HW # 17 - First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit

My grandmother can’t wait to die. She is 90 years old, and she says that every morning when she wakes up, she is so annoyed that her death wish has not been granted. She says she feels extremely angry if she reads in the newspaper about someone young who dies. “That person should have been me,” she thinks. If someone talented dies, she feels particularly frustrated. Michael Jackson’s death upset her because she loved seeing her grandsons dance to “Thriller,” which they did about 10,000 times.

Granny says she has a box of prescription pills that she keeps in case of emergency. The emergency would be the time when her mind goes. The problem is that when that time comes, she will probably be too far gone to remember to take the pills. She is against suicide because “it could get out of hand and become a fad in this crazy culture.” She greatly admires doctors who practice euthanasia though. They are heroes because they help old people who are ready to die no longer be a burden on society by using up oxygen and being a big drain on the health care system.

I asked my grandmother why she isn’t afraid to die. She says that she is hoping that “death will be an awfully great adventure,” which is a line from the book of Peter Pan. She expects to wake up somewhere else that is not heaven or hell but another world. I asked her if this means that she does not believe in heaven or hell. She says that she does not and that the older she gets the more she thinks that religion is something man created to answer questions that can’t be answered and to scare people into behaving better. On the other hand, she still prays out of habit if she is worried, and she believes our spirits go somewhere. She loves the idea of meeting up with spirits of people she liked, but she is terrified of being stuck with spirits of people she did not like even for ashort time.

I told my grandmother that I am afraid of dying. I think it is related to my fear of the dark. I believe that in the dark surprises can happen and they are bound to be bad. I hatethe idea of dying and being in the dark forever. I must believe in a spirit that lives on after the body becomes a lifeless carcass but since I was not really brought up to be religious, my idea of what a spirit does is not clear. I was baptized, but my last memory of church is of finding the giant chocolate Easter egg in a big hunt with a lot of help from my older brother. I saw the new Harry Potter movie and felt terrible when Dobby the elf died. After Dobby’s body went limp in Harry’s arms, Luna, Harry’s friend, closed his eyes. I think it’s terrible that eyes don’t close by themselves at the time of death. If they did, death would be less horrible.