2 posts tagged “dying”

"In life, every ending is just the start of another story.  Except when you die - that's an ending that's really an ending. I suppose if novels were really true to life, they'd all end with all the characters dying; but if they did, we wouldn't want to read them, would we?"   - Love, etc, Julian Barnes

       This had me laughing . . . and at the same time remembering this.

       Dying is an art.

"Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it."  - Firefly, Haruki Murakami

After responding to codes every single night of my Internal Medicine duty it is hard not to view death as a common occurrence.  I am able to act nonchalant and joke about during a code - something I try not to do for the sake of the patient's relatives.  When the code doesn't go well, as some inevitably do, I am left with crying or shocked relatives looking on as the nurses start postmortem care.  And while I can now handle seeing my patient's die, what I need to learn is how to talk to those relatives left behind.  I didn't take the death of my grandfather very well year's ago.  I'm not expecting these people to take their loved one's death any better.  But beyond the pat on the back and quiet words of condolences to relatives there really isn't much I can do right now.

I suppose a priest would be better equipped to handle these situations.  But what if the relatives are people who don't believe in a god or a heaven?  Saying that the recently departed is in a better place will certainly be of no help at all.  Nor will talking about death as being part of the circle of life.

How to?  How to?