I happened across this story earlier today and a young man, I think he was around 27 or 28 hasn't got long to live, his cancer is terminal and his friends have melted away and that is sad.
We don't know how to deal with death I think. I'm as bad as the rest, I did try talking to my friend who died last December as much as I could but he couldn't really hear me and I made a typical hash of it as he knew he was dying and sort of said so much to me and I wasn't prepared for that. I should have been, I knew he was ill (but not terminal) and so perhaps I should have made some notes of things to talk about and cheer him up.
It sort of lines up with my own experiences in that only close friends really stayed by and I was surprised that some people who hardly knew me took time out to visit, that was most unexpected. Close friends melted away and some barely spoke to me and others, you could see were visibly shaken when they saw me. I bought the Tee Shirt which (as chance would have it I am wearing today) which was from Monty Python's Spamalot and has the words "I'm Not Dead Yet!" across the chest.
When you say you have Cancer that's the immediate thought that people (who have not had it) think. "Are you alright?" probably means "You're not going to die are you?" Human nature, lack of understanding about the disease and our inability to deal with dying and our friends dying especially.
I'm called a lot of things and one of them is cold. I am cold, my father's death whilst it was sad, was not unexpected. It was a blessing as he really didn't deserve that last set of weeks in the Hospital with some staff not really being the caring professionals you'd like to think existed. Luckily we were there to effect responses during the day not so much at night but there you go.
So people ask why I don't do the "Facebook" thing you know, "Happy Heavenly Birthday Dad!" or "It's x years since you left us" or "I know you are looking down on us". I don't get the point of that at all. He is no longer here and like all those before him we said our goodbyes and life goes on. He never wanted a memorial for people to pilgrimage to his headstone and I think likewise. Yes, he was my dad and a good one too, we had great and not so great times and in all of this he lives on in me and in my head so what more do I need to do? If I didn't say enough when he was alive and I'm all cut up about it, what would posting in Facebook achieve?
Back to the point, this poor chap has sort of found out the hard way that people cannot really deal with the facts that he isn't going to be around for long. I have sympathy for both him and his friends but I think it's a shame that they don't go over and see him. Grab some beers and crisps and go say goodbye with some dignity and perhaps some light humour for not to be there will surely play on their mind in the future. They'll probably turn up at his funeral and all say what a great bloke he was but not that they were scared of going to see him in the run up to his final days.
We have a very bad time with death - we perhaps shouldn't but it's another taboo sort of subject. I wonder if the do-gooders have something to do with that?
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