When my father died suddenly six years ago, I wasn't prepared for the waves of grief that washed over me in the aftermath of his death. In the midst of funeral preparations, I waded through decisions over flowers, services and gravestones as though in a fog. It was all I could do to keep it together as we went through the painful process of saying goodbye.

Content warning: There are some potentially disturbing images of dead bodies throughout this story.

Humans spend a lot of their waking hours avoiding thoughts of our inevitable end. That's probably for the best, since dwelling on your death is a morbid exercise. But, it turns out, it's also a very useful thing to think about when trying to figure out your life.

You've seen the headlines: "Dead Man Wakes Up At Own Funeral", or "Woman Startled To Wake Up In Morgue." It always makes it feel like one day you're going to wake up in your worst Kill Bill nightmare, buried alive in a fancy casket. But how often does this actually happen?

A number of unique weather conditions have combined today, resulting in a thunderstorm asthma warning being issued to Melburnians. Factors such as high winds, high pollen counts and impending thunderstorms can lead to potentially fatal symptoms for people with hayfever and allergies. Here's what you need to know, and what you should do if you're at risk.

Approximately one third of adults don't get enough sleep. Meanwhile, science keeps telling us that sleep deprivation has serious consequences for your brain and body. In fact, it might be slowly killing you.

Most of you have probably heard about the the Somerton man before - a corpse discovered propped up against a stone wall at Somerton beach on 1 December 1948 with no identification and the tags on his clothing removed. But did you know there was an eerily similar case in the 1970s?

With a burned body, a glamorous woman, multiple identities and mysterious men in black, the Isdal Woman mystery goes beyond most people's understanding.

Corpse-freezing hasn’t exactly gone mainstream, but most people are now familiar with the concept: you lay out a ton of cash, sign some papers, and spend a couple post-death decades in a cutting-edge meat locker, calmly awaiting the conditions for your eventual revival. Over 300 cold, dead Americans — or dead, cold American brains, depending on which procedure they opted for (whole-body vs. brain-only) — can currently be found in storage facilities across the country. All of them took a gamble — one that was pretty cheap, metaphysically speaking: the worse case scenario here is just continued death.

First of all, don’t believe it couldn’t happen. It could.

Overtoun Bridge in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland was built in 1895 for ease of access to Overtoun house. While it is quite a nice looking bridge, it isn't anything special compared to most historical sites in Scotland... except for the fact that dogs crossing the bridge feel compelled to throw themselves to their inevitable demise.

This phenomenon has been occurring since the 1950s, with the bridge claiming the lives of dogs at an average rate of one per year.

There's a simple explanation for how the Ouija board works: it's not ghosts, but how you feel about them.

Nearly one million people die every year from bacterial infections that cannot be treated with common antibiotics. This is frightening because right now we don’t have any alternatives to these antibiotics. Here are five of the scariest examples in the past five years.

Excess storage of fat is linked to many different chronic diseases. But some areas of fat storage on the body are worse than others.

Many wonder how to talk to someone who is going through a loss, how best to be supportive, and how to properly offer condolences. But when grief hits you, it isn’t only painful, it’s extremely difficult to navigate through a range of new emotions.

Space: the final frontier. At this point it feels inevitable that humans will end up living and travelling in space somehow. One day it might be entirely unremarkable for humans to die in space - but as of 2018 only three people have passed away outside the limits of planet Earth.

What is it you'll regret most about your life when your time is up? Failure to fulfil your duty and obligations? Or the failure to follow your dreams? New research from Cornell University suggests our biggest regrets have nothing to do with our responsibilities in life.

The circumstances surrounding death are always a surprise. Even when it isn't sudden, when it has been expected for weeks - months, even - there is always the shock of absence and loss, and the overwhelming feeling that comes with all of the details that need to be tended to while in the throes of grief.

It's in those moments that people tend to neglect their own well being, as self-care often ends up as a last priority after taking care of children and sorting out funeral arrangements.

Most adults should have a legal will that provides instructions on what should happen to your assets in the event of your death. A will is not just for old people - anyone can suffer an illness or be involved in an accident that leads to their death. And while wills were principally focussed with physical goods, many of us hold valuable digital assets that might become inaccessible when you die. What happens to those?

Sue Matthews' world was shaken when daughter Taylor was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 11. For the next five years, the family of five would be caught in a whirlwind of treatment plans, surgeries, biopsy results and medical terms they couldn't pronounce. Yet while so much was uncertain, Matthews discovered that their day-to-day experience was still in their control.