HW 19 - Family Perspectives on Illness & Dying

I've recently noticed how often my mother suggests aspirin to solve all of my problems. I'll complain about an ache and her immediate question is usually, did you take aspirin? It never struck me as an odd solution until we began this unit. This morning I walked into my kitchen and asked her why she always has the same response to all of my physical problems. She began to explain to me that within one aspirin lies the ancient healing of many culture's before us. She said that there is a relation between aspirin and tree bark. So although in my mind it seems that a doctor would suggest taking this pill in her mind it is a very natural solution.

After hearing this unexpected response from my mother I decided to follow up with my Dad to see if he had similar thoughts on aspirin. Surprisingly he did. He explained to me that this way of healing our aches is a very ancient technique. He said that supposedly aspirin is in fact very good for your heart. He continued to explain how most of the modern medicines in our society come from natural resources. I began to wonder if pharmaceutical drugs came from natural resources as well. If they did then why do these drugs have so many side affects. You would think that exposure to the things around us wouldn't affect so many people so negatively.

After my Dad and I finished discussing medicine I asked him his thoughts on death. He bluntly stated that it is inevitable. Life is death, at the end of it all there is no way of getting around it even with all of the medication we have today. He didn't seem scared or worried about death but treated it as just another bridge in life.

Then I started going on about how I don't understand how we treat life so sacredly but have no problem ending the lives of other species who are also just as alive as we are, if not more. If a person is killed by another person it strikes us as unbelievable. However if a person kills an animal it strikes us as completely normal. Then my Dad suggested the idea that if a person is attacked by an animal our entire society seems to find out about the incident. What we classify as acceptable puts us right into a social hierarchy that basically states how much worth our lives have.

Although we know quite a bit about the species around us there is a lot of information that is a mystery. Life spans are one of these mysteries. My Dad and I began talking about how interesting it is that a dogs perception of time is so much longer than our own. Some insects only will live for a day. While turtles can live for over a hundred years. Survival plays a key role and we began to discuss how we have discovered and created time stoppers. Methods and techniques to expand our time on earth, we wonder though do animals and insects have the same ability we do? Have they come to understand the affects of tree bark? Why do humans go against the natural cycle of life instead of just letting nature take its course?