The most unavoidable topic that everyone avoids
No one talks about death. I didn’t for a long time.
Sometimes the words spilled out when I was with a friend, but I never felt satisfied. Other times it was late at night and I would mope out to the living room past midnight to sit with my mother and briefly discuss how much we missed those in our family who died.
That was it though. Death would be brought up, but the conversation never was discussed for too long.
In the summer going into seventh grade my grandmother died from pancreatic cancer, then my aunt ten months later from bladder cancer. Then my grandfather a few years later.
As I coped with the death of my family members, I began excessively planning out my future. I developed the ideal life from the city I’ll reside in, to the color I would paint my apartment walls. When I committed to college I vowed I would take every opportunity I could possibly get and fill each day with experiences that could help me with this vision.
But I worked so much when I got to college. It got to the point last fall that I lost a part of myself. There were no moments of peace in my day. I took a full course load, managed my school’s broadcast news department, worked an internship, another part-time job and choreographed for Quinnipiac University’s Tap Company. In every way, I was disconnected from the people around me and myself.
Yet during this particular semester, I was enrolled in a course called “Sociology of Death/Dying” where we discussed social interaction between the dying person, professional caregivers and loved ones. The class flowed like an open forum.
I joked that I would start and end my week with death since I only had that course on Mondays and Fridays. My friends didn’t laugh too much.
Three times a week I was forced to consider death in ways I hadn’t considered. For the first time, I was forced to confront the topic of death on a daily basis.
More than anything, this course revealed the significance of starting conversations about the dying process before death itself. While the person is dying, family and friends are often so wrapped up in trying to keep them around for a bit longer. However, the person dying may feel an obligation to fight for their family when it isn’t something they want. We begin making decisions not for ourselves anymore and we become alienated from the people that we should lean on the most.
Conversations need to begin with health workers and doctors, it needs to trickle down to the family.
Death is isolating in our world— a stigma that many don’t talk about directly. It wasn’t until I met a very close friend of mine when I was in Washington D.C. that I mentioned that I joked about death a lot. No one had ever told me that I brought it up that often.
Maybe, had I allowed myself to discuss how I felt about death when I was growing up, I wouldn’t weave it into my conversations so much now. However, death changes you. I don’t think I would be as articulate with how I spend my days or have had such a clear path. In a way, it helped me understand my priorities and know I don’t have forever to meet them. If I want something, I no longer wait.
It shouldn’t have taken so long for me to feel comfortable talking about death, but it is something many people still struggle with. Neglecting conversation on the certainty of something each one of us will go through ends up forcing us to not consider what we want in life.
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