I was in some way nervous to ask my mother what she thought about Illness and dying as a whole. With the notion that she probably wouldn’t really be responsive to the questions I had because at the time she was pretty busy and she was dealing with a cold and a migraine. Hoping not to get close to one word answers to my questions I received more than I predicted. The first question I asked to get into the topic of sickness was, how has she been feeling for the past couple of days since she’s been sick? She told me, “I feel so tired, I’ve just wanted to hurry up and get home from work and lay down. I hate the feeling of being sick it’s the worse. I’ve gone to the doctor for the past two days and he gave me medicine, and referred me to get seen once again to see how my health is all around". I than asked her what comes to mind when she hears that other people are sick or dealing with an illness? She answered, "what do I mean?” I told her doesn’t it get scary and pretty repetitive to hear someone is sick? Especially with our cousins and all? She said every family has a history of sickness in some type of way but ours isn’t serious. My mother pointed out that theirs some things that people must worry about when it comes to a family illness and shouldn’t be avoided.
In our society it seems like doctors and medicine are always the solution to dealing with illness. Not only that but also isolating themselves. Other dominant cultural perspectives are that sickness is something that in some sort of way can be avoided. My mother noted that this shouldn’t be the case; people should pay attention to their health, especially when it’s in some people’s case where sickness is a repeated problem. But she insisted that a doctor and medicine was a good enough solution for dilemmas with sickness. Like many others do. Self reliance and self awareness is what people in our society don’t contain when it comes to staying healthy. They wait for someone to give them a direction like a doctor to try and get better. Sleeping and isolating them because they don’t feel like their normal selves. My mother couldn’t stand not being able to go about her day because she knew their was something eating up her ability to want to do things.
The nervousness that I experienced from gathering myself to interview my mother was coming from the topic of dying. I asked her a general question which was, what her views were about dying? She answered that everyone hopes to live a long great life. As the conversation grew she talked on about how everyone expects to do so much before they die. It’s said to see many peoples life go when it’s by accident like a car crash. Because their life wasn’t fulfilled to the extent that they wanted. Some people live longer than others. She referred to my grandmother and other ancestors who have lived past their 90s of age. That they were able to do so much late in their age like what they’ve done early on like having kids or providing for the family. I definitely saw the difference between what I noticed as kid from what she noticed.
What pierced my thoughts the most about my mothers response to death and dying was that she knew it was no way in predicting it. People die and that’s just that. She didn’t word it like that but I came to the conclusion that she sort of meant that. When she talked about my ancestors I realized that their dominant health and illness practices didn’t consist of much. They were healthy and strong minded because they came from countries where everything was worked hard for, food is grown and their minds weren’t pointed in unnecessary directions like the average American. Many people die from other causes like depression. But my grand parents were the superiors in our family because they knew tactics on how to survive and it would show in them because it was instilled from how they were brought up. They weren’t scared of death neither and knew it would eventually come. They cared about the family’s ability to stay strong rather than the typical sibling now in days caring about inheritance or something like that. Thinking about that shows the difference in mindsets of people now and back than. People now are pathetic I’m noticing.
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