Notes #2

Why Is It Hard to Die?

In her book, Ross(1975) cited that according to Hans O. Mauksch , Ph. D., one of the reasons why it is hard to die is the health institutions’ perspective of dying people. In our modern and complex society, we set up expectations and roles that should be done by the health institutions such as the hospitals and its workers: the doctors and nurses. And those roles were to heal or to cure sickness and to aid in recovery process. And these expectations what made the health institutions shift from being devoted to help those poor and dying people to an institution that focuses only to meet the expectations of the society. Thus, even with the advancement of the science and technology of medicine, health institutions perceive the dying people as failures of their roles without even considering that those people served also as a reminder of the limits of the science and technology of medicine. And the very prevalent example of this is the whisking away as quickly as possible of the bodies of the dead persons even minutes have only passed after their death, as if their deaths were a haunting reminder to them that they failed. With that connotation, it’s hard for people to die for they don’t want to symbolize failure that needs to be get rid of or hidden away, they want to be cared and cherished even in death(pp. 5-8).

Source:

Ross, E. K. (1975). Death: The Final Stage of Growth. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice – Hall Inc.

Link from insidiousdeath(common blog): http://insidiousdeath.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/notes-3/