Some insights:
-Death is something that is distant and we are separated from it
-The last 10 days of her husbands life were some of the best days of their marriage
-Telling her husband to let go
-Taking care of her dying husband opposed to having him in the hospital
-It was not peaceful when her husband was dying like they show it in movies and his looks drastically changed
-She accepted that Erik was going to die
The fact that Beth took care of her husband at home with no help stood out to me immediately. Prior to this I had never heard of anyone doing that, usually someone dying is kept in the hospital. I totally agreed with this decision she made, if I had a dying family member I would want to do the same thing. It just seemed so much more peaceful being at home opposed to the hospital which is just doctors in white coats and note pads in an isolated place. Home seems like a much more comfortable place and you can be with the people you love and you don't get covered with a blanket and wheeled away after you die. I know I would much rather die at home.
Another insight was that we are separated from death in our society. I never really thought about this at all. I guess because it has always been normal to me that we're disconnected from death. It has become normal to put someone in a hospital behind closed curtains isolated from the everything. You don't see people die. The person is dying in this unfamiliar uncomfortable place with people they don't know maybe a couple family members.
There are so many questions I still have. How can you accept the fact that someone you love is dying? What do you say to someone during their last days? Is there anything that can really put you at peace? I haven't had much experience with death but I just don't know how people cope with losing people. I also was wondering about our society. How did it become that death is so separated from everyone? Also I was wondering why do they show death differently in movies than it actually is? Why is it covered up and changed so much?
I liked this part, because you used things associated with a hospital to describe it, as opposed to only descriptive words:
ReplyDelete"It just seemed so much more peaceful being at home opposed to the hospital which is just doctors in white coats and note pads in an isolated place. Home seems like a much more comfortable place and you can be with the people you love and you don't get covered with a blanket and wheeled away after you die."
You could have expanded on why you thought home seemed more comfortable, but other then that, the whole paragraph was really good.
Hey Burt,
ReplyDeleteI think that the strongest paragraph you have in this was the second paragraph. In that short paragraph I think you stated something that not many people have stated in their blogs and it is one of the most key pieces to what was being said by Beth. You mentioned that we normally don't see people die. I think this was the beginning of a really good paragraph but you failed to make a follow up statement about this. I think your work could have been much better if you would have talked about this more or staying home helping someone more considering that you said it was something that jumped out to you immediately. Posing some questions and trying to dig deeper is something that I really encourage you to do for the remainder of the blog post. Also you seem to answer the questions pretty well but the questions do say compare and contrast the insights that you have and I would like to see how some of what you think. Then for the questions you do ask, I feel like some of these could have been questions that you tried to answer when you talk about other things in the beginning of the post. So what you overall need to focus on for later is expanding on your ideas because they will probably be good, maybe adding in something from personal experience and making sure you compare and contrast your thoughts. Doing this will completely answer the homework question.
Jasper,
ReplyDeleteThis was a very nice, thoughtful post. I enjoyed how the last paragraph was full of insightful questions that would leave the reader thinking; not only about Erik's death, but of the overall picture of society's way of dealing with illness and dying.
What I think you could improve on is the beauty/grammar. This is just my personal opinion, but I think that grammar can be quite beautiful; adding semi-colons or commas here and there can make a piece look and flow beautifully.
There are a few places where I wanted to sneak in commas and semicolons or switch words around. Here is an example:
"It just seemed so much more peaceful being at home opposed to the hospital which is just doctors in white coats and note pads in an isolated place".
I would have changed that to:
"It just seemed much more peaceful being at home, as opposed to the ___(add adjectives here) hospital; an isolated place full of doctors wearing white coats and carrying note pads.
By changing around words in sentences and adding more punctuation (but not TOO much punctuation), you can create a beautifully flowing piece that will hit the reader even harder than it already did.
Cecilia (Mom) comment
ReplyDelete"Home seems like a much more comfortable place and you can be with the people you love and you don't get covered with a blanket and wheeled away after you die." I agree and it was not that long ago when it was common for families to take care of older people. Houses were bigger and it was common for grandparents to move in with the family if they became lonely and could not take care of themselves. They died at home with their family around them. Women stayed home so there was always someone there. Today women must work and it may very difficult to have someone at home and care for them during sickness and dying. You can further develop this idea and compare care of old people today and how both people in a couple are forced to work today to cover cost of living and care for elderly or sick.