Death is a fact of life and everyone has to deal with it. There is no way around death but there are ways to die happy. In the essay “Death with Dignity,” the author, Dr. Kubler-Ross interveiwed many people that were dying. Eighty percent of the people interviewed wanted to die at home so they could die with dignity. Before you die in a hospital, you go through many types of loss. Loss of home, loved ones and hope are just a few of the losses you go through in Norma Richman’s poem uses personification when she talks about the knotty pine face of each room in her father’s home.
Personification is also used when she describes the hospital white faces and sterile surroundings. Norma had a loss of family when her father died. Norma had no idea how to express the loss of hope for her father except to bang her head against the wall and write a poem for her father. In her poem, she is tryingto explain that he had a loss of home and the familiar surroundings. In Dr.Kubler-Ross’ essay, many bright people that had great potential lost all hope because they were dying. He said that “as long as the person is alive, he needs hope.”
One woman with liver disease was told by her doctor that “there is nothing else I can do for you.” Statements such as this do not give people any hope. Families give up hope by putting a dying person in the hospital-even if they don’t want to be there. A dying woman was sitting on her bed smiling. When asked what she was smiling about she said “Don’t you see these beautiful flowers that my husband surrounded me with?” Her husband had stopped visiting her and there were no flowers. She had a loss of a loved one. By placing this woman in the hospital, she had lost all of In both the poem and the essay, loss of home, hope and family were clearly stated. Many people deny death but there is no way around it. We are all going to die at some time. Many people feel that if we place the ill in the hospital it will make it better. It seems it only makes it harder on those already sick and dying.
