â#âsocial deathâ is a phenomenon that refers to someone being treated as though theyâre already dead #when they are still alive #it is very common for people with dementia to be treated this way #itâs very upsetting #and I think our societyâs disconnect from death is a big part of thatâ
I have SO many feelings about this. The first and only time Iâve seen a dead body (aging millennial here) was when I was about⌠26? I believe? My grandfather had just passed away and I was able to make it to their house before the funeral directors took him away. I saw him again during the viewing and was struck by how much more real, more human, the first experience was.
If anyone out there is familiar with mortician Caitlin Doughty, she wrote a memoir about working in a crematory, and founded an organization called the Order of the Good Death. The book, âSmoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Stories from the Crematoryâ, is a great read, if youâre into that kind of thing (itâs hilarious, in a morbid kind of way), but I recommend it over and over to people for a specific reason: she advocates for home death care as a means of fully caring for the dead, and a means of fully living our own lives. The idea is to bring death care, burial, and ritual connected with crossing over back into the home, and to refamiliarize ourselves with death in its natural context.
As a seminarian, Iâm a big believer in spiritual community as a possible answer to this problem of âsocial deathâ; thereâs a reading from the Unitarian Universalist hymnal that contains a line: âwe need one another when we come to die, and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey.â That line gives me chills every time because I feel itâs intimately connected to the profundity of the work that we need to do societally around death. Itâs an inevitable process that will happen to us all, and yet so much of our effort and resources are spent assuming that every person is afraid of a gentle journey into death and would rather have their lives violently, painfully, and hurtfully extended.
I also have a lot of thoughts about how our lack of familiarity with death also leads to a callousness and abstraction in terms of thinking about war, poverty, and healthcare. Consider how cavalier politicians are about sending soldiers to fight overseas with no end in sight, on a scale that would be considered unconscionable at any other time in history, knowing that a huge portion of these people will never come home. Consider people who vote the way they do because American patriotism is equated with support for our military actions, regardless of their ethical ramifications. Consider the right-wing understanding of disease as something that only happens to people who make bad choices in life, and the legislation thatâs continually being pushed to support that false idea.
Iâm convinced that if more people were directly acquainted with the realities of death, they would think harder before mouthing off in support of sending themselves or others to get hurt or killed, or taking away the medication and health care thatâs keeping someone alive.
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