death & dying
cancer fight is battle of emotions
group
-
by paula dittrick
1 1 f
We told the children from the very beginning that
Daddy might die because the first reports looked pretty
grim," said Lisa glancing toward her husband Tom.
He added that his disease, cancer, is "a battle of
emotions. Your attitude depends on how you do. If you
expect to get sick, then you will."
These . comments were made during a Make Today
Count meeting. Fifteen people attended. This included six
nurses, cancer patients and their families and friends who
wished to remain anonymous, and a reporter.
Lincoln's MTC chapter meets each first and third Mon
day of every month at Crestwood Christian Church, 8000
A St. However the chapter has started meeting at hospitals
to acquaint hospital staff with its existence. Its last meet
ing was at St. Elizabeth Community Health Center.
Tom is 33 and has had cancer for four years. He said
the cobalt treatments had depressed him because he
worked all week, took treatments late Friday afternoon
and spent the weekend throwing up.
He said that he is off treatment but still almost gets
sick on Friday afternoons thinking about past treatments.
"You've got to take her as she comes," he said. "You
get depressed anyway and add this (cancer) on top of
normal depression."
Lisa said she got depressed because relatives and friends
shunned them for awhile. When the couple started seeing
people again, she said, "You could tell they wanted to ask
Vhat's it like, how do you really feel?' "
She said her 80-year-old grandmother had asked her if
Tom had a separate plate, silverware and glass and if she
boiled these.
Those attending the meeting agreed that people think
cancer is contagious.
foarbara, about 40, said her brothers would not touch
her. She talked about a merchant she knew who talked to
her on the street but had taken a step backwards every
time she stepped toward him.
"I had to get close to him to hear what he was saying
over the noise of the traffic, but he finally ran across the
street."
Barbara had only learned she had cancer a few months
earlier. She said she felt the strong need to be touched.
"It's like you're in a circle of your own. You're diff
erent." She added she has a corner in her house where she
sometimes sits all day. She said her little boy was sick one
day and she was glad he was sick because he stayed home
from school and made her sit in the sun with him.
Orville Kelly, a cancer patient and the founder of MTC,
said, it helps to know there are others and these others
care. It's important to know that you're not walking
through the valley alone."
He -said the MTC is not for everyone because some
people will not want to admit to others they have cancer.
"When I first found out, I didn't want to talk about it,
but what I needed was for someone to sit on the foot of
my bed and listen."
Doctors never bed to him, he said, and he liked this
frankness. He said he liked the doctors touching his
shoulder before they left the room or having tea with him
while they waited for lab results.
Kelly said most cancer patients, including himself, ask
how much time they have left. He said a patient should
not ask this because "if a doctor says six months to three
years, then the patient hears the six months and it
becomes a sentence."
He said he has lived beyond the three years, but that he
never thought of it when the three-year mark was reached.
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by tam lee
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Photo by Ted Kirk
,he Grief Center, which began in Lincoln about four
years ago, was the first such center in the nation, accord
ing to the center's president, Mary Lou Meier.
A group of concerned citizens started the center as a
support group for parents whose children had died. The
group was so successful that it was broadened to include
all people who were experiencing death-related grief,
Meier said.
The center partially "came out of the recognition that
culturally, we are a death-denying society. People who are
in grief are often isolated by the people they normally get
support from," she said.
There has been very little research done on grief until a
few years ago, and a few professionals know much about
it, she said.
One of the first researchers on grief found that if grief
lasted more than six to 12 months, it was an illness, but
recent research shows this probably is false, she said.
How long the relationship lasted and how intense it
was are important in determining how long a person will
grieve over the loss of a loved one, Meier said.
For, instance, "If a husband and wife have been
married 40 years, to expect that the spouse would get
over it in six to 12 months is really unrealistic," she said.
Grief becomes a mental illness if the grieving person
has made several attempts to overcome his or her grief and
still is severely depressed or angry after two years, Meier
explained.
"Certainly after two years a person still may be griev
ing, but it's not severe. They may still cry on the anniver-
donations can be made after death
by paula dittrick
Oince it has suited you well during life, you
might want to donate part or all of your body
for transplants or research after you die.
Donor forms are available from the Lions
Club Eyebank and the Kidney Foundation.
The form is considered a legal document and
must be signed in the presence of two
witnesses.
The donor, who must be 19 in Nebraska, is
asked to carry the card with them. The card
offers the donor the options of contributing
any needed organs, contributing only the
organs the donor specifies, or contributing the
donor's entire body.
The donor does not need to register with
any agency unless he wishes to give his body
to a medical school in which case he registers
with that particular school.
The donor need not mention this in his or
her will. The card can be torn up if the donor
later changes his mind.
Sue Johnson, Lincoln field representative
for the Kidney Foundation of Nebraska, said
that anyone carrying a donor card should ask
for a donor sticker to place upon his driver's
license.
She said that the most commonly donated
parts are eyes and kidneys.
Harold Pakulat, Kidney Foundation
director of patient services, said about 1 5,000
cards have been distributed in Nebraska with
in the last two years.
The cards are available by calling or writ
ing: Kidney Foundation of Nebraska
8707 W. Center Road
Omaha, NE 68124
397-9234
or
Sue Johnson
Rt. 1
Roca, Ne 68430
792-2380
or
Anatomical Gift Program
Nebraska Anatomical Board
42nd and Dewey Avenue
Omaha, NE 68105
Johnson said a donor should tell the family
about their decision because the retrieval team
will not take a donor's parts if the family
objects.
After the person dies, a retrieval team from
Bishop Garkson Memorial Hospital in Omaha
takes the body or specified organs. The organs
are typed and matched with a patient who is
called immediately.
Pakulat said matching an organ with a
fathom
patient is first done by typing. He said that a
patient of this hospital with the retrieval team
has the best chance of receiving the organ.
There is a priority list which is followed.
The priority list is organized in the order
which patients or their doctors requested
organs, he said.
Johnson said the retrieval van will be in
Lincoln on April 22 in conjunction with the
Festival of Arts Parade.
Organ donations usually don't affect
funeral arrangements. Pakulat said in cases
where the entire body is donated, the remains
are cremated and the ashes either returned to
the family or made part of a medical school's
mass burial.
He said that most people do not realize
that if they donate their body then it usually
is not used for transplants but for medical
research.
He said a donor is never used for both
purposes.
He said parents can give the consent to
donate their child's organs. Most donors are in
their late 20s or early 30s. However contri
butions have come from all age brackets.
Johnson said people often tell her that
they need their kidneys.
"They think that if they donate their
kidneys, that we're going to take them while
they're still alive," she said.
A pamphlet released by Creighton Univer
sity and the NU Medical Center states "The
need is great" for body donations. All bodies
are accepted. However, an autopsy may make
a donor unacceptable for educational use.
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native american possesses greater acceptance of afterlife
sary of the death, but they're able to function."
Grief is very individual, and must be treated as such,
Meier said.
"As soon as people try and put something like grief
into a neat little box, then we just lose it completely," she
said.
"Grief is as universal as a smile, but it's as individual as
your name. It's just so different for each person."
.he Grief Center sponsors a drop-in center every
Tuesday evening, 5:30 to 6:30 at the downtown YMCA.
There usually are three to five grieving persons and a
professional from the center there to act as a support
group for drop-ins.
"It's a place to talk about how they feel and get
support from somebody else," Meier said.
Grief counseling mainly consists of letting the client
talk about the one who died, Meier said.
"Normally there are different ingredients in grief.
People go through shock, anger, disorientation, depres
sion, and other things. If I felt, for instance, that you were
very angry, but not expressing that, I would nudge you to
ward expressing it," she said.
The main thing, she added, is giving the person permis
sion to grieve.
The all-volunteer staff of the Grief Center sees between
10 and 30 clients a month, Meier said. The center also
operates a 24-hour hotline and an outreach service in
which survivors of people who have died recently are in
formed about the Grief Center. Volunteers from the
center also teach a class at Southeast Community College
on grief counseling.
Meier said Grief Center volunteers are social workers,
ministers, physicians, nurses, morticians, teachers and
some lay people who have experienced grief and want to
help others.
She said she would like the Grief Center to move out
of its current location at the YWCA and get its own
office.
'it's difficult to expand because there is no money,"
she explained. Clients who join counseling groups are
charged on a sliding fee scale but there is no charge for
the drop-in center, she said.
Meier said she never has seen a negative evaluation of
the Grief Center's services.
"We hear over and over again from people who have
used our services that it was really helpful, that it was so
nice for them to hear that they weren't alone. It was so
nice to get that support," she said.
by casey mccabe
"There is no evading death ... The old men have not
told that any has found a way to pass beyond it . .."
Omaha Indian Death song
t
here is no way to evade death. That at least is one of
the few universally recognized standards. But often in our
society we avoid it, mentally if not physically. The Native
American always has possessed a greater acceptance of
death. Their heritage is rich in custom and ceremony
centered around dying and the afterlife.
The older Indians are somewhat reluctant to talk of
these traditions, and in fact it is hard to find those who
still practice their philosophy from a historical viewpoint.
Filtered through the white man's world, the end result is a
diluted picture of once proud ways. The sad truth is that
the Indian way of death itself may be dying.
Roger Welsch, a UNL associate professor of English
and anthropology, worked closely with the Lincoln Indian
community for 10 years. Being white, Welsch has had an
opportunity to gain the insight to make a cultural
comparison between theories on death.
"Plains Indian culture is substantially different from
mainstream American culture, but I think it's really the
other way around. Ar ierican culture is very often differ
ent from the values ot many cultures around the world,"
Welsch said.
"When it comes to death, I believe that is very much
the case, because almost all societies have rites of passage.
In our society, a good many of those rites have been
obliterated, or at least blurred to the point where they're
not distinguishable anymore."
In Welsch 's opinion, the majority of American society
has eliminated death as a part of life. Among the Indians
it always played an important role. When the buffalo died,
not only did the Indians thank them for dying to sustain
their life, but it also was assumed that the buffalo was
offering thanks because its meaningful death was Dart of
its life.
"That was also true of human beings -a meaningful
death is pari of a meaningful life," Welsch said. "In our
society, we don't even like to talk about death. I use the
word death in class, and people become very uneasy.
They don't like to use that word.
"When people are dead we don't want them to look
dead, we don't like to see the dirt thrown on that box,"
he said. "Among the Omaha's, the funeral is a very per
sonal sort of thing, and the people who are there speak
about the person who has died, partially in recognition of
the life, but also in recognition that the person is dead.
"There is a real recognition of somebody being dead .
That person didn't 'pass away' or all the euphemisms we
use. He died. He's gone."
Welsch first was drawn towards the Indian's death
philosophy through the works of John Neihardt, whose
articulation of the Indian views produced what Welsch
terms "an incredibly enlightened perception of death,"
the idea of death being the "great adventure."
"I was romantically attracted to the Indian views ot
death, partially because of my aversion to our cultures
views on death, which I find very troublesome, "Weslch
said.
"I don't know what the pioneer views were towards
death, but I suspect they were much, much closer to the
Indian's than ours are. We're the anomalies, not the rest of
the world or the rest of time. The thing that distinguishes
our view is that we don't die, we just refuse to recognize
death."
"You . . . feel that you are immortal, and the
decisions of an immortal man can be canceled or
regretted or doubted. In a world where death is the
hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets of
doubts. There is only time for decisions. "
Yaqui Indian don Juan to Carlos Cast en ad a
in Journey to Ixtlan
Ted White is 53 and a member of the Omaha Indian
tribe. A program coordinator at the Lincoln Indian
Center, he too has had the opportunity to observe death
in both its traditional and modernized forms. But as an
Indian, it takes on a greater meaning. He admits he does
not fear death himself, but is somewhat concerned about
the loss of cultural awareness among his people.
"They know death is coming, my people are not scared
of death regardless of what it is. They're always prepared
for it," White said. "But today in this society it's differ
ent. Some of the younger Indians are leaving home and
going away to college and things like that. They tend to
forget what they used to have, the language, and what
they used to be."
White described a typical handling of death in the
traditional Omaha style. It is a ceremony performed with
the greatest detail and seriousness, and while death itself
may not be feared, it is a time of intense mourning for
those left behind in the material world.
The body of the deceased is kept by the family for
four days. On the third evening the mourners partake of
peyote in an aD night ceremony. They pray for the dead
one to go to heaven, and for a cleansing of the dead per
son's soul.
An elder in the community conducts a meeting with
singing, chanting, drums, rattles, and a staff that usually
has been handed down from generation to generation. The
man says a prayer at midnight and the people drink holy
fathom
water, and go outside to pray in all four directions for the
deceased's spirit.
After the all night vigil, the conductor sings the
quitting song and a large breakfast ensues. A little bit of
each food is donated to the deceased, a process which will
continue for a whole year, three meals a day. For that
year, the family of the victim will not take part in any
social activities.
At the end of every year, for four yean, there is a
peyote meeting in memory of the deceased. After four
years, the family comes out of mourning with a big feast.
This complicated , sacrificing ritual was followed strictly
by those who practiced it.
"Death is not something special they taught to child
ren," White said. "They talk to you about it, they want
you to go to church, or to become a member of the
Native American Church. This is the Indian's church, the
peyote meetings and things like this.
"Today it's growing more and more on reservations
than around here. We're trying to teach them here now, to
prepare our young people for death. When we accept it,
that's it. My people really believe in teaching young ones
to accept death when it comes. They prepare for it in
their own way."
The middle of a city may not seem a fitting place for
burial in an Indian heritage, but White says that is the fate
for many of his people.
"Some people get buried here and there's no Indian be
hind it," he says. "What we're trying to do is teach our
people. We had a death here about six months ago, but we
went through an Indian ceremony. Often the family takes
the deceased back to a reservation to be buried in a family
plot, usually at the top of a hill.
"I won't be buried back home. Ill be buried up here
by the veterans. I'm all ready for it. I've got my plot, in
surance and everything all ready to go."
Does that defy customs, being buried in the city?
"No I don't think so. This generation has been educat
ed in this society, and that's the reason they're believing
more in this life then the old custom. We're just trying to
keep some of our heritage while learning the white man's
ways of life."
page 4
friday, april 14, 1978
friday, april 14, 1978
page 5
