My second session of summer classes started monday and my medical ethics class has already been more thought provoking than anything else I've taken in the recent past. We're starting with the topic of Advanced Directives and Living Wills, and because there is no philosophy pre-req for the course (Strange because it's a 300 level) we're using it as the teaching framework for the basics of Utilitarianism, Deontology, and Divine Command Ethics.
Our study material includes a few movies, and this weeks was the film 'My Sister's Keeper,' about a young girl with cancer, her family, and specifically her younger sister who was born to be a Savior Child donor for bone marrow, organs, blood, etc.
The biggest personal question the film brought up that I haven't been able to settle on a satisfactory answer to is this, Who is allowed at a death watch? When it is known that a person will die within a few hours/days, who is allowed to be with them at the end? Who isn't allowed? Is it a question of age? Maturity? Closeness of relation? Spoilers following, in My Sister's Keeper, the only person with Kate when she passes is her mother, everyone else having gone home for the night to return the following morning. Do you allow an 11 year old to be present for the passing of her sister? How about a 14 year old brother? How about a 5 year old? Where is the mythological 'Age of Understanding?'
I don't think anyone should be excluded from death watch and age shouldn't factor at all. I think there's something to be said about people's fear of death and how Western culture stigmatizes it. Other cultures have treated death very differently; tribes in the New Guinea famously ate their loved ones, while others brought relative's bodies out on holidays to eat with them at feasts. Yes, it can be painful losing a friend or relative, but it's natural and inevitable. While I don't endorse cannibalism or holding onto bodies, our extreme aversion to death and the dying borders on emotionally unhealthy and dictates that death is a traumatizing experience to be avoided at all costs. The following is anecdotal, but was a primary influence on my view. When I was three my brother died. My parent's initially thought this would be too damaging for me to cope with and didn't allow me to visit him after his accident or attend his funeral. While I struggled with why he disappeared this did some serious, but temporary, damage that manifested into emotional issues and a severe stutter. About a year later they took the time to explain why he was gone and the concept of death, this was a powerful moment that I still remember vividly -- everything made sense. The other issues resolved themselves, but what I learned was that it wasn't death that was traumatizing, but how everyone regarded it.
First of all, I'm sorry to hear about your brother, if I could fathom that sort of experience I would offer a bit more in condolence, but I don't so I'm at least glad you have resolved the impacts of that in yourself. This is very, deeply, painfully true. However, just like your parents I don't believe any conscientious parent would want to expose their child-- doesn't even matter how young-- to a loss like death be it in the family or not. Your parents made an understandable and well-meaning decision to shelter you from the event of your brother's death. They could not foresee the consequences on you or how you would try to make sense of it in a mature way, moreover how trying to do so would impact you personally over time. I don't think I would let my kid see someone die. I also wouldn't forgive myself if I justified letting him stay at a death watch as some sort of lesson for life or manliness. There are some headstrong, intelligent, and wise adults I know that came from various parts of the Middle East as actual child refugees, of war and poverty and the like. Some of them experienced death close-up and first-hand. They all claim it stayed with them forever and is a strong internal guide, an invaluable experience in the end. None of them felt it was something they would want anyone else to experience.Yes, it can be painful losing a friend or relative, but it's natural and inevitable.
Well, yeah, sure. No one wants people to have to experience bad things in life (generally speaking). That does not have any impact on the fact that everyone has to. Do you also plan on hiding rape, murder, war, and crime from your child? Will you not let them read the newspaper or hear the TV? Will you refuse to discuss current events in front of them? Have you considered that hiding the bad things from a child might result in the child being unable to cope with them later in life, blind-sided by situations that they were never raised to be prepared for despite the fact that they are common occurrences? For the record I have very strong opinions on whether children should be exposed to "bad" or "adult" stuff that stem from my own experiences where my parents tried to "protect" me by not informing me of certain dangers and I ended up unprepared for those situations when they began to occur in high school and college. I think kids are pretty resilient creatures and I don't think you're giving them as a whole or as a class the benefit of the doubt here. I also think that you, OftenBen and I are speaking a bit out of depth across the board as, well, we be child-free.None of them felt it was something they would want anyone else to experience.
ok ok please don't get me wrong. The thing here is that experiencing those things are important, yes, and they are valuable to the character of those who have experienced them personally-- we're making a distinction between reading the paper and sitting in at death watch/witnessing war-- but as a parent I still would find it my responsibility to protect my child from it. It's not that my son should not understand and witness that. It's a selfish instinct, understand, to say "I grew up in the shitter of Earth, and I fought my way and sacrificed my childhood to get out of warzone X, so I could marry a lovely woman and raise my beautiful boy in a safe and clean suburb in NJ." The last thing 'I' want is to let my son see a loved one die at 12 years old like 'I' did back in warzone x. Even if it makes him a strong and mature man. edit: That said. I will not be so ignorant as to stop my kid from finding any resources and information on his own. If he wants to read the NYTimes, I'll buy him the paper and get a subscription of the Economist too, have talks with him about current events and politics the way I wish my dad did. Never would I dare stop my kid from chasing his curiosity until it gets so far he learns the sense to distinguish his own boundaries. If he's in high school and decides he wants to enlist in the army or the navy or go back to Armenia and serve the draft, I wouldn't hold him back because if he goes and fucks up that failure is a lesson for him to learn on his own. But I will not willingly expose him to death without his complete and full understanding of what it is and how he is/is not prepared to handle it. That's on me when he's 12. Not him.
True I often go "slippery slope." For me the crux of the issue, as I said in another comment, is that I don't know if I would be able to live with myself as a parent if I prevented my child from being able to give a loved one a final goodbye, and I'd be worried about the potential of resentment over this over time. I think a case-by-case approach is probably most appropriate. For the record, you also compared wanting to be at a death watch to wanting a gun...and those are very drastically different things too :)
Hm, you're right about the final goodbye. I'm not sure. Yeah my comparisons are wild but I'm sorta spanning the whole spectrum of 'heavy'/traumatic experiences for examples. It is probably personal and case-by-case as you said. I get over-zealous in the morning :'(
I've been third wheel at a death watch, there to support those who will go on living, an observer who doesn't have a profound attachment. As a watcher I thought it was one of the most beautiful, powerful things I have even seen. The intensity of the love and honor given to the person who is dying was overwhelming, absolutely sincere. I'm sure there are times when it is not like this, people less loved watched out of a sense of obligation but I haven't stood that kind of death watch. The tenderness and sorrow of a child holding their parent that just left the world is just an awe inducing expression that is viscerally primal and honest. I like funerals, I like open caskets. Giving full regard to a person for a last but brief time seems like very least we can do to acknowledge a persons life. I like the attempt to evoke the spirit, manner and accomplishments of a person when delivered in a collection anecdotes delivered by those who knew then best. So many people hate open coffin funerals. "It just doesn't look like her," they say. Well of course not, she's dead, probably after an illness that already physically decimated her already. Our stories and remembrances will only ever be vague approximations of the person we knew but we have still gathered to share them. How different are the remains in the whole process. I know people who won't take their kids to funerals of people who significant in their lives. I think I only really started to think about things like how does one take the measure of importance and goodness of a life after I went to my first funeral. I'm not sure about the death vigil age. It wouldn't be beneficial to take a kid just for the sake of doing it, that's for sure. Being around death is powerful but not completely terrible. If something were to happen to my wife and my family were in this position I would bring my three year old daughter. I would want her to see us express how much love, honor and regard I have for her. I would also want her to share the sorrow, to have something more than an important person in her life disappear with all the adults around her mumbling unintelligible gibberish about where her mom went. Thinking about this gave me some heavy feelings.
Doesn't the parent have some sort of responsibility, wherein a child's desire to be there might be an ignorant one or not understood well enough to justify "wanting" to? When i asked daddy for my own gun when I was 9, even that sob made the ingenious conclusion that he should probably not do that for me. In my head however, the desire was genuine and in no way ill-intended for anyone.. it also had no regard for the risks involved; in the death watch scenario, that risk would be unpredictable trauma that could surface aggressively years later in life. Permanently. A child most likely isn't considering his own exposure to traumatic experiences resulting in late-onset PTSD when he just wants to see how his brother is doing.
Perhaps I am not fully aware of how one can acquire PTSD and which situations can induce it, but - while I agree there are definitely certain situations where observing a death could be extremely emotionally trying - it doesn't seem extremely likely that being present in a controlled hospital situation while someone dies is going to cause PTSD. I'm only excerpting from Wikipedia here so this doesn't mean that much, but: I mean, it's death. It's a natural part of life. It's not pretty but everyone is going to experience it, and probably more than once through their lifetime; I don't subscribe to a "think of the innocent children!" mentality where it's better to protect a child from reality because of their youth. Like I said there are situations which I think could be more borderline, for instance if a person is hit by a car and is suffering grievous physical injuries, or a person who had suffered burns over the majority of their body and is dying from that. However, especially in the first situation, I'm pretty sure you're not going to have a lot of time to assemble a death watch in the first place. You know how ignorance is resolved? Exposure. Do you not think that being unable to say a final goodbye to your brother or mother as they were dying could not also potentially result in unpredictable trauma and potential resentment against the family members who prevented a child from being there? And, the question that my opinion hinges upon for most of this discussion: Are you willing to be that person that tells a child they are not allowed to say goodbye?Most people having experienced a traumatizing event will not develop PTSD.[2] Women are more likely to experience higher impact events, and are also more likely to develop PTSD than men.[3] Children are less likely to experience PTSD after trauma than adults, especially if they are under ten years of age
Neither do I. I think/hope we're on the same page now on the other thread:)I don't subscribe to a "think of the innocent children!" mentality where it's better to protect a child from reality because of their youth.
Completely agree with and find this statement reasonable. Don't worry though - we are allowed to disagree ;) But I will not willingly expose him to death without his complete and full understanding of what it is and how he is/is not prepared to handle it.
I feel like somehow I was more resilient as a little dude than I am now. I can't explain it, but I would probably take a death harder now than I did as I was young. Maybe it's because I understand it better but still, I don't know.