I am not saddened by death. It’s just part of my workday, occurring sporadically, occasionally in tragic fashion though much more typically the end result of too many years or poor health decisions. I used to feel a sense of disquiet, but this has long been displaced by ambivalence through emotion-numbing repetition. I remain unfazed, and simply move on to the next task at hand.
I am saddened by grief. I dread telling people a loved one has died, all the more so when they are unprepared. I dread the reactions, the sadness and anguish and tears and while I can’t comprehend the full extent of their pain, I feel a small part of it course through me.
I wonder if I’ll be numb to this someday too.
May 19, 2008 at 3:03 am
I hope not.
May 19, 2008 at 4:07 am
I hope none of us ever do. The people you must convey this information to sense this empathy in you and it makes the news received a tad more bearable.
May 19, 2008 at 7:09 am
No… No. Have a good day. Cheers, Zeynep xx
May 19, 2008 at 9:08 am
Telling a parent their child died is gut wrenching. Telling a child their parent won’t wake up is gut wrenching. There’s no easy way around it.
You’re not a human if you don’t get touched by grief.
Like you, death doesn’t bother me or interrupt me. Telling people that bad things happened is the absolute worst.
May 19, 2008 at 10:09 am
I think it is important that nobody becomes numb to the grief.
May 19, 2008 at 10:17 am
Grief and death are two different things. When I drove the ambulance I became completely numb to death. I became almost completely numb to grief as well unless it involved children. But they train you to shut that stuff off and after a while you do. I think towards the end I was pretty numb to everything and that was a sign that it was time to move on.
May 19, 2008 at 8:46 pm
[...] 20, 2008 Here’s an interesting article(or perhaps a mini-essay) about death. The author is an ER doctor and has seen death so many times, [...]
May 19, 2008 at 8:50 pm
This is well-written, and I thank the author for his insight. Not many people deal with death of strangers so often, especially in industrialized countries.
I wrote a response on my blog <a href=”http://techgodmisc.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/re-death/” here .
May 19, 2008 at 9:26 pm
When someone dies many feel it as a failure. We do not deal well with death even decades after On Death and Dying.
The dead person is no longer our patient, and we have trouble accepting that. The family are in need of our care, even if they are not patients. How we tell someone about the death of a family member is important to them.
Easing their grief is difficult, but making the grief worse only takes a few careless words. This post and the comments here show an understanding of that and a respect for the grief of the family.
May 19, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Becoming numb to such a painful emotion such as grief is a normal human response, used in order for each individual to cope.
When you are exposed to it frequently it does numb your senses, though I think that everyone can feel it again if the right situation arises: If the family is much like your own or it is your own.
May 19, 2008 at 11:46 pm
So well said. Thanks for saying it!
May 20, 2008 at 4:04 am
Nicely written.
May 20, 2008 at 5:44 pm
People often reveal their anger in the grief they face. I find that anger and grief are often the pairing factors of many life-changing depressive disorders, including food related ones. It is hard to imagine that there are some who are so unaffected by death that they almost seek it out in themselves and others. Those are the ones I worry about the most. The fact you have no anger with your experiences states more about the strength you have as a person. It’s admirable.
May 20, 2008 at 10:27 pm
It is right to be saddened by grief. You’re not alone. Stay in tune with it… your caring is healing.
May 21, 2008 at 12:11 am
[...] thing ever in existence. Maybe the sheer magnitude of the idea is the very thing that makes us so numb to [...]
May 21, 2008 at 1:53 am
I never got used to it and I hope I never do. I came to accept death, even if it came by tragic and preventable means but dealing with the grief of others has always been my downfall.
As painful as it is, I hope you never get used to it. It’s what makes us human. Just be sure that you have an outlet for your own grief as that is just as important.
May 23, 2008 at 6:19 am
[...] Original post here. [...]
May 27, 2008 at 4:09 pm
When we aren’t bothered by grief we should be bothered by a new career.