HW19 - Family Perspectives on Illness & Dying

I came home , tried, sick, lonely.Dreading the idea of having plies and plies of homework. It seems as this last year comes closer and closer to the end , I'm left more in confusion. Not just about the usual school and what not but life. I ask my self day in and day out what am I doing? where am I going ?Sometimes I wish the world would just slow down so I could. And with the current unit, it has me thinking about my own immortality even more. If I died tonight what have I done ? what am I even going to do ? It seems as most of my friends are already plotting out the finest details of their life's ,I'm lost . I'm not even sure where I'm at in the story of my life and we can never be sure that with a flip of the page it will be the end.

I guess if anything I want make sure I'm doing something right, that my life tho at this point not the definition of success, means something. That theirs someone out their when I get ill will take care of me. Its seems the more I write this the more the thought occurs, how can we be living life to the fullest under all this stress. Most of our youth is spent in the class rooms,hrs on hrs doing boring work.Coming home doing more work, spending time watching TV and updating our facebook statuses. Making some time for dinner and arguing with are parents.Then one day we wake up and where as old as the people teaching us the lessons. More time then passes , we have families, job's, and bills until where siting in a hospital room finding out we have terminal cancer.How is that spending your life to the fullest ? See we love as a society to use cliches and metaphors to make life easier. To hide the facts of life. The biggest disadvantage of life isn't death but that only at the end do we realize what we had, what we lost, what we were, what we could of been, what we did, what we never did. I'm not trying to say to live life on the edge like some of my friends ,smoking and drinking. I'm just saying not to squander it. Because it the real span of things its short.

Don't go to college cause everyone is doing it, because your parents want you to, go because you want learn, you want try to better yourself.In talking to my mom in really opened my eyes , she said seeing someone ill is difficult, That you almost subconsciously wished they would pass because you don't want see them in that kind of pain. She said she thinks about getting sick.That it scares her because your always scared of the unknown but that she wasn't fearful,she was confident in where she was going when she dyes .Her feeling was that we move on to a higher spiritual place.

I was shocked to find out my mom wasn't sure who would care for her in her final days, that she wouldn't be surprised if she was alone.As I expressed some of my thoughts on life , I asked her if she felt she has lived life to the fullest she said no.That to truly live life to the fullest you have to spend your life in enjoyment, and she hasn't. I asked her if she regrets this she said no.Then their was a almost pen drop quietness in the room, then she said "when you alive your constantly changing but when your dead your just dead.When I asked her about why she smokes even tho it could kill her she said "people don't look ahead, they live in the hear an now, maybe people are on a some kind of internal suicide". She said she didn't feel completely comfortable talking about this topic, when asked she said "I'm 47, a smoker, and a minority, you do the math". Where all going to die, at the end we'll all have some feeling , I just hope at the end I can say I had no regrets.