HW 21 - Expert #1

Important Insights and Experiences from Guest Speaker:
1. As adolescents, we have been shielded by the beauty and gruesomeness of death.  Hospitals curtain and sanitize the pain our loved ones feel.
2.  It's important to look past an ill patient's sickness and see them as a person with a colorful and productive past, deserving of compassion and good lasting moments with family and loved ones.
3.  Being alive and having loved ones die first may be the most painful experience because you are watching them wither away while you too, wither away but, at a slower pace.  Dying first would allow you to not go through the pain of seeing another die.

       Having been offered Beth's intimate details about her experiences dealing with death, I certainly gained new insight on the realms in which one enters when his or her's loved one dies.  Death is considerably taboo, as it is sacred and words about the deceased are almost, in a way, forbidden.  This is a concept I have become fond of over the years, as this conversation in class was intense and foreign to me.  In explaining the event in which she had seen her father die, Beth, with a slight quiver in her voice, had mentioned that even when the time to set our worries and tears free from our conscience, hospitals place white curtains over our eyes, shielding what we should be able to face.  When she was able to take care of her husband 24-7 in the comfort of her home, she had experienced the most intimate and beautiful moments of her life.  On the other hand, the cold and windowless walls of a hospital bedroom connote the sense of detachment and lack of emotion that overwhelms the air, essentially sanitizing and monitoring our own emotions by not allowing us to see suffering and the gruesomeness of death.  After a white sheet is pulled over a dead body, leaving the last breath almost a whisper, the chance to embrace "a warmth left in the body before rigor mortis takes over" is gone.  Having been in the hospital a few months ago to visit an ill family member, I feel that the presence of beauty and pain had never revealed it self, however, it was there nonetheless.
       Admittedly, finding beauty in death is a difficult task.  However identifying the pity I feel when in the presence of an ill person is an easy task for me unfortunately.  Although pity disgusts me, I'd be lying if I proclaimed that I have never participated in the act of pitying another.  Beth had spoke about the need to see past a person's illness and realize that they too posses a past with eventful experiences.  Her placing Erik's paintings all around the hospital room did not emanate his position as a terminal patient but rather, a human being with children to be proud of, collections of masterful art works, and the strong will of a fighter.  Seeing past one's present state to explore one's achievements not only creates mutual feelings of respect but of love.  My stroking hand on my once sick cousin's shoulder, serving as a comforting factor now seems condescending and almost full of pity. To see past an illness, is to perceive a person as if their sickness never came about, possibly subsiding the inevitable factor that the end of loved one's time on earth is imminent.
       The idea that dying first may be less painful because the sight of others dying first may be a bit more overwhelming in that the ability to reverse the death of others is impossible and so, the apperception of their suffering is unavoidable is understandable.  Reflecting on this concept, I have found that this concept or rather, way of thinking, is selfish.  When the death of someone we care about occurs, we subconsciously think about how this death with affect our own stability without their presence.  We push their once potential-filled life into the gutter only to seek the optimum way to buffet with our mourning and sorrow.  It's strange to think that many people spend a generous amount of time mourning but, yet they question: "How will I live without them?"