Lobster in a Bucket

On Dying

I’ve got mixed feelings about the Sunday cover piece from the NYT Magazine. Interesting topic, the avoidance of thinking about death in America, executed a bit blandly. I really didn’t want to hear all that about hospices ad infinitum. It would have been better to straight on tackle fear of death in our culture without the medical care system fluff.

It is interesting the different ways Americans and Ugandans deal with death. It definitely reflects the rational/pre-rational divide in the two cultures (not that one is particularly better than the other. As the NYT article shows, our (America’s) most common way to deal with dying, after denial becomes implausible, is to rely on the magic of modern medicine. Many believe that medicine can cure them of any disease that life can throw at them, betraying the underlying assumption that we’re gonna live forever. The article does make a good point to show that medicine is much better at comforting than curing in these phases. Still, American’s mediate the reality of death through a variety of faith-based recourses to science.

Things in Uganda are a bit more homespun. A long-time worker of the mission is in the final stages of cancer. He was only finally diagnosed a month ago, and so things have been hitting him pretty quickly. A man who led the church for nearly twenty years, immediately after hearing about his diagnosis, packed up his bags and sought the intercession of the kind folks at a local pseudo-Christian cult. In return for his earthly riches, he was promised prayer, which while not-making any guarantees, has cured people before. This sounds all too much like the lengths people in America go with experimental trial cures, alternative medicine endeavors. I think of all the crud Johnny Gunther had to endure in Death be Not Proud.

My point here is not that doctors, and cultists are the same. People, those faced with their own mortality, betray the shallow divide between the rational/pre-rational, by behaving in pretty much the same way.