an alcoholic and did not take care of himself, and so maybe it is good reason of his death. However what always perplexed me were the stories that some of his friends who were around told me. He was saying some "man" was behind his house and asking him to come outside to the back. I thought this to be odd because it wasn't like my dad to be talking cryptically like this.

I had probed his friends about this account, they weren't able to give any information other than, someone apparently was interested in him journeying to the back of his house out into the field. I do not know if he obliged this "entity's" request or not, although I found it strange because my dad never went into the back of his place of residence. he lived in an "motel" more or less....behind the motel was a shed, and behind the shed was a fence which enclosed a trailer park.

I never knew what was in the shed...perhaps some answers could be found there, however 8 years later might not be able to find much of anything. So who was this person beckoning him to the shed.

My dad was not by himself when he died. he died without warning, passing out in mid sentence......

Do any of the ATS readers out here have similar stories of someone dying with apparent visitation, or warning of their untimely(or timely) demise?

Death simply is, it neither envies or hates us. It has a job to do and does it at its appointed hour. The time is not fixed, its all choice but not just your choice a person on the far side of the world could make a decision that ripples around the world and brings you to your time. Circumstance may allow you to escape it for awhile but eventually it will claim you.

As far as there being a personification I couldn't tell you. What I can tell you is that I have known when members of my family or friends would or would not live through their illness. I have an uncle that says he has saw death at the foot of his bed and while it unnerved him he knew he would have a long life. I watched as another Uncle knew he didnt have long left and tried to tell me something but couldn't. That my Grandma fought it off long enough for her daughter to make the trip to be with her only to let go a half hour later, to everyone's surprise but mine.

reply to post by Jovi1


I thank you for your comments. I was thinking in terms of my being, my love of live and wanting to live. I felt an inverse relationship could also be true. If from the very moment I've existed, something or some force was plotting to take it all away.

reply to post by The Endtime Warrior

Personifying abstract qualities is a common human game, Endtime Warrior.

The ancient gods were simply personifications of human traits and activities: fatherhood, motherhood, art and thought, virginity, lust, hunting, war, wisdom, ecstasy, fertility and so on. And, of course, death. 'He' was known as Hades to the Greeks, Pluto to the Romans.

Artists and poets have always been notorious for personifying abstractions. Homer, in the Iliad, even personifies the hours of the day.

Greek sculptors depicted Victory as a winged goddess. Soviet sculptors personified things like 'Correct Marxist-Leninist Thought Spurring the Workers of the Republic to Greater Productivity.'

Damien Hirst 'personified' the physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living as a stuffed shark in a tank of formaldehyde.

The personification of Death was especially widespread in plague-stricken mediaeval Europe, when people were dropping like flies and nobody knew who would be next.

From that time and place comes the intriguiing conceit of Death and the Maiden. It has inspired thousands of works of art: see here--and remains popular to this day. Schubert wrote a string quartet based on it; Donald Friend, a hugely underrated Australian painter of the 1960s, often returned to the theme. More recently, the Argentinian playwright Ariel Dorfman used the title for a play about political oppression, truth and reconciliation.

It hardly needs saying that death is not a person or supernatural being that is jealous of life--obviously this is not possible, because something has to be alive before it can feel jealousy, so there is nothing to be jealous of. Death is an act, usually though not always involuntary, that our bodies perform.

In a metaphorical sense, though, it's possible to imagine Death as a person. Here's a page of images of Death in art. Enjoy. Not all the images are child-friendly, by the way.

After my wife passed away, one of her sisters was visiting me and told me about their father, who had passed away about three years ago. She said that he was sitting in the living room of his home, and suddenly said "What is Nick doing here?" His wife asked what he was talking about, because Nick (his brother) had died a few years previously. He replied that Nick was outside, in the yard, just standing there. She looked, and there was nothing there, of course, but he repeated it and then said that he had walked off.

Though he was pretty old, and rather frail, his mind was pretty healthy, so if it was dementia, it was a rather isolated case of it. I asked her Mom about it on one of my visits, and she said it had happened, but it was quite a ways in advance of his death (I want to say about a year) and she added that, though she hadn't told anyone about it, right around the same time, she and he were walking to church one morning and she suddenly realized that there was a third person walking with them, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see that it was Nick, she could even describe the clothes that he was wearing, but she said when she turned to look, he was gone.

One bit of Christian thought is that some people have visions of deceased relatives who are seemingly there to help them pass over. If you read some of the books of Elizabeth Kubler Ross, she documents a number of these visions that people experienced and related to her as a hospice caregiver. So it is possible that this man your father spoke of was there to help him, not to hurt him.

reply to post by Astyanax


Thanks for your links and thanks for the disclaimer! My son is nowhere around and some of those pictures are quite morbid indeed! Fascinating stuff to me though. I am fond of that particular type of art. I read about "memento mori" and have heard the phrase before but never understood what it meant. This was the type of input I was looking for thanks again

reply to post by adjensen


I never thought the entity that had been beckoning for my father could have in fact been there to help and not hurt. Its easy to jump to conclusions on things especially when dealing with such an untimely death. Thanks for your comments and reassurance.