HMW 18 Health, Illness & Feasting

Coming from a culture that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving has given me the perspective that Thanksgiving is the same as Christmas, just without the presents.

It still has the tradition of family, stuffing yourself until you feel sick and fall asleep, usually some arguments, and your version of the Queens speech (the Macy's Thanksgiving day Parade.) A few weeks before Thanksgiving the super in building puts up hideous, tacky turkeys on our front door, and without that I probably wouldn't know Thanksgiving is around the corner.

Last year, my first year in America, my mum attemped to make a 'Turkducken.' She thought it would be fun and American, but in reality it's a vegetarians worst nightmare (see above) and yes, thats right, a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey. But this year my Mum went to Connecticut to eat a 40 pound turkey and I attemped to cook for my boyfriend and I. To me it was similar to a Sunday roast.

All in all as a non-religious, vegetarian Brit, turkey day is wasted on me...

Initial Thoughts

When I first head that we were going to be doing 'Illness and Dying' as a unit, I'll be the first to admit I wasn't looking forward to it.

My grandad died last year and the memories and the hurt is still fresh, so I wasn't too thrilled to have to be reminded of death constantly in school.

When I thought about it deeper, I did realise that similar to other 'social norms' there was already a set way to do things. You were to visit your family member in hospital if they were sick because thats where they would go. There was no question about it, it was just accepted. Not that I thought there was anything wrong with it, but then did I think that because I had just accepted it? Thinking deeper I started to question alot of things to do with the social norms surroundig illness and dying (as I do with everything ever since taking this class..) and saw things in a different way as I did before.
Why did we cremate people, when thats what they did in the plague when there was such a vast amount of bodies there was no room for graves, so they just used to burn the bodies? Why do we traditionally wear black to funerals, when in other cultures such as Indian, they wear bright colours?

A conversation arose in class about remembering someone. Andy asked whether someone would remember there Grandmother, and whether she remembered her Grandmother. This was a harsh reality to accept for me as I'm dealing with such a recent death that is constantly on my thoughts and the thought of this memory no longer being present is scary.

One thing I really noticed at my Grandads funeral was that hearing 'I know how you feel' or 'It'll all get better' really isn't comforting. I remember telling my Mum if I heard one more "I'm so sorry" I was going to go crazy. I understood people were only trying to give there condolences and be sympathetic, but to me they just seemed like a rehearsed, thoughtless words of nothingness.