Illness & Dying Book, Part 3

Précis:

My brother and I have always been distant. When I heard he contracted HIV/AIDS I flew down to Antigua to comfort him at his bedside, he looked awful. My mother’s love for her children was brought into light as my brother lay dying in the filthy hospital. In Antigua the medicine was a little scarce; one could only find something that was applicable to many diseases so when my brother wanted medicine for his virus he couldn’t find any. So I used my American citizenship to get my brother a prescription for medicine that would help slow the process and relieve some of the pain. It wasn’t too long before he was healthy enough to leave the hospital, and sadly indulge in some of his vices. His death however was sure to come, and when it did it wasn’t easy. The funeral was cheap and when I visited his body at the morgue all my feelings swelled up. I was upset at my mother and I was even upset at him, the position he put me in. after his death and his funeral I started to reflect on life or rather death and I still kept thinking of my brother. My first experience with death was not at all the same as my experience with my brother’s death. I still felt sad only more so, but why? Death is all around us and has always been happening why every time are we filled with such grief? His death brought such emotion yet I knew him so little, only later did I find out he was homosexual or that he did not love me the same as others in the family.

Gems:

            “They must go, but it is so hard, so hard for the people left behind; it’s so hard to see them go, as if it had never happened before, and so hard but you can survive this kind of loss, seeing someone go, seeing them leave you behind; you don’t want to go with them, you only don’t want them to go” (138) Jamaica analyzes the mentality of losing someone, the conflict between the ill and not ill and the conflict with one’s own self.

            “They did not know that I had suffered a great loss: someone I did not know I loved had died, someone I did not want to love had died, and that dying had a closed-door quality to it, a falling off the horizon quality” (156) Jamaica is approached by people who have read her work and she feels an almost resentment to these people because they are unaware to how she feels, that someone she wasn’t very close to had suddenly disappeared from the earth, and they were completely unaware.

            “People in the place that I am from are quite comfortable with the shame of sex, the inexplicable need for it, an enjoyment of it that seems beyond the ordinary the actual peculiarity; only then when you die from it, sex, does the shame become, well, shame” (184) interesting that the consequence of this action which is apparently very accepted in Antigua is shameful. Perhaps because it is known but very scary, a taboo subject that no one really likes to bring up, kind of like that your parents had to have sex for you to be brought into this world.

Gems:

            “They must go, but it is so hard, so hard for the people left behind; it’s so hard to see them go, as if it had never happened before, and so hard but you can survive this kind of loss, seeing someone go, seeing them leave you behind; you don’t want to go with them, you only don’t want them to go” (138) Jamaica analyzes the mentality of losing someone, the conflict between the ill and not ill and the conflict with one’s own self.

            “They did not know that I had suffered a great loss: someone I did not know I loved had died, someone I did not want to love had died, and that dying had a closed-door quality to it, a falling off the horizon quality” (156) Jamaica is approached by people who have read her work and she feels an almost resentment to these people because they are unaware to how she feels, that someone she wasn’t very close to had suddenly disappeared from the earth, and they were completely unaware.

            “People in the place that I am from are quite comfortable with the shame of sex, the inexplicable need for it, an enjoyment of it that seems beyond the ordinary the actual peculiarity; only then when you die from it, sex, does the shame become, well, shame” (184) interesting that the consequence of this action which is apparently very accepted in Antigua is shameful. Perhaps because it is known but very scary, a taboo subject that no one really likes to bring up, kind of like that your parents had to have sex for you to be brought into this world.

Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

Kincaid, Jamaica. My Brother. NY, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. Print.


 Precis: 
On my last visit seeing my brother he was in good health but at last he was in the hospital again, his inevitable death being stretched over a long time making him slowly looking more and more disfigured. When my brother finally died I was not surprised, I honestly did not feel anything. With my mother at the morgue see my brother I felt alone and dark, things no longer seemed pleasant. My mix of emotions turned on my brother, the pain he caused, the trouble he put me through, his death was unavoidable, if he only had died earlier things would have been easier. I remembered to the time of him being very ill showing me his penis, horribly disfigured from his AIDS and saying "Jamaica, look at this just look at this.", and I stood their motionless and disoriented at everything that surrounded the motion he used and reason for him showing me this.


Gems: 
"When I saw him for the last time still alive though he looked like someone who had been dead for a long time and whose body had been neglected, left to rot" (106). This is a good insight to the visual you see as someone is slipping into death, they never look like the person you knew for so long. They are stricken with their illness and you never imagine a loved one to be sick so when seeing them in this state it is hard to connect the same way you did so time ago.


"When he was still alive I used to try to imagine what it would be like when he was no longer alive, what the world would seem like the moment I knew he was no longer alive, I didn't know what to think, I didn't know what to feel." (87). This I think is the common reaction when someone close to you dies, when it happens suddenly it is so unimaginable and when it happens you are bewildered with emotion.


"Oh, I thought , oh it's Devon who died, not one of his relatives, not someone of his, this is not someone he has to grieve for. I was so glad about that" (99). Jamaica's reaction to another death and the relief of not having to go through what she had to with her brother.

Thoughts:
In the middle third of the book her brother finally dies. I think now is when I've really started to appreciate Jamaica's unique writing style. She jumps in and out of when her brother was alive, which isn't common but it isn't baffling. In fact it fits quite well, and I think it is one way Jamaica's unique writing style illustrates accurately and portrays what she is going through.

Luke Jensen said...

Hey John, this was a very interesting discourse on death, intimacy,and social norms that was compelling and clear. There were some grammatical and syntactical mistakes that, if fixed, would make your piece more fluid and precise. This piece sparked some questions for me about people's reactions to death through, celebration and mourning, and why they might differ. How should we react to the death of a relative if we never found anything worth celebrating in them, or were just indifferent to them,when the social norm is to celebrate or mourn? Does the social norm provoke people to behave in a certain way towards deceased relatives even when they do not love the deceased, or do not feel a connection with the deceased? When someone defies the norms of a society, like norms about death, does that individual's defiance create a feeling of strangeness towards themselves? Does it make society look at you strangely? I think that you ask a similar question when you ask: "what constitutes as an intimate relationship?" And I think that our social norms and cultural context defines our ideas on intimacy and therefore define our ideas on how to react to the passing of a relative. For example, when you talked about Beth's celebratory description of Erik as the "dad of the neighborhood" you suggested that the description was only celebratory because of its cultural and social context. And that perhaps in a different context, both the neighborhood and Beth, might not feel the want to celebrate Erik after his death if descriptions like the "dad of the neighborhood" weren't culturally celebrated.

December 8, 2010 7:29 PM

normalisweirdCHRIS said...

Hey John,
I like a lot of what you said and I think you got a good point across about what Beth was saying and you did a good job answering the questions that Andy presented. Also, when I know that you most likely had some of the feelings that Beth had and you mention that when you say, "Before my own father died I felt more distanced from him he wasn’t the same image of my father I had when I was younger". But even though this could just be something that may be to personal for you to want to talk about I feel like even though you compared your feelings to Beth you could go more into depth about the differences and the similarities of how you felt with how Beth felt. The question does ask you to compared both of these things and I think you do address this but for someone who has experienced this I thought maybe you could bring up something that you thought she might have felt that you felt. As for the beauty in the work and the insight, I feel that you also bring something up that is very smart about the norms changing, which is something that I didn't really think that much about when she said he was a "stay-at-home dad". Besides this, the one thing that I thought could have made your blog better was just going more into depth IF you feel comfortable with that about your experience because that would have brought out a lot more beauty in this assignment.

December 10, 2010 3:18 PM

Lucas L said...

John,

I found your piece at the end relating your contrasting thoughts about a family member insightful. Perhaps the difference in feeling was the relationship difference between Beth and Erik, and you and your father? You knew your father your whole life (I'm assuming, correct me if I'm wrong), whereas Beth met her husband later in life when she had already had many life experiences.
In addition, your second paragraph dealing with the divide in what you perceive as cultural norms and what others like Beth might see was also a interesting insight. I thought so because once again, the two perspectives are coming from different backgrounds. Beth saw Erik as a notable difference in his role as a stay at home dad, probably because she was seeing it from a view influenced by her situation as a working mother. You on the other hand are seeing it from the perspective of a young man. Since you don't have kids yet or have to work fulltime, maybe there's more to a familial relationship with the community than you, or I for that matter, could have experienced yet?

Emily said...

John,

You touch on a very distinct aspect of remembrance after someone close to you has died: idolization. To idolize someone after death seems to be common, as I did that with Dad, and I think is part of the healing process. It acts as a component necessary for acception (or really, the ability to cope with death). It would be interesting to explore this process further.

You mentioned Beth grew closer to Erik while he was sick, but more importantly, this happened because she cared for him during his illness. I doubt the relationship actually gets closer, but rather there is this protective, nurturing, almost self-sacrificial element that occurs while caring for someone. We saw this with our parents. However, there is a difference between caring for someone when their life is ending, and the recognition between the image of them before and now. You saw dad as a different person when he was sick, as did I, but I wonder what mom thought as she was his primary care-giver. You should ask her.

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chris,
I think you answered the question Andy posed thoughtfully, fully and in a very organized manner. I think this was pro aswell as a con. I think your post can be more interesting when you find an insight you are either knowledgable about or curious about and persue it to the best you can. I very much enjoyed the second to last paragraph and the last one I thought it was the most insightful and you could have definitly expanded on it. I think that you should try to think deeply on the topic itself rather than precisely following a rubric. The rubric helps when ur struggling no doubt, but if you want to improve your own insights and make it more interesting for myslef think deeply and try to find a passionate idea you have. when u love the idea the reader loves reading about it. hope my comment helps

Lucas,

Your thoughts were clear and concise. I admire you for your deep insights and the clarity in how you presented your ideas. Something I often have a problem with, I have deep insights but my poor writing skills will make it hard for me to convey my point. Throughout the entirety of your work I was able to grasp (I thought) exactly what you wanted to say and where you were going. When I first saw your work I was bummed out on having to read it, but while I was reading it I enjoyed following along with your ideas. In fact, I liked it so much that during reading I was trying to think about what I should write about for ways to improve because everything seemed so on point.

I did of course find it anyway though. I thought that to make your piece stronger you should organize it accordingly I felt in the final paragraph it had some great ideas but they weren’t relative enough to be in the same paragraph. The problem I think we both have is that we can spill all our ideas onto paper (or a screen) and with a couple read-overs we can make it work fine but in doing so we won’t have what we want in exactly the right place. So next time you might want to try look over your work and find the main idea of each paragraph and if what you’re saying supports it. Other than that it was fantastic and I can say I am not unhappy with reading over your home works to come.

HW 22 - Illness & Dying Book Part 1

                I am reading My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid published by The Noonday Press in 1997. Of the first 70 pages of the book the most thought provoking was definitely in the 20’s when Jamaica first visits her brother. I get the most insight into Jamaica's own mind and the norms associated with Antigua.

Précis:

My brother and I were very distant through the entirety of our lives, in more ways than one; I lived in another country and our age difference was greater than ten years which was to blame for us never really knowing each other. I felt utter sympathy when I sat to comfort him as he lay in the hospital bed. Though I never knew him well he told me he loved me and I returned the sign of affection in complete truth. The setting of the hospital was eerie and uncomfortable, no place to care for people so ill. He was dying of AIDS, a disease no one wanted to hear about in Antigua. It was taboo and people who had it seemed to be distanced from the rest. As I left the depressing hospital, I drive down the roads of Antigua constantly being reminded of him.

“In that dirty room, other people before him had died of that same disease” (23). Having this strict organization where one is in the same room as others who have died of the disease make the stay for the sick from the perspective of the doctor more impersonal. Being another patient the sick lose their individualism. A problem with hospital care that the only alternative that would address it would be home hospice.

“These medicines common in the treatment of AIDS-related illnesses are not kept in the hospital; people who are not infected with the virus that cause AIDS do get an extreme case of thrush, do not get a terrible kind of pneumonia, and so the medicines that would treat these afflictions are not on hand at the hospital.” (34). Rather than supporting the needs of all, the hospitals take a very utilitarian perspective, address only symptoms that are apparent many time in many different scenarios. A questionable stance when Antigua has a striking AIDS population.

“None of his friends came into the room to visit him. They would stand in the doorway of his room and say something to him. They never came in” (42). This stance of distancing one’s self from the ill seems to come up in many different cultures.  I think it is not that people are worried that they will catch the illness, rather they see someone they once loved looking almost disfigured from their illness. This physical distance is to protect the viewers own emotions because the reoccurring thought of your friend in such a state can be traumatic, which is why one would not become so close and personal with the ill one.

                I think my own behavior can be reflected by certain individuals in the book. That I would want to be close to the one who is ill, it can be traumatizing but there is an obligation I feel to comfort the loved one in their greatest time of need, even if you can’t give them what they need most. I also think that hospitals should adhere to all those who are sick, of course a lack of resources are a factor but with so many dying of this epidemic, having treatment for AIDS is a must-have. The room that her brother was treated in was sad, the cleanliness is unforgivable especially with someone who has such trouble breathing. It is easy to have such a stance as I do on hospital care but no perspective can address every need and solve every problem. The treatment of the ill will always be tricky as long as we are all mortal.

HW 21 - Expert #1

Beth's stance on illness and dying seemed to be very concrete. With views similar to my own she believed that a hospital is an institution, though it has good qualities of course, is still a place detached from the rest of the viewing population. It shields us of the reality of dying and has a lifeless tone of white beds and sheets and walls. She also believed that mourning and wearing black shouldn't be the common practice when someone is dead, sadness is inevitable but we should rather celebrate that these people were in our lives and be thankful they were there. Before Erik’s unfortunate end she felt very close to him and more intimate, something I couldn’t relate to personally which I will get back to later.

Before Beth began speaking about her husband Erik's death, she painted us the picture of him being a larger than life man, someone in touch with the community himself and his family, very contributive with his art and other skills and a loving man. A trend common when someone has passed; to give them this almost heroic status and never giving mention of his faults.She went on to say he was a househusband pushing his son around in a stroller and being the only dad in the park, something very uncommon twenty years ago. She elaborated that this connected him with the community, and he then became the "dad of the neighborhood" which everyone loved him for. This is in interesting prospect when analyzed, as a man not following the norm of a community the assumption would be that he would not be loved, contrary to what Beth said. Maybe then it is a statement about the community that it is open minded. Or rather when a more dominant figure (a man) chooses to step outside the norm of a society to those less dominant (mothers taking their kids to the park) can only accept it. Or even one step further that this step was unavoidable that these norms (unless practiced religiously and fundamental to the society) are always changing, that he was simply an example of this norm going through the change in which more stay-at-home dads will be apparent and be taking their kids to the park.

Going back to what Beth said earlier about the intimacy when Erik was very close to the end was something I felt oppositely when I had a similar experience. She felt that when she was caring for Erik they were more connected. Before my own father died I felt more distanced from him he wasn’t the same image of my father I had when I was younger; he was thinner, delusional at times and visiting him in the hospital was not the same as years prior to that when I would sit on his lap and he would explain to me things far beyond my ability to comprehend at the time. I was very in touch with him at his state at the time. That state however I don’t think of as who he really was. This distance was mental and emotional in ways it was not at all physical, if he needed something I was always there to help him. Not to want to go into semantics but my view of intimacy is that the two (or more) are connected in every way, if Beth thought it was only physical by tending to him when needed then I would agree with her as I was more aware to my father’s needs whenever he presented them and I was more connected to him in this sense because I might not act on a request he posed every time before his illness but during it was my priority just as it was his.

So what constitutes as an intimate relationship? Can you be close when there is so much distance mentally and emotionally?

HW 19 - Family Perspectives on Illness & Dying

                My mom has raised me since birth and has always been there to take care of me and be available in times of need or even for just a question on the meaning of a word. She is arguably the most influential person in my life, so to have insight on how I might have originated my ideas on illness and dying I asked her about the dominant practices and her own that surround illness and dying.

                To no surprise my mom responded to the questions I posed the same why most people would; she would take care of the person who is sick, she would give them what they would ask, speak quietly and clear. The experience itself of being with a sick person is of love yearning and sadness. She only surprised me when I asked her how she would speak to someone who is sick or dying and she responded “matter-of-fact” in a very matter-of-fact tone. This approach to informing loved ones on there well being isn’t taboo but it is uncommon. Not to be confused with the question of whether when you’re in physical distress how you want the news given, because a common response is “give it to me straight doc”. No, this is not what I mean, what I mean is that when people comfort loved ones when they are very ill they try not to talk about any bad thoughts, they want to tell them about all the fun times they’ve had together, what’s to come. All avoiding the fact of their undoubtable mortality. On the side of the visitor, this usually is not the dominant discourse. Interesting that this isn’t the topic most would confront when approaching a sick loved one. Yet in the opposite situation and when one is sick she will typically want to be aware of the time they have left and the condition of their health.

                All the social practices surrounding illness and dying were brought up in class by my peers and me. All of us agreeing on every single one (it seemed like) suggest that we and the one(s) who brought us up all perpetuate the same practices when faced with a loved one. Although it could just mean we are aware of them, but from my interpretation of my peers I do not think they previously questioned social practices before (I am no exception) so I think it is safe to say we all practice generally the same practices when a loved one is sick.

                My understanding of the overarching theme in Andy’s class is that there are many social practices and when we are in his class we will suddenly be enlightened to our ignorance and choose this new alternative or minimally question the dominant social practice—again this is my understanding. I’m fully aware that he does not believe an alternative to the dominant practice will automatically lead to a utopia.  As for as practices go, my mother and I follow the dominant practice. An individual follows the dominant practice because she believes that it is the logical decision. Thus no decision/practice is made by anyone unless she has a reason she believes is valid and justified. The decision anyone makes consciously is based off prior knowledge. So when Andy aims for us to analyze these practices the root of it would be our knowledge, so rather than pondering why I should do something or what causes me to do this, I believe my time will be better spent researching information related to that decision.