Years of wondering why death was chosen

I spent a month in the place closest to death.

The name of that place was the "hospice" ward; this ward was really special and one of my favorites.

During that time, I witnessed several deaths, some of whom had been in the hospital for some time, and we had talked about it; some of whom had just seen each other in a hurry and left the world.

In front of death, we have too many people unknown, we normal and rarely talk about death; and as a normal person, in the face of a relatively unrelated thing to ourselves, we always like to use rational thinking to think, to comment, some things that happen to others.

However, for death, for illness, fortunately, we should not blindly criticize and comment.

Because, this is not something that is understood and experienced with rationality.

In the second week of my internship at hospice hospital, I met a Chinese aunt who was less than 40 years old and, like many people who entered hospice hospitals, was suffering from cancer.

She was different from the patients I had met during this time, and in her I saw only the desperate, single-minded thought of dying. The day she first came to the hospital, she was almost in a state of madness, she did not accept and did not cooperate with any examination, did not accept any treatment, blindly shouted, struggling, "I want to die, I want to die." "Her son was right around at the time, watching it all happen.

Someone at the hospital asked me to comfort her child, who was supposed to be about the same age as me at the time. Her child asked me, "Is it because I'm around her that she's so uncooperative with treatment that she wants to die so much?" "At that time, I didn't know how to comfort him. If I were him, and I saw my own mother, blindly begging for death in front of myself, my mentality would have collapsed.

At that time, I was also thinking, does this mother not love her children? Why can't you live a little longer for your own children?

The next day, my classmates and I went to do a basic examination with her, and she also had the same attitude of refusal. Once a person loses the belief in surviving, there is not much time for such a person, and the same is true for this Chinese aunt. She died during our weekend break.

The uncooperative behavior of my aunt before leaving the world has always become a doubt, which has always stayed in my heart, and I am puzzled.

When I came across the book Bucket List: A Hospice Worker's Notebook[1], I felt like I had found the doubt that had been buried in my heart for years.

As I said before, it's easy for normal people to think rationally about something that has nothing to do with themselves. Under my rational thinking, I think parents should live longer for their underage children, rather than going crazy in front of their children and begging for death.

But it is precisely because I am fortunate that there is no pain in my body; so I cannot imagine how illness can destroy a person; how painful that person can be, and how pain can torture a person to the point of only wanting to die.

This Chinese aunt is first a person and then a mother. At that time, I only looked at this matter from the perspective of the child, and saw a mother begging for death like crazy in front of her child, so I formed my own criticism, thinking that parents should live for their children, or pretend in front of their children.

However, I have never looked at the patient's point of view of what kind of pain she is suffering. Even if I had thought from the patient's point of view, I would not have been able to feel her pain, so I would not have been able to think from her point of view.

At the end of the article, I would like to conclude with a sentence from the book.

"Whatever choice you make, it's right, and no one is qualified to say anything about you."

There are some things that we can only see a little, and then evaluate it by seeing a little bit of it ourselves. It's just that sometimes, we simply don't have the right to comment and don't deserve to tell people "what you should do".

My Chinese aunt has been dead for years, and I think I've finally found the answer to this doubt. At the same time, I would also like to say sorry to my aunt and wish you all the best in the new world.

[1] Bucket List: A Hospice Worker's Note: https://weread.qq.com/web/reader/66132fa0722e9c3b6617fc0