I am so very sorry to hear that you are ill. Your posts are a bright spot, and I always enjoy your commentary. In light of being ill, you seem to keep things in perspective, which would be difficult for me to do. I admire your strength.
Why does death have to be on tv to make it real to anyone?
Most people live not thinking about this and I don’t get the point of putting it on tv. There is something perverse about it no matter how it is cloaked.
Humanity has always had rituals and acts that acknowledged death. We have always had what is broadly known as Memento Mori - Latin for "Remember Your Death"; art and literature that glamorizes death and dying. There is nothing new under the sun.
Speaking of the sun, most every sundial, counting away time, has a Memento Mori. Tempus fugit is a popular one. It is there to remind us that time is fleeting.
I don’t get it and I guess I won’t ever get the public appetite for the most intimate part of people’s lives.
Humanity have always had graphic depictions of death. Always. The Greeks had their plays, the Middle Ages had Ars moriendi and books about perfect, holy deaths. We have days and ceremonies to commemorate death and dying (Halloween. harvest festivals, Dio de los Muertos, Decoration Day, Memorial Day, etc.). We have monuments to the fallen.
From the mid-19th through the mid-20th centuries, postmortem photography was very popular. It was often artistic, but sometimes gruesomely graphic, the likes of which would probably not be accepted on TV or in society in general today. Some of it is tastefully done, but others are enough to give nightmares. At a time when photography was expensive, people paid to have it done, and would send the photographs to relatives and friends to announce the passing of the deceased.
What is on TV today is certainly more crass, with less forethought, though.
People seem to need to be reminded of death in a remote sort of way; nothing too personal.
I think that people want and need to make dying a statement or a gift because it is so agonizingly painful to lose a loved one. Anything that the mind can concoct to give it meaning, to assign a reason, can help those left behind. Death seems unfair; giving it meaning makes it a little more tolerable.
You are in my prayers.
THank you and you are right. I have seen victorian death pics.
Perhaps the television is what offends me. ANd perhaps the interest in this is partly fueled by people who have not had to watch death and dying.
I think at one time it may have been common to having a dying relative in the home,,now not so much.
But while I will die of this cancer if statistics and prognosis are attended to,,I am a while off if I am lucky.
That is what not to many people know,,cancer can be treated even when recurrent for a while. It doesn’t have to kill you in three months with a little luck.
THanks for the post.