HW #18 - Health & Illness & Feasting

Over my Thanksgiving festivities, I experienced many traditions, many of which were body related, and some of which had very little to do with physicality. The most essential Thanksgiving tradition of my dad's side of the family is traveling to my grandparents' house in Chattanooga, Tennessee. For a few days, there are between 10 and 30 people in that house at any given time. There are so many people that it takes two large tables and some couches to accommodate the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, family friends, etc. Food dominates the focus of much of the day in some way or another, because when we aren't eating together at the table, someone is preparing for, cleaning up after, or discussing future meals. In the days surrounding Thanksgiving, I cannot walk into a room without people without seeing someone eating or discussing food.

My family is not exactly gluttonous; they just see food as one way to come together and share memories and pleasure. Food is important to my family, but more important are the traditions surrounding it. The cousins, aunts, and uncles all take turns cleaning up after a meal, which provides a means of forming camaraderie and actively loving each other by cleaning up our collective mess. Every family brings an appetizer or dessert (or both) to lessen the workload of my grandmother. These efforts to feed the army of Smiths results in copious amounts of desserts and snacks. 

Other traditions include watching football, going to my cousin's farm, hiking, and riding horses and dirt bikes. We usually all go to a park and play ultimate Frisbee or kickball before Thanksgiving dinner. Many of my family members are avid bikers and runners. Health is often a topic of discussion as well, as might be expected of a group of people who are either getting on in years, or who are athletes, or both. A distant cousin found that she requires open heart surgery, and refuses the procedure because she wants to pursue her dancing career. This was a topic of discussion when we weren't eating. One of my cousins is an extroverted and passionate physical therapist. It's hard to get him to stop talking about bodies. My aunt is a certified nutritionist. Ailing family members often come to them for advice or massages. For example, my dad pulled a tendon in his foot while at the park, thereby providing a new patient for my cousin.

My family sees illness and dying as a regrettable event in the (possibly near) future, and many of them act accordingly. I don't know if this is normal or weird, but it is probably beneficial to keep awareness of health and illness traditional.

HW #17 - First Thoughts On The Illness and Dying Unit

The first encounter with death that I can remember is with my tortoise, Abraham. When I was about 8, I walked into my room and looked into his little cage. He was still and stiff to the touch. I still don't know what the cause of his demise was. I remember numbness at first, and then anger. I was a very anger-prone child, because I valued justice so highly. Tortoises often live to 300 years of age, and I had expected more than a year of life for my little pet. Why couldn't he have the same privileges as the average tortoise? The death of a young tortoise with a world of potential and time ahead of him seemed earth-shatteringly unfair, especially with no warning to me. I felt slightly guilty, because I was the one caring for him. Was it my fault that he died? Did my friends hold him without washing their hands first, even though I asked them not to? Did I cough on poor little Abraham by accident?

Insignificant as this encounter with death was, it was only the beginning. I have a big family, so I've been to many funerals, especially in the past 3 years. I remember sitting in my room one day, hugging my knees close to my body, overwhelmed by the foreboding feeling that everyone was leaving me, or would sooner or later. The scariest part of this realization was that I couldn't predict it; the time that someone's life ends, the moment that I would indefinitely never be able to say goodbye, is so without rhyme or reason. The only way to predict the end of someone's life is with disease...but how does that work, when most diseases don't lead to death, and not all diseases have apparent symptoms?

Most of my family is Christian, so naturally I was essentially taught that people who repented of their sins, believed that Jesus died on the cross for the sake of the world, and accepted God as their redeemer were saved, and went to Heaven. According to my family, those who had the opportunity and did not do so, went to Hell. Because I was the typical trusting child, and because this made sense to me, I believed it. I suppose this is, in a sense, indoctrination. Let's save that argument and the nuances behind that term for another day. My family never really discussed illness a lot, but if someone we were close with was in the hospital with a probably fatal situation, they would tell my sisters and I. I appreciate this in hindsight, because it saved us from being extremely shocked and horrified. They always approached serious illness and dying with a level of respect that is typical of our culture.

Most people, I think, see death as something horrific and scary. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I definitely don't think it's as climactic as it is portrayed by the media. It is a difficult thing to comprehend, someone dying. Death is basically ending. It is when the body ceases to function, the heart stops beating, activity in the brain ends, etc. Beyond that...who knows? And how do they know? In movies and books, I think it is sometimes sugarcoated to be a less threatening idea, and a more dignified experience. Death is evidently scary to our culture; how else could it be a punishment for the worst of crimes? I think that the most frightening aspect of death is the promised uncertainty that comes with it, that dreaded moment when you know you are about to die and you don't know what lies in store for you.

On a slightly different note, death and illness don't have to be physical. I would rather be injured physically than emotionally. Diseases such as pride, hate, and laziness are just as contagious and hurtful as a cold or even maybe cancer. Once when I lost a friend (a human, this time) I literally felt like a part of my heart had died, leaving a raw wound that did not have enough emotional white blood cells to clot it properly. Loss and vulnerability festered in the wound, producing bitterness and cynicism. Technically, every moment is like a little death. Who you were a minute ago is dead, because the new experiences in that minute shaped who you are and killed a bit of your youth. The difference between physical death and the kind mentioned above is that you don't have to live with physical death (Redundant, but true).