"I have a prayer request for you," my sister said. "A young man, twenty-six, discovered that he has stage four lung cancer." Never a smoker. The prognosis is unknown, but it does not appear likely that he has long to live.
"It seems I am being constantly reminded of the fragility of life." my daughter said when I told her of a friend of ours who was hit by a car while riding on his bicycle and sustained serious spinal chord injury.
"There is one word you will never hear around here," my friend in the nursing home told me: "Death."
She was right. At least from what I heard when I visited my father there. I suppose we were all trying to make the last years or months of life as full as we could. Conversation was often difficult since many of those living there were hard of hearing or very tired. Around the dining room table we talked about the food and about family or friends who had come to visit. When someone from the small group died, no one told the others. The absence of the table mate spoke for itself. Once, when I asked about someone who was gone, the aide whispered that he had died. They didn't usually tell the others because they didn't want to upset them.
I am sure this is done with all good intentions. Perhaps the news would upset some of the people there, but the unwillingness to talk about death struck me as strange in a place where most people go knowing they will likely die there or in the nearby hospital. Read More