HW 18 - Health & Illness & Feasting

Ahhh thanksgiving time.  When I think of thanksgiving I think of the "3 F's", Feasting, Family, and Football.  This holiday always makes me feel happy and comfortable because I am surrounded by all those who love me.  Usually on thanksgiving I have my whole "family" which would include cousins distant cousins and random assorted aunts and uncles.  About a week before thanksgiving I was informed it would just be me, my mom, my dad my brother and my 1st cousins and aunt and uncle.  When I asked why I was told that some of my family members were feuding with each other.  I don't understand how at a time when family is supposed to come together my family just didn't even wanna be in each others presence.  Every thanksgiving I do always feel bad that I have never had a thanksgiving with my grandmother.  She has been in a nursing home ever since I was little so it is really sad to not have thanksgiving with her.

This year since thanksgiving was held at my house my mother got the great job of preparing the feast.  The only part that I hate about thanksgiving is the anticipation for the food to come.  You find yourself sitting in a room talking to your family for hours.  At first your having a good time and then half way through the conversation you just really start to get hungry.  I feel like I am starting to get rude since all of my responses end up just being one word.  When the food comes tho the satisfaction that comes from it is worth the wait.  This was the first thanksgiving where I actually sat down at a table and ate.  Usually everyone is crowded on the couches watching TV.  After I ate I thought I was never going to be able to eat food again or I would explode.  That feeling lasted me about an hour until it was time to eat pie.

Finally the other thing that really makes up thanksgiving for me is watching a good football game.  Usually my family sits around the TV and claims that they are watching the game, when really only me and my uncle pay attention.  When everyone come we all say hello and then I get right back to my game.  My dad always says that its fine to have the game on when people are here, but then everyone ends up just talking to each other and they claim that the TV is "so loud they cant here each other".  I would like to say so then move, but I cant.  So this forces me to not even be able to watch football on thanksgiving. That is until everyone starts to eat then I usually try and sneak peaks at the game.

HW 17 - First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit

Illness and dying have always been very significant topics through out the course of my life.  Ever since I was young the thought of dying has always been a scary thought for me.  The thought that there will be a point where you will die and not experience life is a scary thing to imagine.  But as for the thought of getting sick it is not a scary.  When I was young I took getting sick as just another opportunity to get off of school.  Now on the other hand I feel that I cant afford to get sick during the week or else I will miss something important.  The reason that I am not afraid of getting an illness is because I just don't think I am going to get one.  But there I am just talking about the flu or a cold, on the other hand i am very afraid of getting a life threatening illness.

Some experience that I have had with death and illness is that about a year and a half ago my fathers best friend Sherman Darby passed away from cancer.  Sherman was possibly the greatest person that I have ever met in my entire life.  He was kind and would put everyone before himself no matter what.  When someone like that dies of a disease like cancer it makes it so much worse because he did not deserve to get such a horrible disease.  Another experience I have had is that my aunt passed away from leukemia when I was around 11.  This again is an example of someone who got taken by such a horrible disease for no reason.  I know that some people think that everything happens for a reason, but in these cases I feel that there was no reason for this to happen.  These weren't bad people who deserved anything like this in there lives, so then why did they have this happen to them? 


The way that my family approaches these topics are pretty similar to mine.  They figure that death is something that is going to happen to everyone at some time.  Although like me they don't like the thought that one day they will die they have come to terms with the fact that it will happen.  I feel that the thought of my family dying scares me more then the thought of me dying.  I feel that if my family dies then I wont really have anyone to be close to.  I am sure my family feels the same way about this topic when it comes to losing me or another family member.  I feel that the loss of a family member has much more of an impact on your life then the loss of a friend.  They both hurt but one of this is more personal since those are the people that matter to you most in life.