HW 18 - Health & Illness & Feasting

Each year I have two Thanksgivings. One here, in the city, and the other in New Jersey. My parents and I started off our day with my great aunt. She lives just a few blocks away and is one of the few relatives left on my dad's side. Whenever we eat with her we never cook; it's always order in. We usually order from a diner and have it delivered to her apartment. With my great aunt, we don't really "feast". She doesn't have too much of an appetite so we usually don't get too much food. My dad and I shared a spinach pie; my mom had half a burger; and my aunt had leftover salad and some home-made yellow split pea soup that we brought over with us. There wasn't much conversation during our meal; Nan (my great aunt) is 97 and has bad short-term memory so the conversation was basically, "Are you going to see Bunny (my grandma) after this?" My mom would reply, "Yes, we're going to pick her up and go to my sister's house for dinner". This conversation repeated itself probably 3 times within the 30 minutes we ate our food in. Our meal was relatively rushed; our focus was to get the food into our bodies; not really even to enjoy it.

The Thanksgiving lunch we used to have with Nan was much more lively. My great uncle; who was mentioned in my HW 17 post, passed away in 2004, leaving Nan very alone [because they never had any children]. In 2007, Nan's last sister, my grandma Eleanor, died from complications of colon cancer and a dislocated hip. The only blood relatives my aunt has left are my dad, his brother, and me. Thanksgiving lunch used to be much more "extravagant" (though we still ordered out). We would actually set the table and sit in the den and talk before our feast. As there are less people for her to be thankful for; her meals become less "enjoyable".

The meal we have with my mom's side of the family is much more of a traditional Thanksgiving. When my grandpa was still around we had dinner at my grandparent's house. But in 2008, my grandma was recovering from surgery at a rehabilitation center over Thanksgiving. I don't remember much about it, I think that we stopped at a deli on the way over and picked up sandwiches. My grandma's illness effected our regular Thanksgiving routine. Instead of having a turkey dinner in a home we ate sandwiches in an unfamiliar place.
But for the past two Thanksgivings, we have spent our time at my aunt Joanne's house. This year she got an organic turkey; as requested by my cousin, Jeremy. For sides she made mashed sweet potato and butternut squash, yellow and green beans, brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce, mushroom barley soup, vegetarian stuffing and meat stuffing. I don't think that my family really cares about the "giving thanks" aspect of Thanksgiving. We attempted to have a toast; someone said something along the lines of, "I am thankful to have all of us together as a family"; and then we drank the artificially flavored sparkling pear cider.
My two cousins, Jeremy and Daniel, are known very well in our family for their eating habits. I think Daniel reffered to Jeremy as "the beast" at one point or another. Daniel and his wife had already had Thanksgiving dinner with her parents, so they just tried the stuffing. Jeremy on the other hand kept going. I don't know how many servings of Turkey he had, but everyone at the table was done eating and he was still going. When he was finally done he did some stretching and rubbed his belly. Everything that my aunt made was delicious; people wanted to keep eating but they just didn't have room for anything else. Food pleasure wasn't the main attraction of this meal though; there was a lot of conversation and rarely a moment of silence. If people weren't stuffing their mouths they were talking, and sometimes, they attempted to do both.
We did watch the football game after dessert (pumpkin bread and fresh fruit crumble). Only a few people were really into the game though. Some of us looked through old photo albums and talked about late family members. My family's Thanksgiving isn't necessarily based on thanks nor the pleasure of food. It's more based on simply being with family.

HW 17 - First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit

I was talking to a friend a while ago and she was explaining to me how she gets scared when she's alone because she associates death with being alone. I asked her why she was scared of death. She couldn't give me a well thought out response. I think that everyone is scared of death; that's why we avoid it everyday. That's why we stand on curbs instead of in the middle of the street; why we get vaccinations at the doctors office. But death is inevitable at certain points; why avoid something that you know is going to happen?

Sometimes I'll come home with a cough or a warm forehead and my mom automatically goes for the medicine cabinet. She'll pull out a big white basket full of colorful pill bottles and syrups. about 99% of the time I say "I'll pass" and head to my room for some rest instead. I really hate taking medicine to help "cure" myself when I'm sick. I have never actually done research on medicine or commonly used drugs but I've always felt like I'm putting something into my body that doesn't belong there. I feel like at this point in my life my immune system is strong enough to fight off a virus or bacteria on it's own.

I don't really have a personal view on death. I don't necessarily believe that things happen for a reason but I do believe that whatever does happen occurs because of an outside cause. Death can happen but death has to have a cause in order to happen. For example one's heart can stop beating because an artery got clogged because they led an "unhealthy" lifestyle which can be based off of many different factors. Another example could be that someone got shot which led to them to bleed so much that they died. In the first situation would probably be classified as "natural causes" the second situation would probably be classified as "murder". Sometimes I question how we classify death or the causes of death. What does it actually mean to be dead?

I'm hoping that this unit will help me to better understand death and why my friend was scared of being alone or why I'm so skeptical about medicine.

Some questions I've posed in my head:
What do other people think of when they hear of a suicide? What are the differences between the different standards of death (natural, suicide, murder)? Why do we have such intense emotional reactions to death?

While I'm reading my classmates' blogs, I'm noticing that almost everyone has a personal experience linked to their post. Here goes mine.
My first experience with death was when I was in the fourth grade. My great uncle Abe died. I actually don't remember the circumstances of his death but that I was a little bit shocked. When I first found out I didn't cry I didn't say anything I just went into my bedroom and sat on my bed. I remember I tried SO hard to cry. I thought about what he looked like when he died, I thought about pain and anguish. No matter what I thought about I couldn't cry. I think I got a few tears out and went to sleep. The next day we had a class trip I remember it a Circle Line trip (a 3 hour boat ride). When I woke up I felt normal, like nothing had happened. I started to feel queasy; an image of the Bah-Humbug doormat my Great Uncle kept outside of his apartment year-round popped into my head. I was so confused, why was I thinking about this now? why didn't this come to me yesterday, when I found out he had died? I dismissed my sick feeling and went to school. As soon as I hit 23rd St. (the street his apartment building was on) the sadness hit me. It wasn't until I got to school though that I started to cry. I cried and cried. I cried on the way to the boat. I cried while we were getting on the boat. I cried so much that I literally passed out. I feel asleep on some uncomfortable wooden folding chairs with pleather upholstery attached to the seat.