Hw 19

Both my parents have lived to see death and illness more times then they want to admit. They have seen it in war, and in their family life. It stems from illness that cannot be healed. My parents understand death in a way I can’t imagine. Even thought I have seen death and illness so much in my life already.

My dad has witnessed death in ways I wish upon no man. He was drafted in to the army to serve in North Korea in 1969 while his brother was sent to the Vietnam. When he was there, he was fixing DMZ (Korean Demilitarized Zone) signs a lot of the time and one day his unit was ambushed. He lost his best friend in the army in the first two minutes of the ambush and he was pined down for seven hours. He had to watch his best friend on the ground dead for this time. He analyzed everything he could think of. One of the biggest things he thought about beside his family was the idea of fate and if he believed in it. He ended up accepting that fate was real and accepting that if he died it was fate. Right then he was able to reconcile with death, face to face. He also knew that if North Korea attacked South Korea at full strength there would be no reinforcements ready to help the front line and he would have been dead in five minutes.

But his brother saw more death then my father would have ever scene. He was killing not only men but also children. This had a physiological effect on him and when he got back home my father knew he was changed in way that was not good for him. Also coming home his brother had to live with everybody in America being mad at him. Threw his pain he had five different types of cancers that not only my father watched him go threw but I did as well. He survived it all and he is living in Florida.

My dad saw even more illness and dying coming home from the war, when his father had stomach cancer. His father was a world war two veteran and by the time my grandfather saw a doctor he was incurable so he stayed at home to live out his life with his kids.

My mom lived with a mother that suffered from breast cancer. When my mom was 12 her mother was diagnosed with the cancer. Three long years later her cancer was dormant and the family was happy but it came back two years later this time proving incurable. My grandmother who I never meet lived her life out at home never going to the hospital again till she died. She lived out her days at home with her kids. Just recently the rest of my mom’s family has died, first with her brother whom suffered then died form lunge and brain cancer. He stayed at home to die not going and living at the hospital. Then her father died from a heart attack.

Unlike the modern social practice of dying in a hospital my grandparents died with their closest love ones at home. However they did go strait to the hospital when they were sick but they were determent not to make it a home. Both my grandparents were very religious so following their religious social practices my grandfather had a very catholic funeral and my grandmother had a very Jewish funeral. To this day my parents are not very religious but my mom want to be breed religiously and my dad wants a religious ceremony but to be cremated. They have not decided whether they want to follow the social normal if dying in a hospital or be like their parents and do their own thing.

I have scene a lot of death and illness in my family and I know I will follow the social normal and go to the doctor when I’m sick and I would like to die at home but only time will tell what I may do.