Home » Posts tagged 'death' (Page 6)
The fact that
we think we need more stuff
is why we worry.
Question everything you need
as quickly as possible.
In the
nest below my head
is God
chirping away
God says
Our end is in our beginning
Grinning at us from the grave.
The only difference between
cradle and coffin
is size.
Both are boxes for bodies.
You can’t take it with you
so drop it all right now.
Take your bouquet of damp roses
now while you
can still smell them.
Books on death, dying, and funeral customs. Face your fear. These are in no particular order. I’ve read most of them. Some look interesting and I’ll get to. There is enough information here for you to get them from Inter-Library Loan (ILL) if your local library does not have them.
CALL # 611 R6282s.
AUTHOR Roach, Mary.
TITLE Stiff : the curious lives of human cadavers
ISBN/ISSN 0393050939 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN/ISSN 0393324826 (pbk.)
CALL # 393.9 P9772f.
AUTHOR Puckle, Bertram S.
TITLE Funeral customs : their origin and development
ISBN/ISSN 1558887504 :
CALL # 393 M6475f.
AUTHOR Miller, Clarence W.
TITLE The funeral book
ISBN/ISSN 1885003021 (pbk.) :
CALL # 155.937 C69h.
AUTHOR Colgrove, Melba.
TITLE How to survive the loss of a love
ISBN/ISSN 0553077600 (pbk.) :
CALL # 152.4 J279g 2009.
AUTHOR James, John W.
TITLE The grief recovery handbook : the action program for moving
beyond death, divorce, and other losses including health
career, and faith
ISBN/ISSN 0061686077 (pbk.)
ISBN/ISSN 9780061686078 (pbk.)
CALL # 362.14 S92m.
AUTHOR Strong, Maggie.
TITLE Mainstay : for the well spouse of the chronically ill
ISBN/ISSN 0316819239 :
CALL # YA 306.903 M6138t.
AUTHOR Meyers, Karen, 1948-
TITLE The truth about death and dying
ISBN/ISSN 9780816076314 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN/ISSN 0816076316 (hardcover : alk. paper)
CALL # 393.9 M9841m.
AUTHOR Murray, Sarah (Sarah Elizabeth)
TITLE Making an exit : from the magnificent to the macabre-how we
dignify the dead
ISBN/ISSN 9780312533021.
ISBN/ISSN 0312533020.
CALL # 362.1756 H4342.
TITLE A healing touch : true stories of life, death, and hospice
ISBN/ISSN 9780892727513 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN/ISSN 0892727519 (hardcover : alk. paper)
CALL # 616.078 N969h.
AUTHOR Nuland, Sherwin B.
TITLE How we die : reflections on life’s final chapter
ISBN/ISSN 0679414614.
CALL # 155.937 L8499f.
AUTHOR Longaker, Christine.
TITLE Facing death and finding hope : a guide to the emotional and
spiritual care of the dying
ISBN/ISSN 0385483325 (pbk.) :
CALL # 155.937 K95od.
AUTHOR Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth, 1926-2004.
TITLE On death and dying : what the dying have to teach doctors,
nurses, clergy, and their families
ISBN/ISSN 9780684839387 (trade pbk.)
ISBN/ISSN 0684839385 (trade pbk.)
CALL # 344.7304 U78L.
AUTHOR Urofsky, Melvin I.
TITLE Letting go : death, dying, and the law
ISBN/ISSN 0806126353 (pbk.)
ISBN/ISSN 0684193442.
CALL # 155.937 B398i.
AUTHOR Becvar, Dorothy Stroh.
TITLE In the presence of grief : helping family members resolve death,
dying, and bereavement issues
ISBN/ISSN 1572306971 (pbk.)
ISBN/ISSN 1572309377.
CALL # 393 E845.
TITLE Ethnic variations in dying, death, and grief : diversity in
universality
ISBN/ISSN 1560322780 (pbk.)
Greening Death: Reclaiming Burial Practices and Restoring Our Tie to the Earth by Suzanne Kelly
When We Die: The Science, Culture, and Rituals of Death by Cedric Mims
Saying Goodbye Your Way: Planning or Buying a Funeral or Cremation for Yourself or Someone You Love by John F. Llewellyn
Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial by Mark Harris
The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
Dealing Creatively with Death: A Manual of Death Education and Simple Burial by Ernest Morgan
When Death Occurs: A Practical Consumer’s Guide Funerals, Memorials, Burial, Cremation, Body Donation by John Reigle
The Funeral Book: An Insider Reveals How to Save Money and Reduce Stress While Planning a Funeral by William Miller
Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying by Maggie Callanan
One of the most helpful things I learned when my Mom was dying was in the middle of the night.
Normally the nights were uneventful, but this one was a doozy. She was yelling something about the mama and the baby and the man and it didn’t make sense. I have a pretty good ability at being able to understand people who can’t communicate well, but I was at a loss here. I was alone with her, as I was during most of that year she was sick. When her sickness became terminal, we were even more left by ourselves.
She was under the care of hospice by that time, but that didn’t mean they were there. She was at home, not in a facility. A nurse would come by once a day for about twenty minutes. Towards the end a sitter would come for a few hours as well. A social worker would come out maybe once a week and say useless things like “what do you regret not having done with your life?”
The goal I suspect was to figure out if some of these unfulfilled life goals could be completed. In reality the effect was to drive home how much of her life hadn’t been lived.
This night she was wild. I called the number that hospice had given, asking what to do. The nurse decided to send someone out to the house. That was a long wait, alone in the dark with someone who was hysterical and dying. Somehow things seem more intense at night.
When the nurse came, he talked with her and listened to her and he was just as confused by what she was saying as it was. It was as if she was having a waking nightmare. He gave her ativan, which is really valium. That did the trick. He left me with some and told me how to administer them to her when she got to the point that she couldn’t swallow.
We sat and talked for a bit, and I’m grateful that he saw that part of his field of care involved me. Often the caregiver is ignored in favor of the patient. Both have needs. This was a new and strange thing for both of us.
He said this – “People tend to die the way that they live.”
This has stuck with me all this time, nearly 20 years now.
He asked if she smoked cigarettes. Yes. That was what was killing her. She smoked for half her life, and I remember that she lit up a cigarette every twenty minutes. It had become such an addiction that she didn’t want to go to the movies because she couldn’t imagine an hour or so not smoking.
That is an addiction. That is a desperate need to relax using chemicals.
Being terminal is stressful. Dying at 53 is stressful. Having not fulfilled your life goals is stressful.
It would be a miracle if she learned how to deal with her emotions not using chemicals now. So she didn’t. She was on ativan until she died, as a substitute for nicotine.
I find it funny (not funny ha-ha) that she didn’t want to take her pain medicine because she didn’t want to become an addict, not realizing that she already was one. But socially accepted addictions are different, right?
If people tend to die the way they live, how will you die?
More importantly, how will you live, knowing that you will die?
You never know when you are going to die. Until you do. Then you start pulling yourself together. Then you start cleaning up and hunkering down. Then life develops a clarity it never had before.
But you always knew. You always knew that this day would come. This day, the day the doctor told you that you were going to die. How long do you have? Three months? Three weeks? Three years?
Perhaps your first clue that you were mortal came from when your parents died. You were young, just out of college. Or you were middle aged, with children of your own to manage. You didn’t have time then to deal with it, but you did. You somehow managed to work in the extra work that is involved in handling an estate. You just did it, because it had to be done.
Perhaps your second clue came when you found that spot – that spot that made you go to the doctor. You thought it might be cancer, and you started wondering what you were going to do, how you were going to manage. You found out it was something simple – for now. It could be cut out or burned off or you could take a course of medicine and you were done.
But now, now there is no turning back. Now it is for real. You’ve had your second opinion. You’ve had your third opinion. Now you can’t turn away from this because it is in your face and it is holding you hostage and you feel like you can’t breathe.
And all you want to do is live.
But that is all you have done. You’ve had your life to live, and you’ve wasted it. You’ve spent it up. You’ve decorated your house and gone to tea parties and read your books and that is it. What have you done that made a difference? What have you done that has made the world better? What change have you made? Who will remember you when you were gone? Whose life was made better because of you?
Have you spent your life for yourself, or for others? Have you been true to the person you were born to be? Have you really lived, I mean really?
Because there is a difference between being alive, and living.
You say you don’t have time, but that is all you have had. Too late now to cry about it. Too late now to feel cheated. The only person who has cheated you is yourself.
Wait. Here is a reprieve. They were wrong. For now. What will you do? Back to the same old habits?
Start, right where you are. Begin. Begin again. Renew. Revive. Reassess. Strip down everything to the bare bones. Look at now, and the future.
Where do you want to be? Start heading there.
Life is short. Death is coming. Be mindful. Be awake. Be alive, really alive. Live every day with intention and meaning. Leave nothing undone. Enjoy your food and your friendships. Work on that project you’ve been putting off. Make peace.
Because one day, there won’t be a tomorrow.
Instead of this filling you with fear, let it add savor to your life. Make it add meaning. Aim for your goals.
There is a memorial garden in my town. It isn’t a cemetery, oh no. Nothing that gauche. There aren’t even gravestones. There are little metal vases to hold bouquets of fake flowers. So there is to the eye a field of flowers. Perhaps you have such a place too and haven’t even thought about it.
Have you noticed that people don’t die anymore? They “pass on” or “transition” or are “fallen” if they are military. Even more euphemistically we might say they have “kicked the bucket” or “bought the farm”.
Why have we sanitized death? It isn’t a reality anymore. We no longer think about it in a real way. We no longer see it. We are divorced from it.
Our family members die in hospitals, alone or with strangers. They no longer or rarely die at home if it is an expected death. Their bodies are taken away by other strangers, who wash them and clothe them and lay them out. They put makeup on them so they look “natural”, because it is important for us to have a good memory of death. They look peaceful, because that is what we want to think of when we think of death.
We’ve done the same with birth. It is far more common these days for a woman to give birth in a hospital than at home. This wasn’t always the way. Birth is now treated as a medical condition rather than a life event. Women are treated as passive observers and no longer participants in this experience. It is something that happens to them rather than something they participate in. Sure, there are some home births and some midwives, but they are seen as the exception rather than the rule.
Ignorance causes pain. The more you know about something the easier it is to deal with. The more we ignore our own reality of birth and death, the more anxiety we feel.
I am for everyone breaking the taboo about talking about important life events, and for being aware of the lies we tell ourselves.
I wonder what it is about the English language that we can’t bother to
actually say what we mean. When we go to the bathroom we more often use the toilet than the tub. It isn’t a bath that we need.
I’d never thought about it until I went to England and asked where the bathroom was. The clerk looked at me funny and said they call it the toilet. I winced. “Toilet” sounds dirty, vulgar. It is accurate, but so gauche. But he had a point. We do this all the time.
We have “correctional centers” instead of prisons.
We have “medical centers” instead of hospitals.
Newspeak is here, right now. We don’t even fight it. It is time to notice how we are lying to ourselves.
Originally posted on FB on 12-23-12
When you swallow something that isn’t good for you, your body has a way of dealing with it. Say it is spoiled milk or meat. You may notice that it isn’t quite right when you eat it, and spit it out. Or, it may be mixed up with other things and you don’t figure out early enough that it is a bit off. Fortunately your body knows better and will end up getting that out of you pretty fast one way or another. Generally you will throw it up, and while the throwing up part never feels good, you invariably feel so much better once you have gotten it over with.
So why do we suppress our emotions? When we take in something bad, something difficult to process, why do we in our society do our darnedest to not cry or yell? These are ways of getting out the bad emotions. I’m not saying that it is a good idea to fake being happy all the time – that too can cause problems. In fact, that is part of the problem. We need to experience all emotions, but we also need to know how to deal with the ones that overwhelm us.
It is OK to cry. It isn’t a sign of weakness. It doesn’t lessen your status as a “man” or as an “adult”. It is OK to yell and scream sometimes. I’ve read several books on grief recently and they all say that loudly expressing your grief is really healthy and helps you start to heal faster. Holding it in is exactly like holding in that spoiled milk or meat – you’ll just feel sicker.
I didn’t fully process my parent’s death when they died 6 weeks apart when I was 25. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t feel that I had time to. I had to handle the estate and then take care of myself. I had to get a full-time job. I had to take care of an old, rambling house. I had to figure out how to sell off my father’s car that he just bought. I didn’t have much help from my family on these matters. My aunt gave some money to tide me through for a bit. My brother was less than helpful, and in fact made the situation worse. My priest performed the funeral service, but didn’t tell me anything about grief. The hospice workers also didn’t prepare me. I didn’t know how to handle the pain, and the only model I had was how my family had handled everything big in the past. Sadly, that model was to just endure it quietly. My friends also abandoned me, one even saying that she didn’t know how to help me now – so she just left. This was common. Nobody called, and nobody came by. So my grief was multiplied- my parents had died, and it seemed like my friendships had died as well. Two years later I ended up in the mental hospital because of my grief and inability to process it.
When you are grieving, everything seems far away and not connected. It is as if you are looking at your life from far within yourself, and hearing everything as if it is through a paper tube. There is a lot of distance, both physically and psychologically. You may feel like you are walking through quicksand or molasses. Everything goes very slowly. It is hard to take care of everyday tasks, and so it is almost impossible to take care of unusual tasks like tending to your soul’s needs.
Grief isn’t just over a physical death. You can grieve over any loss or change. Changing a job, whether voluntarily or involuntarily can bring on grief. Divorce, whether you wanted it or not can do the same. Any change – moving to a different town or a house, having a baby, getting a new health diagnosis, can cause big emotions. It is important to recognize this and process this.
Bottle these feelings up and it is the same as swallowing your own sickness. It will only make you feel worse. Get it out! Yell, cry, wail. Complain to a trusted friend who can handle it. Seek therapy. I’ve heard something I like that I’ll share with you. There is a Jewish saying that it is important to have friends, and if you don’t have friends, it is OK to buy them – and this is the source of why it is OK to have a therapist. A therapist or a counselor is a paid friend.
So, my suggestion to you is to first recognize you are sick with grief and pain from a loss, and then to get it out. Don’t bottle it in. Crying is excellent medicine. If you don’t start to feel like your regular self in about a month, or if your grief is just too much for you, please seek professional help. Seeking this help isn’t a sign of weakness – to NOT seek help is. Self-medicating also isn’t the answer – it just puts a Band-Aid over a severed artery.
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betsybeadhead 