I noticed that yesterday’s post had the word dying in it and despite this being a blog about our family together as our beloved mother dying this was actually the first time I had used that word in this blog. I led me to ruminate on the power of language and words around death and the dying.
I have been sending several emails and talking to a number of people since I go the news about mum and it’s been noticeable how powerful some of the words that we use are. I have always known about the power of language, in my other life along with work I am also doing my PhD using something called Critical Discourse Analysis as my main research tool, although this is just a fancy way to study the things people believe using their conversations to see what they really mean even if its not what they are saying out loud. Our words betray our unconscious thoughts and our cultural and historical backgrounds.
In the case of death, I have been really conscious of using euphemisms rather than the word death or dying. My mum’s ‘final stage or life’ has been one I have commonly used but I wonder why? Who am I using these euphemisms for? I know that partly the reason I am using these at least initially I didn’t want to believe this myself that this was the end. I mean I knew that there would be no hail mary or miracle happening now but still using the words accepting it as truth was not something I could do straight away. Sometimes using the language is the same as accepting it.
I also think that my use of euphemisms instead of saying my mother is dying is due to our historical taboos about talking about death. We have been brought up to fear death and not to talk about it. However, I don’t want to obfuscate with people and I also needed to get out of some work and withdraw from a conference so I needed to let them know exactly how bad the situation was but I was worried about making people uncomfortable. I think that there is also a worry that I might break cultural sensitivities as I don’t know how other cultures discuss and talk about death so in some situations I have used the euphemisms to avoid any potential concerns. I keep thinking though if we had more honest and clear discussions about death and dying that this would be so much easier.