Death and dying
Introduction
The fact that human beings are alive means that one day they will die. This principle adopted by the Buddhists that attempt to explain the death phenomenon in the simplest of ways. Despite the obvious, very few individuals have learnt to come to terms with death. Numerous material and inspiring online content exist to provide a wealth of information into death and dying that help bereaved people to build a consciousness of their own humanity in a manner that totally enriches and changes their lives. The understanding and implementation of these topics will enable people accept death with poise, simplicity and courage, and be happy for the rest of their lives.
Death has continued to be a great puzzle as one of the vital subjects that philosophy, religion and science have struggled since human beings started dying. Even though death is an accepted part of life, the American culture is special in that death is considered a taboo topic. Other cultures have also adopted such escapist behavior in tackling death and dying. Rather than having honest and candid discussions, people perceive death as a foreign occurrence that can be overcome through application of modern technology and medicine. The languages of these cultures reflect the fight against the last stage of life where individuals refer to death as “kicking the bucket”, “passing on” or “going to meet their Maker”.
Some of the anxiety associated with the death and dying progression develops because death has been promoted from being a common incident to being a supernatural and unique experience. The normal trend was for people to die in their residences encircled by their family members and close friends but the change has seen people preferring to die in health care facilities. The loss of personal familiarity with the process of dying serves to add to the sense of apprehension and dread. The relationship between mortality and life has also been addressed by many generations since it was obvious that all men are born so they could also die.
Various views of the nature of death
There are various views on death and dying within different communities in the world. Some communities are more exposed to the aspect of death and are fully aware of the consequences of people close to them dying. However, other communities revere death and consider it a taboo and unique stage in life that is marked appropriately. Most human beings have grown afraid of talking about, dealing with or even thinking about death. Most of these people do not know what to expect and therefore develop fear of the unknown. For some cultures however, it is seen as an expected passage of life. Whatever the view of death, it is important to note that death must be understood in some way for the rest of the people to get on with their lives (Kuehn, 2001).
The comprehending and views on death are best amplified by the major religious groups within society. Among Christians, there are different subdivisions such as Baptists, Protestants and Catholics; there is a general view of death and grief. Christians believe in the existence of hell where the wicked individuals go to when they die. Catholics however believe that there is an afterlife universe for the righteous dead and purgatory that acts as the middle ground. At purgatory, the spirit is considered for heaven or hell. Some Christians do not accept the concept of purgatory. In Buddhism, there is a basic accepted concept of karma and reincarnation. However, the main goal in life is to escape the inevitable cycle of death through eliminating the human characteristics such as desire and craving to a level of achieving Nirvana that is the disappearance of all cravings and the consequent graduation of one to liberation. Islam and Judaism also share the common view that physical life ends with death (Pippin, 2011).
Personal stories of cancer victims
Most of the victims of critical diseases end up dying. This is because most of these dangerous diseases have no cure or rapid treatment. Examples of such ailments include Alzheimer’s disease, various types of cancers and meningitis among other diseases. Cancer stands out a deadly condition that kills many people globally. The following are stories of people who had different types of cancers and did not survive the condition. Bryan Lee Curtis lay dying in his bed after suffering from lung cancer for over 12 years. Bryan was already bald from the chemotherapy sessions that had eaten away his hair. The slow deterioration of Bryan’s health weighed heavily on the family members especially his son Louie and wife, Amber. Bryan died at 11:56 am just seven weeks after he was diagnosis with lung cancer. On the day of the burial, Bryan Lee Curtis had lost over 75% of his body weight. His family members had undergone a lot of stress. Personally, Brian had undergone physical and psychological trauma over the period that he was diagnosed.
An elderly woman was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2006. She had been informed of her condition about 7 months earlier but her health slowly deteriorated until it was evident that she was bound to die. When she was just about to die, the elderly woman displayed different characteristics than those written in most pamphlets and online sources. She did not make out people who had died before her or talk of feeling like dying. Instead, she became nervous, fidgety, uneasy, and talked of having nightmares. The slow worsening of the elderly woman caused stress on her daughter that caused her to seek help from people who had experienced similar situations.
Formal philosophical concepts of death
Philosophers may be diverse on other topics but it is evident that they share a common perspective when it comes to death that is there is nothing to know about death. All human beings are born having the same knowledge about death and die having been ignorant of what really happens when one dies and even the purpose of people dying. The concept of death is only partly important to the living and itself, death has no vital use. Therefore, even scholars who study death do so without much results or deductions. However, there are some possible philosophies concerning death and dying. One is that death is an interruption of life that is quite similar to diseases or sleeping only that it is permanent and irreversible. To that extent, there are two ways of reacting to it: ignore death or continue living in spite of the effect that death has on life.
Methods for Dealing with Grief and Pain
Dealing with grief and pain can be difficult for most of the people who have experienced losses. There are various methods of dealing with the grief and pain of losing a loved one. The Kübler-Ross model or the five stages of grief is one of the methods of dealing with death and dying that was established by Kübler-Ross after she worked with fatally ill patients. Kübler-Ross had a hypothesis that when an individual and the family members are faced with the truth of their imminent death, they usually undergo a sequence of emotional phases: denial; anger; bargaining; depression and acceptance although there is no defined order to their emergence. Kübler-Ross was motivated by the poor curriculum in medical educational institutions when it came to addressing the topic of death and decided to start a program about death when she got a job as an instructor at the University of Chicago. This endeavor developed into a string of conferences and publications that changed how the U.S. medical sector took care of the lethally sick (Silverman & Kelly, 2009).
The five stages mentioned by Kübler-Ross in her publication start with denial. Denial happens on a temporary basis as the individuals try to defend themselves. At this phase, the individual may appear stunned and confused. This feeling is then replaced with a delicate consciousness of belongings and relatives that were left behind after the death. Denial can occur consciously or unconsciously where an individual refuses to accept the new facts or the truth about the death. If not checked, most people who experience losses are stuck at the denial point for the rest of their lives.
Anger is the second stage of grief where the victim acknowledges that denial cannot work for them. Due to the anger, the individual expresses confused feelings of fury and jealousy. The anger is also manifested in different ways, as some people can be angry at themselves, angry at their relatives or at other things. After anger, bargaining sets in where an individual thinks that they can bargain with death by offering the things most valuable to them such as life savings or promises of good behavior. As death nears, the victim thinks that they can buy more time even though bargaining really never does work effectively (Gaughen, 2003).
The next stage is depression where the dying individual begins to understand the assurance of death. Because of this, the dying individual has the tendency to become hushed, decline to see visitors and use up much of the time weeping and sorrowful. This stage is important as it allows the dying individual to detach themselves from loving and affectionate things. People who are this stage are better when they are left alone than when they are consoled. At this stage, all they can do is sit and wait for the depression to set in. For such dying people, depression acts as a kind of acceptance that is attached with emotions. The depression is perfectly normal and when dying people feel sad, apologetic, scared, and uncertain, it is imperative that they be let to continue so. This is because the expression of those low feelings is a sign that the person has begun to accept their fate.
The last stage before death is acceptance. In this last stage, dying begin to come to terms with their humanity. Acceptance differs according to the situation in which a person is. The people who are dying tend to enter this stage faster than the survivors who take a relatively longer time to accept the fact that one of them will soon lose their lives. Originally, Kübler-Ross had applied this theory to terminally ill people but later expanded the subjects to include people who had experienced other major life changing events such as divorce and loss of jobs. Other situations where the Kübler-Ross model can apply include relationship break-ups, drug addiction, and other tragedies. The onset of death anxiety is a common occurrence immediately after the death of a loved one and is usually the first sign of how people will deal with the immediate loss.
Explaining death to children
When a loved one dies, it can be a difficult time among adults. Among children, the change of events is even more difficult to understand and handle, as children do not know how to cope with the loss, particularly as the remaining relatives also struggle with their own grief. The level of handling grief among children is dependent on their experiences, their age bracket and their personality. However, in all cases, there are similar responses and solutions to the process of death and dying among children. Many adults often find it difficult to translate certain things such as death to children as they feel that they should instead shield children from the tragedy altogether (Balk & Corr, 2009).
The adult should prepare to explain the death of a certain family member to the child in terms and expressions that they can understand. Children require honesty rather than sugarcoating the real story for example with fairy tale characters or cartoons. The adult should also encourage the child to ask any questions about the death. This can be hard because you may not have all of the answers. However, it is imperative that an open and comfortable atmosphere is maintained. Lastly and most important, the adults should stress that there is no one correct way of expressing feelings about the loss of the family member. Such opportunities are good for adults to instill spiritual teachings about how people react to death and how to live after the death of a loved one (Mohammad & Ayati, 2007).
Children that are below five years have a literal perspective of the world that may not allow them to understand death easily. To such children, an adult can explain the death in the most concrete and basic terms for example they might say that the loved one’s body was not functioning properly and the doctor could not rectify it anymore. In this way, the adult would not necessarily have to say that the loved one died but that they “stopped working”. Children at this tender age often have a difficult time comprehending that all humans and living things ultimately die, and they cannot be resurrected. The adult should be prepared to repeat the same story to the child in future, as they may probably not understand.
Living with grief
Death that occurs suddenly for example through a shocking accident or tragedy can create a number of intricate issues for the survivors. The grieving process is very different from a predictable or expected death. Murder, suicide, or extremely catastrophic events can trigger reactions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the part of family members and survivors. Abrupt loss or death raises extraordinary problems for the survivors. Many of these problems make the grief response more complex. The grief response following an unexpected loss is often maximized since there is little or no opportunity to get ready for the loss, bid good-bye or prepare for mourning. Families and close friends are required to face the loss of a loved one instantly and without caution. This type of loss can produce deep grief responses such as alarm, rage, blame, depression, hopelessness and despair (Northridge, 2010).
The death of a cherished one can usher one to a reflective, and long-term, grieving process. After loved ones die, it takes people a long time before feelings of grief become less acute and almost many years before the sadness, memories and loneliness wear off. Most people’s experience with grief follows this similar pattern. It is often not until around 6 months that grieving can move into a less passionate stage. Grief is an individual reaction to bereavement that is moulded by the intensity of the relationship with the person who died, being the level of religious belief, the societal anticipations, the cultural context and other factors.
Modern societies have resorted to medicalizing grief so that they demand treatment is which is routinely characterized with antidepressants. While this treatment works efficiently, it is very dangerous and flawed in its principles. There exists little unstable evidence that promotes the use of medicine to treat grief among people who have lost a loved one. Among many people, grief is a natural response to the bereavement that should not be manipulated, tampered with or shortened.
The treatment could be recommended however, for unique people whose grief transforms into acute depression that will have to be treated with drugs or other more effective psychological interventions such as guided mourning. This new development in the conditions among human beings has been recognized and acknowledged by respectable bodies such as the WHO that labeled it as prolonged grief disorder. The loss of a loved one is accompanied by adverse health ramifications such as weight loss, lack of sleep, depression and anxiety. However, these extreme interventions such as medical solutions should be left for worse cases (Hood 2008).
Religious and Philosophical Answers: Comfort after death
Human beings were created differently and therefore no two people grieve in the same way. Attempting to comfort a person who lost a cherished one can be a discouraging task. There is always the fear of saying the wrong thing that would end up further worsening the situation. An individual may also want to do something appreciative for the bereaved but have no idea on how to start doing it. The bereaved need to know that it is very natural to have feelings of inadequacy during the mourning period. Most bereaved get the feeling that they lost the war against death and that they were weak, susceptible and disadvantaged.
Comforting the bereaved people requires tact as the period is a very sensitive and volatile time for them. The people comforting them should be fully aware of the he five stages of grief as prescribed by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. The Kubler-Ross model was clearly planned to ensure that the bereaved followed a studied path to ensure that they handled the grief appropriately. Comforters should try to analyze the bereaved with an effort to establish which stage they are. After establishing the stage, it is the comforters’ responsibility to prepare the bereaved for the current and next stage appropriately.
While directly comforting the bereaved is important and highly efficient, not all comforters have these kinds of skills. The comforter can also help the bereaved by catering for their daily needs. People in intense grief fail to take care of their domestic needs such as maintaining proper personal hygiene, household organization and other responsibilities. Te traditional way of comforting such people was by stepping in and doing noteworthy actions such as cooking meals. These actions offer undeviating aid and emotional comfort. The comforter can also offer to organize mail, run the businesses and help in paying bills. These actions of comfort should not be done in a manner that makes it seem intentional (Woo & Wong, 2003).
Importance of friends, family, and community during death
The role played by the friends, family, and community of a bereaved individual cannot be overlooked. In fact, they play the largest role in the five stages of loss and even in determining the physical and mental condition of the bereaved. Friends of the bereaved understand the value system of the bereaved and can therefore help him/ her come to terms with the reality. They can also help the bereaved to sort out their domestic and professional backlog. The immediate family is important during the grieving period as they all share a common loss of one of their family members. Lastly, the community plays the role of the silent comforter in that they offer physical and financial support to the bereaved and his/ her family.
Conclusion
The aspect of death and dying touches all areas of human life. All human beings will at some point die. However, the different experiences those human beings have experienced in the process of dying or watching their loved ones die has created new issues and complications that make the whole phenomenon difficult for man to deal with. There are various views of what death is and how people ought to deal with it. Unmistakably, there is a strong fear of the unknown factors that surround death making it even more painful among the survivors. Dealing with grief is another major issue that has plagued many people. Most survivors fail to recover completely from the losses they experience. It is however imperative to accept the loss as being part of the life cycle that every human being will inevitably have to pass through. In doing so, people will find it easier to deal with the grief that accompanies the loss. In this way, most of the myths circling death can be demystified among the communities.
References
Balk, D. E., & Corr, C. A. (2009). Adolescent encounters with death, bereavement, and coping. New York: Springer Pub. Co.
Gaughen, S. (2003). Coping with death. San Diego, Calif: Greenhaven Press.
Hawe D. (2012). The Philosophy of death. Retrieved from http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gjmoses/DEATH.htm
Hood, A. (2008). Comfort: A journey through grief. New York: W.W. Norton & Co
Kuehn, E. (2001). Death: Coping with the pain. Mankato, Minn: LifeMatters.
Mohammad R. & Ayati S. M. (2007). The Concept of Death: A Religio-philosophical Analysis. Ingenta Connect. Retrieved from http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cicm/2007/00000018/00000003/art00007
Northridge K. (2010). How to Comfort a Friend After a Death. Livestrong. Retrieved from http://www.livestrong.com/article/204176-how-to-comfort-a-friend-after-a-death/
Pippin, R. B. (2011). Hegel on self-consciousness: Desire and death in the Phenomenology of spirit. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
Silverman, P. R., & Kelly, M. (2009). A parent’s guide to raising grieving children: Rebuilding your family after the death of a loved one. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Woo, B., & Wong, G. (2003). Living with grief. Singapore: Times Editions
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