Present at the Dying
Most people do their dying in private.
We may take our last breath in a hospital bed or beneath a crumpled car by the side of the road, or in any number of fathomable and unfathomable ways, but the rest of the world is rarely waiting for us to die. That is not the case with the well known among us. It is even less so in the era of the internet and the 24-hour news cycle.
Yesterday in a New York hospital a woman died, with her family at her side. Those of us who have lost family members in hospitals know what much of that experience must have been like for the family. When you are caring for the critically ill, the waiting room becomes something of a community. You begin to recognize the faces from one hour or day to the next, you pick up a piece of their story, who it is they are sitting vigil for, the illness or injury, and all too often in those rooms the wait is a short one.
The moment can come in the middle of the night or in the early morning – there is no knowing – a doctor or nurse walks in and takes the family out of the room. Soon you hear the sounds of loss and you know it is over for them, the dying at least, but certainly not the grieving, which can last another lifetime. Nevertheless, aside from your fellows in that room and the staff of the hospital, the experience is a private one.
For the family of the woman who died yesterday in New York, there was no such privacy. Camera crews and reporters prowled the streets around the hospital, covering the entrances and exits like a swarm of angry pests, unwilling to give even a moment of peace to the family who came and went from the bedside of their loved one. I suppose it’s impossible to attach anything like the concept of shame to such behavior but that’s the word that comes to mind. They should be ashamed for their beastly behavior and we should be ashamed for supporting it.
Is it possible for a person who chooses to live her life in the public eye (or by accident finds herself in it) to reserve no right to privacy, even in their dying? Is our need to know so great that we deem it proper to stalk their families at what is perhaps the most devastating moment of their lives? Our collective, invasive, toxic, boredom has become a beast that knows no bounds. It’s long past time to step back, but I fear the opportunity may have already been lost. Will we ever become sated with it all or is this greed for peering into the lives of others a virus that has no cure?
We may take our last breath in a hospital bed or beneath a crumpled car by the side of the road, or in any number of fathomable and unfathomable ways, but the rest of the world is rarely waiting for us to die. That is not the case with the well known among us. It is even less so in the era of the internet and the 24-hour news cycle.
Yesterday in a New York hospital a woman died, with her family at her side. Those of us who have lost family members in hospitals know what much of that experience must have been like for the family. When you are caring for the critically ill, the waiting room becomes something of a community. You begin to recognize the faces from one hour or day to the next, you pick up a piece of their story, who it is they are sitting vigil for, the illness or injury, and all too often in those rooms the wait is a short one.
The moment can come in the middle of the night or in the early morning – there is no knowing – a doctor or nurse walks in and takes the family out of the room. Soon you hear the sounds of loss and you know it is over for them, the dying at least, but certainly not the grieving, which can last another lifetime. Nevertheless, aside from your fellows in that room and the staff of the hospital, the experience is a private one.
For the family of the woman who died yesterday in New York, there was no such privacy. Camera crews and reporters prowled the streets around the hospital, covering the entrances and exits like a swarm of angry pests, unwilling to give even a moment of peace to the family who came and went from the bedside of their loved one. I suppose it’s impossible to attach anything like the concept of shame to such behavior but that’s the word that comes to mind. They should be ashamed for their beastly behavior and we should be ashamed for supporting it.
Is it possible for a person who chooses to live her life in the public eye (or by accident finds herself in it) to reserve no right to privacy, even in their dying? Is our need to know so great that we deem it proper to stalk their families at what is perhaps the most devastating moment of their lives? Our collective, invasive, toxic, boredom has become a beast that knows no bounds. It’s long past time to step back, but I fear the opportunity may have already been lost. Will we ever become sated with it all or is this greed for peering into the lives of others a virus that has no cure?
posted by Berlinbound at 6:40 PM
5 Comments:
When I heard they had removed life support, I knew exactly how many hours it would take for her to die. I went through it with my Mom. I get angry at the press and how invasive in the lives of famous people they get. Do we really need to know every little thing. The tragedy is that it happened at all, that is such an innocuous little hill, I skied it many times in my youth and had many similar falls. In my day helmets weren't even on the horizon...ciao
In recent weeks, the MSM seems to be welcoming shootings, Fritzl, AIG bonuses, and a death that shouldn't have happened as ways to boost circulation in the Internet age. The real news--global warming, tightening energy supplies, destruction of biodiversity, petro-dictatorships, and so on--isn't getting the attention it deserves.
Amen.
(and my verification word "ammen" seems to agree, too.)
Thanks for stopping by and leaving your words of encouragement. I think I will continue to save and listen to the recording. If I find it comforting now, I imagine it will be even more of a gift in the future as the sound of his voice fades into the past.
As Ralph already mentioned, we're constantly distracted from the real, global news.
I'm already full with tragic stories like this (and I try to avoid them if that's even possible with omnipresent media). If we'll ever satisfy our greedy peering into the lives of others? If this includes blogging (or simply watching neighbors), I'd say no. Anyway, I could only hope that at least news media will become less greedy when it comes to things like you mentioned above, but that's more a dream than an actual thing to believe in, I suppose. A really bad and touching story still sells best, the worse the better...
"in any number of fathomable and unfathomable ways..."
You write so beautifully about the unbeautiful.
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