- Beth treated everyone who worked at the hospital with an equal amount of respect no matter the task s/he performed in treating her husband.
- Beth also made the effort to get to know the people who were caring for her husband, asking about their own lives and families in order to build stronger relationships.
- Beth questioned everytihg the doctors had to say about her husband's terrible illness.
- Beth displayed her husband's artwork and pictures of him and the family in an attempt to make people aware of the individual man that he was -- an artist.
- Beth rejected the option of having hospice care for her husband and chose to look after him herself with the help of her younger son Evan.
- Because she knew what a close relationship her older son had with his dad, Beth shielded him from her husband's deterioration in the last two weeks of his life.
- Beth said that there was "an indescribable stillness" at the moment of her husband's death. It was almost as if time stood still.
- Beth did not cry right away and mentioned that she had the realization that we would all die.
I can relate Beth's experience of time standing still when situations of monumental importance occur. When my soccer team went to France to play in the Nation's Cup, we played against the Ukraine in our second game of the tournament. In front of 30,000people I nutmegged one player en route to delivering a through-ball to my forward, who scored easily. Immediately after seeing the ball hit the back of the net, I did a front flip, and time seemed to be suspended while I was in the air. I remember wondering when I was going to come down. I believe that the silence Beth experienced was a way of acknowledging and honoring the moment of her husband's death that would have been quite different if she had been hysterical or crying profusely.
I can certainly relate to Beth's experience in getting to know all the people who were caring for her husband so that she could be confident that he would be treated well. On a much less of an important scale, when my mom and I shop at Dean & Deluca, which is near her office, we have made it a point to build great relationships with the people who work there, always asking about their lives and keeping them up to date with the most interesting stories we have to offer. As a result,we receive numerous amounts of free food. Others stores that I have built similar relationships with include Jamba Juice, City Bakery, and the Adidas store near the Broadway/Lafayette subway. This is not to say that I think it is a good thing to form good relationships with people only to get something from them. Having good realtionships with the people around you is good in and of itself. Good relationships create harmony in the world, and I am certain that for Beth the atmosphere of harmony that she created with the people at the hospital made life more pleasant for everyone and took away some of the stress of a very stressful time.
Further Thoughts
When she first began her talk I wondered whether she had any feelings of regret about speaking to our class about such a painful experience. I was thinking that in her place I wouldn't have wanted to be so open about such a personal time with a room full of strangers. By the end of her talk though, I think I had some insight into why she wanted to share what had happened with us. None of us want to think about death, so most of the time when it comes, we aren't prepared for it. She was actually giving us some preparation in a positive way by making death real for us and telling us how she was able to make this time as bearable as possible for her husband, her family, and herself. I could picture all the photos and his artwork in her husband's room. Not only did they show the person that her husband was and make the room warm and homey, but they also must have been good conversation openers for anyone coming in the room.
I was also interested in the hallucinations that her husband had and her thought that he might have been trying to fight off death. My grandmother's sister died having her first child. She seemed to be unconscious and then suddenly sat up, threw her arms out, and said, "How beautiful! This is gong to be such an exciting adventure." I like the idea of people having some kind of awareness of their own death and being brave enough to fight it or brave enough to want to accept it and go to it like some new part of the world not yet visited.
"Good relationships create harmony in the world, and I am certain that for Beth the atmosphere of harmony that she created with the people at the hospital made life more pleasant for everyone and took away some of the stress of a very stressful time. " I thought this was nicely written as you make it a general statement that is not only applicable in Beth's case. I think a lot of people tend to overlook the importance of relationships that they might not consider significant.
ReplyDeleteThe last paragraph I also found really interesting. I never knew that people had these types of hallucinations, but I think they're almost comforting, like you said as people have an "awareness of their own death." Also the idea of "some new part of the world not yet visited" as if death is simply a parallel universe.
My favorite thing about this homework is what a good job you did using the insights of Beth and connecting them to your own life. For instance, I thought it was very interesting how you were able to relate something like the time standing still in Erik's situation to your own experience in a soccer game, when normally the two situations would be completely different. I also like when you said, "I like the idea of people having some kind of awareness of their own death and being brave enough to fight it or brave enough to want to accept it and go to it like some new part of the world not yet visited," because it really got me thinking about the way I vew death. Great job!
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