Zero times? Can someone paint me a picture of this supposed silence the author talks about? In elementary school we were all forced to participate in Terry Fox Runs: that he had died of cancer was...
Never shall a complaint pass your lips. How many times have we all heard that praise sung of the dying and recently departed, “They never complained”?
Zero times? Can someone paint me a picture of this supposed silence the author talks about? In elementary school we were all forced to participate in Terry Fox Runs: that he had died of cancer was the only thing I knew; the reasons that we were forced into the frigid outdoors or blistering sun I was never taught (edit: I'm sure they did, I was probably too indignant to hear it). He ran as he was dying and then somehow we now have to run; that seemed like a loudly protesting type of thing much celebrated, and myself much complained about certainly.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Education is an endless parade of old dead folks and genocide and the quiet Western front with Juliet and her Romeo. But I suppose that is their point: death is celebrated, while dying and suffering is an embarrassing affair?
Professor Randy Pausch of the last lecture (2007) was much celebrated, becoming best selling author and person of the year as he died: people did not look away and people were not silent. But that might be because Randy was so vigorous and keenly alive and so strong and positive about it. I still remember this quote from him:
The metaphor I've used is... somebody's going to push my family off a cliff pretty soon, and I won't be there to catch them. And that breaks my heart. But I have some time to sew some nets to cushion the fall. So, I can curl up in a ball and cry, or I can get to work on the nets.
So, no, I don't see this enforced stoic silence the author talked about, but I know this embarrassment around displaying negative emotions towards suffering. We love Dylan and Pausch because they're coherent and poetic about their death, but we hate and abhor degenerate illnesses and disability and becoming a paraplegic or terrified of being in a comatose state, but potentially still aware. We think nothing of celebrating assisted suicide but we cannot conceive of a worst fate than to suffer the decline.
I found myself in the completely unreal situation of having, over and over, to comfort people when I told them I had cancer
People are shocked and stunned into speechlessness, and in that brief pause the suffering / dying are urged to juggle and dance and amuse and comfort rather than to burst into tears, or worst, see their healthy friend cry. But what they are uncomfortable about is not dying, but the suffering.
We all know we are dying, and these days most people don't even pretend to believe in heaven or whatever and seem chill about their wish to kill themselves before the bitter end. What we do seem to be supremely uncomfortable about is the suffering. It's the ultimate indignity and abhorrence, to suffer as we die, and that the topic of death should only be countenanced by the supreme moral obligation to eliminate suffering, that a much sooner death is far preferable to any amount of suffering.
The author is half right. Death, poetically and sweetly, you can talk endlessly about. It's suffering that is immoral and socially unacceptable to talk about.
Zero times? Can someone paint me a picture of this supposed silence the author talks about? In elementary school we were all forced to participate in Terry Fox Runs: that he had died of cancer was the only thing I knew; the reasons that we were forced into the frigid outdoors or blistering sun I was never taught (edit: I'm sure they did, I was probably too indignant to hear it). He ran as he was dying and then somehow we now have to run; that seemed like a loudly protesting type of thing much celebrated, and myself much complained about certainly.
We all read our Dylan Thomas:
Education is an endless parade of old dead folks and genocide and the quiet Western front with Juliet and her Romeo. But I suppose that is their point: death is celebrated, while dying and suffering is an embarrassing affair?
Professor Randy Pausch of the last lecture (2007) was much celebrated, becoming best selling author and person of the year as he died: people did not look away and people were not silent. But that might be because Randy was so vigorous and keenly alive and so strong and positive about it. I still remember this quote from him:
So, no, I don't see this enforced stoic silence the author talked about, but I know this embarrassment around displaying negative emotions towards suffering. We love Dylan and Pausch because they're coherent and poetic about their death, but we hate and abhor degenerate illnesses and disability and becoming a paraplegic or terrified of being in a comatose state, but potentially still aware. We think nothing of celebrating assisted suicide but we cannot conceive of a worst fate than to suffer the decline.
People are shocked and stunned into speechlessness, and in that brief pause the suffering / dying are urged to juggle and dance and amuse and comfort rather than to burst into tears, or worst, see their healthy friend cry. But what they are uncomfortable about is not dying, but the suffering.
We all know we are dying, and these days most people don't even pretend to believe in heaven or whatever and seem chill about their wish to kill themselves before the bitter end. What we do seem to be supremely uncomfortable about is the suffering. It's the ultimate indignity and abhorrence, to suffer as we die, and that the topic of death should only be countenanced by the supreme moral obligation to eliminate suffering, that a much sooner death is far preferable to any amount of suffering.
The author is half right. Death, poetically and sweetly, you can talk endlessly about. It's suffering that is immoral and socially unacceptable to talk about.