Problem 1: What did you learn about yourself and your relationship with death? Is it something you avoid thinking about or is it something you are often consciously aware of? What does your culture or cultures tell you about death? Have you thought about your eventual death? What is your number one priority for the end of your life? Have you communicated that priority to anyone you care about or who cares about you? If you have, how did you do it? If not, when and how will you do so?
Problem 2: Identify and discuss how people think about death (their own or other people's) during these three periods of life span: childhood (early and middle childhood), adolescence/emerging adulthood, and adulthood (early, middle, late). Summarize this information for each period and highlight the key differences in understanding between them. Give examples of how people think about death at each stage, and compare it to your own current understanding. Remember to use the information on cognitive differences in children vs teens vs adults. The classroom lecture discusses this and talks about how people think about and respond to their own death in more detail.
Problem 3: The actual death process is not really hard, but what leads up to it can be less than ideal. Most of us will not just up and die - we will become ill, or old and decline. Use the information from the videos about the experience of death and health care, as well as the topic talk and lecture to answer this question in detail.
What did you learn about death and dying from the resources? What are the very serious issues related to death and dying that arise from our societal avoidance of talking about death? What are the very serious issues related to death and dying that arise from our healthcare system? You should be able to describe multiple issues for each of these questions, and clearly link them to the main ideas, and to each other.
Problem 4: It's critical that each of us remembers or keeps in mind that life is finite, that we will all die - 'memento mori' - and plan accordingly. The planning for our end of life experience (treatment, interventions, who makes decisions when we can't) is best done early in adulthood and reviewed often, for the sake of our loved ones and for our benefit as well. The videos in the resources under the heading Talking about Death: Why and How to do it, and What to Think About having food for thought - take notes, reflect, and respond to the questions below.
What are two specific takeaways that you have from these videos? Why do these stand out to you? What are two questions that you have about what you heard in the videos? Where might you look for the answers to these questions or who might you ask? What are your plans for starting "the conversation"?