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How Can You Not Know This?
I have a peculiar area of expertise: I know a lot about death. Well, more precisely, I know more than the average person about bereavement, especially sudden, violent bereavement. I have come by this through my own losses, dedicated study, and, especially, through nearly 15 years of experience as a law enforcement chaplain. Law enforcement officers often have the sad duty of performing what is known as “death notification,” and it is one they gladly hand off to the chaplain whenever possible. It is one of the subjects I teach at our academy.
A few years ago, I began to receive invitations from members of the medical profession who wished to learn more about death notification. The first time the state’s chapter of the American Academy of Surgeons asked me to address their meeting, I was puzzled. After all, these were doctors: highly educated professionals that must regularly (if reluctantly) come face-to-face with death. “Don’t you know more about this than I do?” I asked.
Apparently not. So I went and spoke about the very early stages of bereavement: the first seconds, minutes, hours after news of a loved one’s decease has been transmitted. And as the assembled surgeons nodded, took notes, and intelligently asked what seemed to me pretty basic questions, I kept thinking how can you not know this?
We know what we know. And once our knowledge has been integrated into our mental processes, it becomes difficult to return to the time when we didn’t know it. Once you’ve learned to read, for example, you can’t not read a passing road sign, a phenomenon that has inspired some truly idiotic educational theories.
And when you encounter someone who seems like a reasonably intelligent, educated person who has no grasp whatever of information that seems essential for living a normal life, let alone having or voicing a political opinion, it just seems bizarre. How can you not know this?
I gave two Ricochetti that disorienting feeling the other day, when I posted my (passionate) opinion on healthcare reform. My new friends, with whom I had happily conversed on other issues, found themselves having to kindly explain how insurance works…in terms a third-grader might understand. Though I couldn’t see their faces, I’m quite sure they were staring at their computer screens thinking: How can she not know this?
One of my correspondents wrote: “Kate, I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that you just spend your time with people who don’t think like [other Ricochetti] and I do, because you are obviously quite intelligent enough to have already understood our viewpoint.”
I’m sure that if we were having the conversation in person, her voice would have in it the same despair with which my dear husband inquires how it is that I can have lived in our house for 10 years and not know where the furnace is?!
So okay, Ricochetti: What areas of ignorance encountered in others (here or elsewhere) cause you that heart-sinking dismay? And what blank spots on your own mental map would you confess to?
Published in General
Oooooooh, there are lots of things I don’t know anything about, and many of them become evident to me reading Ricochet. But I feel free to have opinions anyway.
Who would dare suspect a world famous author of being a mole because she said illogical things about insurance? Shame on them!
Ignorance in others that makes me sad: English and the most basic concepts concerning unintended consequences.
Ignorance of my own that worries me: nothing. Anything that I need to go and learn, I go and learn. Today it was principles of hydraulic coupling and torque converters.
My favorite story about how we all have areas of ignorance involves my very smart and capable husband, who had no sisters. When our baby daughter was given a doll he found it fascinating. He stood it up and laid it down, this way and that. “Look at this! Her eyes close when she lies down and open when she stands up! What will they come up with next?”
I thought I’d focus on this part of your post. As Americans living in a first world country, we’ve chosen to shield ourselves from the nitty-gritty of death.
As recently as 70 years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for Americans to wash the body of of a deceased loved one, maybe on a kitchen table, and place the body in the coffin without benefit of an undertaker. The film Places in the Heart portrays this near the beginning of the movie.
The fact that death, especially of the young, isn’t as common here has a big part of it.
It’s not true of third world countries, where there are more “opportunities” to grieve for someone who has died way too young.
I’m a big fan of Donald Sensing’s blog, Sense of Events (and previously called One Hand Clapping) who became a Methodist pastor after retiring from the U.S. Army as an artillery officer.
Here’s what he said about what to say, and not to say to the grieving. I wouldn’t be surprised if our ancestors of 70-80 years ago beyond the age of thirty, mostly knew that.
I am a technological idiot. I am continually dumbfounded at people who have no comprehension of the common cold.
My cousin Tom accidentally (who used to describe himself as the only Republican in L.A.) decided to buy a Subaru—in part, I fear, because his moralizing, Puritanical religious-nut cousin Kate made him feel guilty for having considered buying a car that cost more than her house.
Anyway, he decided that to make the purchase at least a little bit fun, he’d order a custom color. So he chose one from the available custom choices…and the dealer called back and said “are you sure? I mean…it’s a pretty unusual color…” Well, Tom was in a meeting, so he just retorted “yes that’s what I want, get it done.”
When the Subaru was delivered it was the most astonishing purplish-pink you have ever seen. I mean, like Barbie-dream-house pink.
His religious-nut cousin can claim no credit for this at all, but Tom decided that driving a Barbie-Pink Subaru around L.A. would be his spiritual practice, and he kept it up for three years.
You mean like the ones that want an antibiotic for their cold?
Agree!! Definitely! (And with what Sensing says, too—perfect)
Moreover, we have found that, given even minimal encouragement (or at least no active discouragement) most mourners want to see and touch the bodies of their loved ones as soon as these have been recovered. And we’re talking about bodies that are often badly damaged, or decomposing, or skeletonized. It’s been such a marked feature of our “scenes” that we’ve made it into its own presentation, and one of the Lieutenants and I take it on the road to teach law enforcement officers all over the map to—wherever possible—let people see the body. (Let me know if you want details on that!)
This little true story is apropos of nothing, except that it does have to do with death.
A good friend of mine, Patty, worked many years as a social worker for the local hospice. She told me of one elderly patient who knew she was very near death. She had been depressed and surly for the several weeks she had been in the facility, and no one liked her. She also didn’t have any teeth, and that made her speech somewhat difficult to discern.
Patty was tasked with visiting her. She asked the patient, “Is there anything you need that you don’t have?” The lady tried to answer, as Patty later figured out, “Yes, I could use some good sense.” But as her toothless speech was slightly garbled, Patty wasn’t quite sure what she had heard. She replied, “Did you say that you need some good sex?” Well, the cantankerous and depressed lady started to laugh, and before long she was convulsed with the best laugh she had had for many a year, she later claimed.
She died a day or two later. But for Patty, this was probably the most help she had (inadvertently) ever given to a hospice patient.
Thanks for the aside. I just added it to my Amazon Wish List.
I love this. Beautiful.
Oh—and I recommended this to JoJo before, but I recommend Atul Gawande’s On Being Mortal. (Your friend’s story reminds me of his thesis!)
What areas of ignorance encountered in others (here or elsewhere) cause you that heart-sinking dismay?
Agree with SoS about personal finances. You need not understand the intricacies of short-selling in the stock market (or whatever) to figure out that it gets expensive to pay interest on a credit card balance month after month.
Also, rudimentary cooking. If you are over the age of 13, you should be able to put together a basic protein-vegetable-starch meal.
And what blank spots on your own mental map would you confess to?
Oh, so very many. Home maintenance and repair, automotive issues, social media other than Facebook, use of Apple products other than iPods, anything to do with reading music or playing musical instruments…Ugh. Better stop.
A recent one that has come up a few times regards safety. We live in an apartment building in a fairly large complex.Each hallway has two downstairs apartments and two upstairs with a landing halfway, and then a partial floor at the head of the second flight of stairs to access the two upper apartments. According to the lease and the fire marshal, there is to be nothing in the hallways.
On Christmas Morning, one of the nearby buildings burned. My neighbors are good and lovely people, but when it comes to safety, they just aren’t in it. A couple days after Christmas, we noticed they had an unattended candle burning on the landing of the stairway in the window. We left a note citing the recent fire and they stopped doing that.
One of the neighbors also has a green thumb. In the spring, summer, and autumn, his balcony is a jungle of potted plants. Well, they have to go somewhere in the winter and he doesn’t have room inside his apartment. So, he has them out in the hallway on the entresol upstairs and some on the landing between floors. There was a package by the mailboxes for one of the upstairs apartments, and my wife, being a good neighbor, took it upstairs. She found that the neighbor was keeping the plants he has in the hallway warm with an unattended space heater.
This reminds me of a comment made by my father re: a family relation: “He just doesn’t understand money.”
My response: What’s to understand? Don’t spend more than you take in.
As for my personal shortcomings, I still don’t understand that damn Note 4 I bought two weeks ago.
Wait a minute… strike that… reverse it… thank you.
As a young man of 21, I had the great pleasure of working at my first full-time software development job. This meant relocating and getting to meet another young colleague I’d only spoken to on the phone, or via e-mail, to that point. So it was one of those “I’m meeting my good friend for the first time” situations. Shortly after, he was home from school and I was visiting in his family’s house. The subject came around to religion. My friend is Jewish—in fact, the first person I knew was Jewish when I met him. I’m a second generation German-American Lutheran pastor’s grandson. We talked for a while, and he said something that will haunt me to my grave:
Never before—literally—had it occurred to me that someone I care about could be frightened by my faith, ethnic background, whatever.
That was bad. Then I married a Jewish woman and went to schul with her in LA. Met an older congregant. Saw the tattoo on his wrist, that damnable dash through the 7.
The dry heaves in the restroom, thinking I’d never stop crying. Those were the worst.
The dry heaves in the restroom, thinking I’d never stop crying. Those were the worst.
Or they were real grace.
Understood. When I was visiting Krakow in 2010, many friends asked if I’d visited Auschwitz. My answer was an unequivocal no.
I thoroughly understood the evil and would find it impossible to carry on in a positive manner if I had to face this history yet again. It’s critical to understand the truth but if one dwells on the horrors of the past it paralyzes you from creating a future.
Ditto.
I am constantly astounded by the number of people I come across who don’t know how to behave properly in public.
It’s on my mind because I was at a college basketball game just yesterday. A whole lot of people will stand up when something exciting is about to happen, even though they are so far away from the action that standing makes no difference to their ability to see or appreciate it, but it does block the view of people sitting behind them, forcing them also to stand. Can’t they cheer sitting down?
Drivers in the parking lot after the game don’t always understand that they should take turns when merging into the exit lanes. Why isn’t that obvious to everyone?
Certain people are loud in restaurants. Very loud. You can follow their conversation from across the room. How is it they don’t know that not everyone is interested in what they have to say, and might like to concentrate on their own conversations?
That you do not have a Social Security account containing the money you paid into it that you’ll draw on when you start to collect Social Security benefits.
Whenever geography pops up on Jeopardy I concede the category. Hopefully there will be a Bible or musical theater category for me to catch up.
Anybody heard of the Dodge Rampage?
I agree with Charlotte @ #42 re: basic cooking. Also just a smidgen of other basics including sewing (I’ve known people who will put clothing in the donation bin rather than sew on the missing button) and home repair, changing a tire or the oil in the car.
I drive a Subaru – I bought it because I needed a new car and liked it. I never knew of any implications beyond “all wheel drive.”
I’ve been thinking about what my own areas of ignorance are. I can think of three:
Sports: I am somewhat of a fan of American football and Australian Rule Football. Even on them, since I don’t watch TV, I don’t keep up very well. I’m not the type who scans the sports pages of the newspaper every day. I am at best a casual fan of these two sports. Any other sport, I’m uninterested in. Why would I watch someone else playing? I play some sports, seldom team sports, but not interested in watching. If you think I should know why the zebra is showing a soccer player a funny-colored card, you’re bound for the last train to disappointment station.
Entertainment topics: I don’t find most forms of entertainment interesting. I don’t like modern music. I don’t watch TV. I usually only go out to movies my wife wants to see. (Even on my birthday, we go see something she’s interested in.) Now, if you want a game of checkers or dominoes or many other things where we personally interact, that is my kind of entertainment.
Mainline Christian Theology
Is it still possible for the layperson to change oil in a car?
My car is old enough to buy alcohol. I could do it with mine.
I will dodge a rampage. That sounds like good advice.
“Have you noticed how expensive arugula is lately?”
Things I don’t know: sports, popular music, high-brow cultural things such as literature (the erudite posters here at Ricochet are sometimes intimidating.) The only poetry I like is the kind that rhymes.
Funny thing is I really enjoy watching a sporting event when one is put in front of me, but I don’t know enough to talk about it in any depth.
Things I love but don’t know enough about: Boats and airplanes.
Things I do know something about: cars and computers. I would add politics and history, but that’s true for everybody here.
And yeah, I know more about Star Trek than I care to admit.