HW#23 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid

Published in 1997 by Farrar,Straus, and Giroux

I found out my brother died. I didn't know how to react to his death honestly. my husband told me my brother died, i went along with things as if it didn't happen. When my brother was alive he did unthinkable things. He was trouble and did drugs. We were two different people. He liked to read about stories in past history, all the different events and stories but his life was not a story but real life disease AIDS.

1.) When i saw him, though, lying in bed,two months before i saw him at the undertaker's, he was in his mother's house. She is my mother, too, but i wasn't taking to her then, and when i am not talking to her, she is someone else's mother, not mine. (pg.89)

It seems like Jamaica always had this amonisty towards her mother because her mother hated the fact she remebered things that she wanted people forget. When her mother and her aren't talking she specifically doesn't claim her just as her other siblings do to.

2.)I missed the place i now live in, i missed snow, i missed my own house that was suttounded by snow, i missed my children, who were asleep or just just waking around the about in the house surrounded by snow, i missed my husband, the father of my children and they were all surrounded by snow. (pg.97)

No matter by the fact how sick her brother was she always put her family first before her mom and brother. I feel like her brother having AIDS or any other disease would not make Jamaica's feelings change towards him because she left that old life and started a new one with her kids and husband.

3.) I did not love my brother, i did not like my brother, i was only sorry that he had died, i was comforted to hear other people say that they were sorry he had died. (pg.106)

Throughout the brother's past from what Jamaica is saying he did alot of messed up things and never listened to anybody which is why he got AIDS. Maybe she feels she doesn't love him because he didn't appreciate her for the things she did for him. Even after feeling better he continued to do have sex with women and other things in which he shouldn't.

I think the brother in this book is just very selfish in my opinion by the fact that he has this disease that killing and does inapproriate things with it. I feel like most of the people in the book are very numb to the situation of people getting sick and would just rather not deal with it especially in that country. Previously as in the first 1/3 of the book the actions of the people are just forgetting the dying people and moving on with your life and like i said i think that its weird that people do that. All my life you are told to be very sympathetic and caring and always visit them but in the book some people are not like that at all. All his friends and people where he lived gave him the cold shoulder.

HW#22 - Illness & Dying Book Part 1

Title:My Brother
Author:Jamaica Kincaid
Published in 1997 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

I got a phone call saying that my brother is sick and dying of HIV/AIDS. I return home Antigua to go visit him. He thought i would not come to see him but i did after all. I found out that he got the disease from having unprotected sex from multiple different women. I always told him to be careful but he always seemed to brush it off. Everyday my mother seemed to be taking care of his every need in her own way. i don't think i loved my brother, i don't know what it is was love or not. I made a phone call to get my brother medicine called AZT. My brother soon started to take the medicine and began feeling better. He gained weight and was able to do normal things. It was impossible for him to do start a family and do things he wanted to do because he had the virus but should i kill his dreams? I said my goodbyes to my brother and my mother finally returning to my onw family.

"My mother loves her children, i want to say, in her way! And that is very true, she loves us in her way. It is her way. It never has occurred to her that her way of loving us might not be the best thing for us. It has never occurred to her that her way of loving us might have served her better than it served us."(Pg. 16)

I felt like i understood where Jamaica Kincaid was coming from about her mother having a way of loving their children. I feel like some mothers feel as if the way they love their children is the best solution possible but maybe it isn't at all and i think that's why she had some many issues with her mother because of that.

"But when he lay in the hospital, none of his friends came into his room and they would say something to him. They never came in. After they had seen him they left and they never returned again." (Pg.42)

When i think of somebody being sick or dying, we greet those people and try to cheer them up and make them better no matter what disease or sickness they have. In Antigua if you contracted AIDS you are automatically abandoned and nobody pays attention to you. I find that to just be rude and disrespectful to the person why do they have to be mistreated even though they might possibly die wouldn't it be good for the person to have that special comfort?

"I missed him sometimes when i took my children to the school bus, sometimes when the snow fell; i talked about him, his life, to my husband, i talked about him to people i knew well and to people i did not know very well. But i did not think i loved him; then, when i was no longer in his presence, i did not think i loved him."(Pg.50)

It wierd how she only "loves" her brother when she sees him but other times she doesn't know exaclty if it's love or not. I don't understand that maybe that she doesn't see her brother often that's why she doesn't love him or is because of the whole relationship with her mother. WIth my sister i love her dearly and would kill for her. I feel like ever silbing should be there for each other no matter what and should love each other, that's your blood.

Reading so far, it's made me think of the other side of illness and dying such as people not caring about you and moving on with their lives. Not everybody sees this as a chance to do everything in their power to spend that special time with someone but to just continue on with their life and not have any sympathy. Jamaica Kincaid seems to do everything in her power though to make her brother better or slow donw his illness and it's something i would do for my family as well. It didn't matter how long she didn't see her brother or how much time passed she did what she needed to do to improve his life and so did his mother even if both women didn't see eye to eye for things.

Hw#21b-Comments

Raven

Raven i thought your blog was very insightful. I liked how you were in depth about all 8 things that you said about what Beth said. Two things that stood out to me was how you thought maybe that old feelings would start up when she talked about her husband but she didn't which is also what i thought about cause usually when you talk about a past family member mostly likely we would cry but she didn't at all. Another part was when you said "life is too short to hold onto grudges and dislike we may have for other people. I move past the mistakes I’ve made and I allow those mistakes to shape me", i agree with, i think that if we do hold those grudges and don't move on that can haunt us and we won't grow up as a person. Overall your post was aligned with the assignment and i like how yu referred back to your own life.

Michelle

I really enjoyed your post. The second paragraph talking about basically our time management and how us teens nowadays get distracted by it with digital things because its true. Each insight that you talked about comparing to Beth's comments were very in depth and you sumed up everything very well. One of the things i took away from your post was "at times in my life I enjoy letting myself be swallowed by my own thoughts and visions and not being able to do this terrifies me" it felt like something i would think about myself because it happens to me often as well.

This is what i wrote on Raven's blog:

Raven i thought your blog was very insightful. I liked how you were in depth about all 8 things that you said about what Beth said. Two things that stood out to me was how you thought maybe that old feelings would start up when she talked about her husband but she didn't which is also what i thought about cause usually when you talk about a past family member mostly likely we would cry but she didn't at all. Another part was when you said "life is too short to hold onto grudges and dislike we may have for other people. I move past the mistakes I’ve made and I allow those mistakes to shape me", i agree with, i think that if we do hold those grudges and don't move on that can haunt us and we won't grow up as a person. Overall your post was aligned with the assignment and i like how yu referred back to your own life.

This is what i wrote on Michelle's blog:

I really enjoyed your post. The second paragraph talking about basically our time management and how us teens nowadays get distracted by it with digital things because its true. Each insight that you talked about comparing to Beth's comments were very in depth and you sumed up everything very well. One of the things i took away from your post was "at times in my life I enjoy letting myself be swallowed by my own thoughts and visions and not being able to do this terrifies me" it felt like something i would think about myself because it happens to me often as well.

Hw#21-Expert#1

1.)He was the care giver of the house
2.)Her husband was creative and talented
3.)Very strong personality even with the illiness*
4.)Never mentioned the word death or dying*
5.)Even if he was sick he still did his artwork
6.)His death wasn't just a straight line
7.)Time is everything

She mentioned that he had a very strong personality when it came to the illness. He was the kind of person who just brush things off and thought that it woold go away or that he didn't need medicine. It reminded me of when my dad appendix erupted. Previous weeks later he kept saying that he had pain and my mom told him to go to the doctor but he said that it wasn't that bad and that he was ok. When he finally did go to the hospital because the pain was overbearing, we found out that if he didn't come any sooner he probably could have died. I agreed with her that most of time men do think nothing can affect them or brush things off but it's not good. I think some men do it because they believe they are masculine or prove something to other people that they can't take pain.

She talked about how through the whole experience they never said the word death or dying which i thought was very vulnerable and it kind of made me tear a little bit because when a very close person of yours is very sick and on the verge of dying you don't want to let them go or even think the worse. We just want to thik happy thoughts. Three years ago when my grandfather passed away it was so out of the blue. He was fine the whole entire day till the night time and he was rushed to the hospital. Day by day his body was shutting down but my mother and i would keep the thought that it wasn't minor and he would get better. It wasn't till the last couple days when it was going to be over that reality was settling in and we were going to lose him. Sometimes just thinking postive thoughts even though you know what's going to happen helps but in my eyes i feel like i would be lying to muyself if i said i did.

After hearing her talk it made me think a lot about death. With your own experiences it doesn't really affect you until you hear the point of view of someone else. The fact that she was there from the beginning to his last breathe was just like "wow". She said she met with a buddhist and i thought it was interesting because typically you don't think of that. She said he would do certain things like "pushing his hands away" and that actually happened. I was kind of surprised. Also that he always put his hand in a bowl of water maybe resembling being in the womb or fish which was insightful and he had a painting actually based on that which was pretty cool.

HW#19-Family Perspectives on Illness & Dying

When i spoke to my mom she was talking about how it is important for us to live a healthy lifestyle so we can live good lives. She talked about how she saw her father die from a heart attack, i knew talking about that she was knd of dwelling on the past and kid of sad talking about it. Going back to the anti-body discussion. When my grandfather was still alive he didn't really watch what he ate because my grandmother always cooked for him since he was blind therefore he didn't pay much attention to his body which might of led to his death. He also had diabetes so maybe that was another thing that added to it.

She also said how her mom has caridiovulsar disease and that it worries her that so many people in our family don't take the right steps to live as possible as we can. Similar to my grandfather my grandmother was the same way with her food choices it wasn't till after surgery that she started to care more about her body and she should treat it in order to stay in a good stable condition. It always after the fact that everybody wants to be healthy and what-not because their lives are on the line which is kind of sad.

She was saying that we need to eat and live healthy as best as we can. She believes death is a part of life and we must all die but its up to us to give us all the time to live as we want to as long as we take the right precautions. I agree that as long as we approach life in a positive matter and the do the right things then your life will be good and you won't have to worry about the illness and dying unless it happens to be cancer or some strange disease you couldn't prevent.

I asked my mom how does she feel about antibotics and drugs in order to help people with their illness and prevention from things. She told me that if it has to do with prolonging their life then she is all for it somehow the topic came about the governemtn and she saif The government is going to control the drugs just like they control everything else which i find to be true. Everything revolves around the government.

Hw#18-Health & Illness & Feasting

While we were enjoying our meal, i noticed everybody's plates had piles of food and that it didn't matter because it was "thanksgiving" therefore it was okay. Most of us didn't count what was in our food or what it contained and if we were eating too much or too little that can possibly make us sick. We don't pay attention to our bodies unless we have to so everybody just kep stuffing their face with a whole lot of turkey. It was towards the end when everybody was getting really full and decided to stop eating, if it was up to them they would probably continue to eat. I know for myself my plate had so much food and by the time i was done i had to unbutton my pants.

One of my mom's family friend that came over i noticed that he was kind of fat and he had two plates of rice. I thought to myself should he really be eating a second one with the weight that he has? Also i noticed that he wanted to get more food but seemed a little bit embarassed because of everyone else.There was a lot of talking at the table than what i expected to be because usually everybody is focusing on eating and enjoying the food. It didn't really matter how much you ate just as long as you had that secure feeling that you were full was good. You could have been packing a whole bunch of heart attacks coming but it didn't matter.

After everybody finshed eating, all the guys went and watched the football game debating, drinking beer while the woman were in the dining room drinking wine and talking about other stuff. Then everybody had cheescake and pumpkin pie with coffee while the kids had cucpakes to top off the whole thanksgiving feast. Everybody was not moving much everybody was pretty much relaxed since they ate so much food and just stood still.

HW#17-First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit

I encountered illness twice with very close people in my family. One was my great grandmother, she had been sick for so many years since i was five years old. It was matter of time before she would pass away but at the same time nobody was ready for it to happen. The second was my grandfather which came to a shock to all of us. The day before he became very ill he was perfectly fine doing the usual things. Then the next day he was rushed to the hospital and each day he was getting worse. It was crazy how one day you can be perfectly fine and the next day terminally ill.

Growing up when somebody is ill or dying, you are suppose to go see them and comfort them even though you know that they are going to die which is the worst part. In my family lots of times we pray for the people who are sick and hopefully they get better(doesn't happen all the time. Following that in lots of hispanic background when people are dying or died, we have these praying session with the bible and the rosey. I never realized how in depth they go and the reason why, i honestly don't like it.

I always wondered where the social norms come from and how they came about with having funerals and seeing that constant ill person at the hospital. What if we never visited them at all or not the proper burial does that make it bad? In society being terminally ill or dying are suppose to have that their family near them and always have that comfort zone so possibly it will make them get better.