Why Can't I Say it Like That?

A lot of the reading I do for work relates to death. We deal with health and specifically a lot of end of life issues.

Almost every article I would read about death would refer to Sherwin B. Nuland's book "How We Die". So last week I decided I needed to read the book. I was starting to think I might be the only person around who hadn't.

I am less than 1/4 of the way through the book. Dr. Nuland has put into words that make me jealous some of the things I have tried to express. For instance, I have never cared for viewing of the body before, during, or after a funeral. I was horrified the first time it happened. I was 10 years old and attending my grandfather's funeral. I had already experienced seeing my father cry for the first time. Then everyone got up and went sedately to the front of the church. I didn't know why we were going up there but I think my young mind assumed we were going to get a treat. Imagine my horror when I discovered we went to the alter to view my dead grandfather in his coffin!

As time progressed and I experienced more funerals, I learned not to be so repelled by this practice but I still found it unpleasant. I came to the conclusion that very few of the bodies I viewed bore much resemblance to the living persons they had once housed. They looked like wax figurines. I attributed this to the fact that the personality was what made an individual what he or she really was. But I never felt I could express it well. Dr. Nuland has done it for me.

"That day would surely have been a lot easier for me, and its memory less painful, had I but known that not only my own grandmother but indeed everyone becomes littler with death - when the human spirit departs, it takes with it the vital stuffling of life. Then, only the inanimate corpus remains, which is the least of all the things that make us human."

His book is really interesting as it describes the physiology of dying. I want to share some of it with my mother so she can understand that Daddy's death was natural and not the result of some negligence on the part of his caretakers. I have to figure out how to present it to her - it has to be brief and to the point, and she doesn't like the idea that living is fatal.