Death and Dying

Death and Dying

Introduction

We are not only disturbed by external things, but also by ours beliefs and imaginations; they conjure up in our minds with regard to the form of our future life. Death is not by itself dreadful: the terror or dread exists only in our minds. It is not common that we are strong and brave enough to come face to face with the idea of our mortality. Insistence upon the truth of suffering may seem awful and totally unacceptable to our mind which is not capable to face realities and truth, but it certainly helps eliminate or reduce the dread of fear by knowing exactly how to face death.

Experience

In today's society we are so convinced that we will live a long life that we let many days simply slip by. We delay fulfillment of dreams or ambitions until the later years, when illness or limited finances may restrict our ability to do what we had planned. In this sense, death has robbed us of the meaning of life. We no longer take each day and use it for everything it is worth (Ufema, 1995).

My grandfather died 86 years old. He was not sick. He just has the heart failure. The funeral follows the ritual of the Greek Orthodox Church. His body was kept in the house for three days. After, we went to the church for one hour, where was the religion part of the funeral, and the last step was to cemetery, where was buried in a nice chapel. He builds this chapel at the age 40 - and is still for all our family.

Death is not something that happens only to one particular age group. Most of us tend not to think about it, because we associate dying with old age (Gina, 1998). As I have found out, death has no age limit. Death could be anywhere from birth to old age. We never know when death will come our way. Often one person's death seems more acceptable than others do. Usually, the death of an elder is considered natural, while the death of an infant is considered tragedy. Death is experienced differently, depending on the age of the individual (Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, 1997).

At the funeral he got a lot of flowers and a lot of people follow his funeral, family and friends. After cemetery all friends and family was invite for dinner in the memory of my grand father, where they remember things happy in life (Lydaker, 1996). For more than one week, after the funeral I was said and I miss him a lot. I had the regrets I did not spend more time with him when he was alive. I think I could do some activities he always enjoyed, some short trips. One of the most import things that stay in my memory it was his desire not to die in pain or to live with pain.

Personal feelings

In class, we all shared a little bit about ourselves and everyone seems ...