Do you get upset when people die?

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Generally, no.

I must have a personal, close attachment to someone to feel most anything for them. I'm more affected by watching other people grieve...as if I experience the pain vicariously.

I can totally relate Tektek. It's odd really. I once tried to make myself cry when I was fourteen when my grandfather died but I couldn't really manufacture a single tear. And yet how you said..."I remember bawling (tears) that I just wanted my boys back." I know this one too, very intensely. I had my kitty for 17 years, since she was a kitten, and it did take a long time to finally stop grieving.

True Millie, just as valid.. I take forever to process things too, sometimes even years when it's especially difficult or complicated.

I do get upset when people die. I got very upset when my Grandpa died, so much that I had a breakdown in very late September, early October. I also haven't been eating much since my Grandpa died in late July, or at least I haven't been cooking very large dinners. I don't know how long that's going to last. I've also been posting on WrongPlanet a lot more often than I have.

Animals, always. People - it depends on how close I was to them.

When my uncle died, I was straight faced for over 12 hours, and then only broke down and cried a few times, but not for very long. When a granamda died, my dad woke me to share the news, and i rolled back over and went right back to sleep. Her funeral was very upsetting though. More because i'd never see her again. 10 days later, when my other grandma died, I had a very hard time and completely broke down in my bosses office. I was the closest to her though.

Family friends who I have known since I was little, not upsetting. Don't really understand why my mom gets so upset over it, to be honest.

If I'm in an airplane, and the pilot suddenly dies, then I get pretty upset.

At least I assume I would.

I've never had the experience of getting very upset when people died, but I've only known a few people who died, and none of them were close to me. My grandparents are all dead, but people can't be expected to live forever, and I didn't have any special bond with any of them. That probably sounds cold, but how upset am I supposed to get? Two of my grandparents didn't even have funerals, by their own requests. (The others did, but I was either too young or too far away to attend.)

If my husband or children died, that would be very upsetting to me. I can't predict how I'd feel or how I'd react, but they are very important to me, and if any of them died, it would be a major upheaval in my life and in the rest of the family. It's important to me that my children have a chance to experience life. Also, if they die, that would imply a certain amount of suffering on their part, which would be upsetting to me.

Eventually my mother will die, and I'm sure I'll be very sad about that, because she's a wise, interesting person whose company I enjoy.

I have yet to be truly devastated by the death of someone close to me - and for that I consider myself lucky.
I have known a good number of people to die though. I understand death, I understand why people are sad, I am sad too, I just can't get over that hump that makes people cry over it.

My strongest reaction to death is to immediately go to sleep. And I mean immediately. I've fallen where I've stood before, and slept for 12-15 straight hours.

Seems to me, strangely, that deaths I hear about on the news can upset me more than a family member/friend dying. I was really shook emotionally during 9/11. I know a lot of people were, but for me it just got stuck in my head and was too horrible to process. I was finally able to look at the newscasts etc about it this year.

I tend to be really good in emergency situations. I'm always the calm, rational one who can remember and perform all the first aid steps and decide what help is needed and delegate who should do what. It's only hours afterwards that I fall apart.

Weird.

When my mother dies I know I won't feel a thing, but it won't be because I'm abnormal, just the circumstances, the unspeakable facts that change everything.

i too tried to cry at the funeral of my colleague, mentor, and friend... but i could not... i could not show emotion at all and i was attempting to do so for the sake of his family, his partner, and for his son... i felt empty and i think it showed. i could offer no words as i knew that any that i did would not carry the sincerity and empathy that they should have.

...and here's me thinking about what i should and should not be doing and saying; analysing, ruminating, obsessing... where if i was NT i would have been able to show appropriate emotion and to wish condolences as is proper in such a situation... it all seems rather cold and selfish on my part.

:-/

When I was about nine years old my grandpa Louie was dying in his bed at home and all the family gathered round the bed until he expired. I saw him there laboring to die and later when I died I was forced to kiss the corpse.

When I was about seventeen my grandma MeMa died. I didn't see it but I was at a wailing screaming wake and funeral and I was forced to kiss the body. She wasn't there only a made up decaying body. I felt nothing, but I remembered her.

My mother died when I was twenty four years old. I was out of town, but came back quickly for the funeral where like a prop I was to stand with my father and sister greeting well wishers. It was a perfunctory act. I was guilty I was not there for my mother and I did miss her. As was the custom I kissed her, but felt nothing there as she was gone to I know not where but some place nice.

In my 40s and 50s I worked intermittently as a hospice nurse. There were bad agonizing deaths and there was one good peaceful death. The peaceful death calmed. The bad deaths made me nervous so much so that I had anxiety attacks or totally withdrew from the patient and family.

I know death and terminal loneliness is inevitable for everyone. I don't know what it means beyond continuing decay from this life to the next. I remember dead loved ones and even patients I wanted to throw immediately out of my mind.

When it's my time to go I want no hospital, nursing home or hospice. I can see at most one person I totally trust to help me with mundane things I cannot ultimately help myself with like medicines. Other than that I prefer to die utterly alone with my own thoughts and without the humiliation of the presence of strangers.

Same here. People are born. People live. People die. It happens. Get over it.

I often grieve for strangers. People's pets too.

Animals dying worries me more than people dying. Having said that, animals dying does not upset me to the point of wanting to be a vegetarian.

Usually only relatives but not strangers

I'm a vegeterian

Me too. Technically I'm vegan.

In case I was misunderstood, I wasn't putting anyone down for being a vegetarian. I was pointing out that whilst animals dying upsets me, I am still OK with them being killed as a food source.

What people eat is their own business.