HW 23 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

Title: tuesdays with Morrie

Author: Mitch Albom

Publisher: Doubleday

Year Published: 1997

Precis: pg 80-90

On the fourth tuesday that morrie and mitch meet (since mitch first came to visit), they talk about death. Morrie brings up points about how people often deny that they will die. They push death away until becomes apparent in their lives. Morrie believes that if more people just accept their death earlier on, they can focus on the essentials. What they need, not what they want.

Quotes:

" 'The truth is, Mitch' he said, 'once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.' "

"We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted."

" 'Well, the truth is, if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time- then you might not be as ambitious as you are'

I forced a small grin"

Final Thoughts:

Thinking back, i remember when my cat was dying. I was in complete denial, in fact even my parents denied it to me. I was only 9 years old and when i found out that being "put to sleep" meant going away forever i broke down into hysteria. In this case i relate to morrie. If my parents let me embrace the fact that something close to me was dying the acceptance might have been greater when my cats time was up. Then again, i was only 9.

HW 21 - Expert #1 - Comments

Christian

- Christian. I liked your further inquiry on the effect of dying from cancer beths husband went through, and how because Beths husband had such an "out-going" personality this effected him even more. I like how you also went on to explain why this is, how when we are dying we have certain need to fight the illness because we have too much "dignity" or "pride" when really we just don't want to accept the fact that we are dying. Your insights on death bringing family closer together were interesting as well. I've also noticed this as a common happening in our culture. As the saying goes "you never know what you have till its gone"

Great Post!
Harry

Dean

-Dean. I enjoyed reading your insights on beth's presentation. Your paragraph on beths experiences, and how death is not only sad (not nesseccarily happy) showed insightfullness. You were clearly not only taking notes on beths emotions but the people around you to receive further answers from your own questions. Although your first paragraph showed a lot of signs of insight, you could have expanded your second. You go on to say that because of beths presentation it " showed me that you can be slowly dying for a long time and not even realize it." you go on to say that you "have heard that people can have diseases for a long time and not even realize it until it is too late." To improve your work next time, my suggestion would be to expand on this idea. Are there any examples you can give of when this would be? (for example: Magic Johnson). Non the less i enjoyed reading this post very much.

My Father

-Death has always been one of my favorite subjects. Death is something I have much experience of, having lost all my antecedents, many, many close friends, (most recently Tuli Kupferberg). I was myself declared dead at the age of eleven. Harry’s observations regarding his grandmother were quite well observed and as this was his very first encounter with human death, I am sure it must have been a signal event. I was not aware that we kept the fact of his grandmother’s approaching demise in denial, as he states, but it must have been so. Life is defined by birth and death. As one approaches one’s mid seventies as I am, death is an almost daily occurrence.

HW 22 - Illness & Dying Book Part 1

Title: tuesdays with Morrie

Author: Mitch Albom

Publisher: Doubleday

Year Published: 1997

Precis: pg 39-48

It is clear by now that Morrie has had an extremely significant effect on Mitch Albom. As he writes "Before college i did not know the study of human relations could be considered scholarly. Until i met Morrie, i did not believe it". Mitch takes a trip to london to cover Wimbledon and here is where he receives hands on experience with Morries sayings. As a sportscaster, Mitch realizes how stupid the papparazzi is and just in general how much of a dumb idea it is that humans obsess over other humans lifestyles.

Quotes:

"Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted"

"The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it"

"'So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote your self to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.' I knew he was right. Not that i did anything about it"

Final Thoughts:

The way this book portrays illness and dying are very straight-foward. I can connect my experiences and insights to this book because (i believe) the book is based on the saying "You never know what you have till its gone." In this case Mitch Albom doesn't bother to reach Morrie for years after graduating until seeing Morrie on TV. So far in the book it almost seems like his writing is a guilt trip, a way to give back to Morrie for all of his teachings. In terms of the way that this book portrays how other people go about Illness and dying? As stated before Mitch seems depressed about the timely death of his important techer, while Morrie is very accepting of the fact that he is about to die. In fact, in one paragraph Morrie explains to mitch how he is dying in descriptive detail, showing no signs of denial (this might have something to do of how well he is taken care of when dying in his own home)

HW 21 - Expert #1

The most important insights and experiences shared by the quest speaker

1. Her idea of a "Honeymoon from death" or a false hope

2. Her last emotional days with her husband

3. Her family never used the word "dying" when her husband was in fact dying

4. Her husband was diagnosed with kidney cancer thanksgiving eve

5. The hospital her husband was taken to took great care of him

3. Her family never used the word "dying" when her husband was in fact dying

- My grandma was 94, a very old age and our family knew that her time was coming to. I knew it as well, but my mom and dad never discussed it with me. Although my parents knew i was smart enough to catch on, they would never discuss the fact that she was dying let alone use the word "dying itself".

4. Her husband was diagnosed with kidney cancer thanksgiving eve

- My family and i knew that my grandma was going to die, but we never knew when it would happen. She was dying of old age, not a disease. We had a better idea of when she would die when had an accident falling. She finally passed away on september 11th. Although not a national holiday like thanksgiving, i believed this was a significantly depressing date because of the september 11, 2001 events that took place.

Beth's presentation sparked the question of "what will i do when someone very very close to me dies?" Not to say that my cat and grandma weren't close to me but what i mean is someone like my mother or father. Beth seemed to handle the situation very well, this made me think of how i might handle this situation when it approaches. Beths presenation also made me question how i will handle my death if i get a disease such as cancer, or just have a good feeling in general of when i am about to die (lying in hospital, very old). Beths husband seemed to handle the situation of dying during the last months well, which is again, something i don't think i would be able to handle if i knew i was going to die in 9 months.

HW 19 - Family Perspectives on Illness & Dying

Illness and dying in my lifetime is a somewhat familiar topic. I almost drowned in the ocean when i was only 7 years old. I have always been afraid of death and have tried my best to maintain a healthy lifestyle. As mentioned before my cat died of cancer when i was 11 and my grandma died last year. When both died i was overwhelmingly sad. My cat was cremated (although i never asked why) and my grandma had a traditional jewish funeral. At the funeral i was asked to speak upon my grandma and her life in general. I noticed that this a social practice seen a lot, where at the funeral people close to the deceased are asked to speak their mind.

Illness and dying in my family is definitely a familiar subject. My dad had hands on experiences with illness and death even as a kid. At age 11 my dad was declared dead because of a serious illness, although in fact he obviously was not dead. The people that raised my dad were basicaly in denial about what brought about their death. Most of my dad's friends died at 50 (including his parents) just from not living healthy lifestyles. This included not exercising and smoking ciggarettes. We discussed the idea of prolonging peoples lives when there is no hope of that person ever recovering. We both agree that if people want to do die, that is their choice (this lead us to talk about Dr.Kevorkian and that whole issue, but then we got off topic). We agreed that life and death are all part of the same fabric.

My mom had hands on experience with death as well. She had many family members (more specifically aunts and uncles) who died of cancer as well as acquaitances. Her father died very suddenly and very unexpectadly at a relatively young age of 55 of a massive heart attack. This effected her profoundly and made a lasting impact on her life, the event changed her so much that she couldn't go back. Her mother was raised of a jewish decent, so they often had ways of approaching illness and death. Her parents were very emotional and vocal, there was a lot of physical emotion and a lot of crying. Her family did not engage in the typical social practices of death such as open casket funerals. Although her father died a relatively young age her parents took very good care of themselves and had common sense health practices. Her mother especially had the "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" attitude.

In conclusion, both my parents and i have witnessed illness and dying first hand and it has been very traumatic for all of us. We all agree that illness and death are horrible experiences and we as a family try to avoid it all together by eating healthy and exercising daily. While i know that i don't eat particularly well, i try to balance out what i eat between junk food and healthy food.

HW 18 - Health & Illness & Feasting

Thanksgiving. A holiday that comes once a year where our purpose is to give thanks (pretty self explanatory, i also don't think there should be a holiday for this. I believe we should give thanks every day of our lives). This year for thanksgiving my parents and i went down to Miami, Florida to visit my dying uncle, other uncles, aunts and cousins. As soon as we arrived i got the chance to meet and reconnect with relatives. We arrived at about 3 when the dinner was at about 7 and usually on thanksgiving what i mostly think about is the meal, but i was so caught up talking to relatives and hearing interesting stories i forgot about the big traditional thanksgiving meal.

The background element related to illness and dying during this thanksgiving experience was my dying uncle. At first, seeing my uncle (who at 95, still had some humor left in him) depressed me. His skin was bruised and sitting in a wheelchair, he could barley speak, but after the stories he shared of his childhood with my relatives the mood at the dinner felt a lot more "light" (less depressing). The food also helped with this issue, in other words the typical turkey my aunt cooked for thanksgiving dinner lived up to the hype and i was happy and full to say the least.

By the end of the night i was stuffed. My relatives and i decided to take a walk on the beach for an after-thanksgiving dinner sort of thing, instead of watching football (although we did watch football a little bit later on in the night). When we got back to the house my uncle showed me and my relatives old footage of my mom and cousins. This was probably the first time i had ever done anything besides watch football, or just television in general after a thanksgiving dinner and it was a nicer way to end the night.

HW 17 - First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit

Illness and dying. I have had a couple of experiences with this topic. My first experience with this topic was when i was only 11 and my 3 year old cat got cancer and died shortly after. This was the first time i had ever experienced death and i took it pretty harshly. I cried in my room for 2 days straight but soon got over it because i was told to believe my cat was somewhere in heaven, happy. Whether this true or not i choose to move on and believe what i was told. Looking back at it now, i find it interesting. Usually when a loved one dies, we're told that that person, pet or thing went to a happy place (usually heaven) We don't even think about it because the topic is so strong we choose to believe whatever we want. That is how we are taught (at least that is how i was taught)

Last september my grandma died at the age of 94. No one in my family wanted my grandma to die (i hope not) but everyone saw it coming. My grandma was very old and as my mom nicely likes to put it her time was ''running out''. She was buired in a jewish cemetary and everyone in my family was sad. Based on my families reactions i can guess that when someone else dies in the family in the future, the funeral will be taken very seriously just as this one. Was i sad? of course, but as stated before i sort of saw it coming.

Based on that experience at that funeral, this lead me to believe most funerals happen just like that. Death in our society is practiced in a very gloomy manner. We look down upon anything morbid as slightly offensive. This is opposed to the mexican holiday dia de los muertos, which is a holiday celebrated in mexico to celebrate the dead of loved ones. While after the funeral my family and i did eat at a restaurant that my grandma loved to sort of celebrate her death most of the day was filled with sadness of her passing.

I can't predict when i'll die or what the cause of my death might be but i try to stay as far away from becoming ill and dying (or dying from another cause) People in society today try to predict death all of the time. Whether it's "Fortune Tellers" or karma, people think death comes at a certain time, when in fact death is random. An example of this would be my grandfathers death. My grandpas death happened at work where randomly, he died from a heart attack, as my mom likes to put it "He went to work one day and never came back". My cat that i had at 11 also died very randomly. One day he just got cancer and a few months later he was dead. The cat was fed very well and no one knew why he died so spontaneously. In conclusion, you can't predict death, no matter how hard you try death is something that just happens by human nature.