Age DOES affect how tragic death is

[Bumpitybumper]

In the current climate and for obvious reasons, I see a lot of discussion about the average age of people dying from Coronavirus and how it is skewed significantly towards the elderly. Inevitably, this will lead to some claiming that this fact is irrelevant and a life is a life and any death is equally tragic. Talk of amending our approach towards the virus because of the average age of the people dying is shot down quickly. The implication being that any acknowledgement that the loss of an elderly person's life is less significant or tragic than a young person is implying that the elderly are expendable or don't matter.

To be clear, I don't think either of those things BUT I do think most people tend to find death more tragic and significant the younger the victim. My theory is that death is an inevitability for all of us, but there is a presumed "normal" lifespan and therefore young people that have died are viewed to have had less opportunity/experience and lost more years.

The ultimate test I believe is that if there was an emergency (e.g. burning building) most people would opt to save the younger person over an elderly person if only one could be saved. I think if children are involved then again most people would rescue them as a priority over adults.

So AIBU to think age does affect how we perceive death?

Yes that's true. And I suppose if you've had ten children and five die, you still have five you have to care for. I know many women ended up in asylums for reasons directly linked to pregnancy/childbirth/childloss/general hardship, but really when you look at what the average woman managed to go through, it's always amazing to me that any of them managed to keep going at all.

Well yes.

The narrative around women who are in societies now or in the past who had lots of children is somehow that they somehow were less affected when one of their children died.

Is there narrative from women in that position now or in the past?

Because the idea that having lots of babies renders you less attached to them, and less affected when they die. Feels wonky.

Whose narrative is that? I would say the people now and then who ran societies where babies died.

Women in the whole do not go through pregnancy and birth etc and see the offspring as disposable. No matter how many babies there are.

@NiceGerbil if you haven't read any already, then Anne Bradstreet wrote a lot of poems on domestic/religious themes in the late 17th century century, she had I think about 10 children and definitely loved them a lot. There are also different bits and pieces, letters and the like, and once when I was trawling through Project Gutenberg I found a few books written specifically for 19th century women on the subject of losing children. Very much slanted to comforting them with religion and heaven etc, but an interesting insight I thought.

Though one thing which I've noticed when reading older texts is that babies and sometimes toddlers aren't always referred to by their names, and are referred to as "it". You simply don't see that anymore, not once the child has been born. In one of the L.M Montgomery books, a character is talking about her baby who died, obviously incredibly upset, and she says something like "it was such a beautiful baby- it only lived a year." - and that's the mother talking. Even as a teen it jarred me, and makes me wonder if even from the word go they tried to emotionally prepare for the loss of the child, only relaxing a little once they got past a certain age perhaps (I think after age 5 the mortality rate was less)

I've got a picture of my great granny with her 10 kids around her.

I remember my family on that side saying oh well she had a batch of children and they died so she had a load more :/

Society is strong and I think having any idea what it was like for women then is so hard. We were still property then I think, the children certainly were.

Attitudes are formed by society and circumstance.

I will look into the poems you mention.

I find it hard to believe that women were ever cavalier about losses. More that. Their feelings haven't really made it through because they just weren't important.

I remember speaking to my grandmother when I was pregnant with my Ds - we thought he would die at the time (thank god the out come was good and he’s 18 now).

She was 90 odd at the time (18 years ago) and told me that in her day, you didn’t think much about the pregnancy and tried not to get too attached to the babies incase they died. So many children died, she said you almost expected it to be you who went through it.

I don’t know how women coped psychologically back in the older days with the high chance birth could kill you and then chances of losing a child.

There is clearly a difference in age. Generally the implications of a younger death are greater (eg young family, not having the chance to live full life etc). The story of the young family killed in the car crash was very shocking. I suspect a lot of people paused for a bit after reading it.

It is obviously a lot more tragic when people go before 'their time' which obviously applies to any young or middle aged person who dies, given that we all hope and even expect to live to old age these days.

For older people, when someone's 'time' is depends on the person though. My parents are late 70s but still very active and do a lot for their family, friends, local causes etc. If they died now I'd still feel it was 'before their time'. But that may not be the case for someone of the same age who's been in ill health for a long time, eg one of my parent's friends is in a care home with alzheimers.

@Iggi999

I remember thinking that parents in the past must have somehow not bonded as much with their infant dc, since it was so common to lose several as small children Obviously I was just thinking this to avoid the awfulness of how it would really be. I read a letter someone had written to the infants they had lost and it was so heartfelt and full of grief. She felt it every bit as much as a "modern" parent, even if she had a higher probability of losing a child the pain of it wasn't less.

I think it’s a common held view and entirely inaccurate in my experience. I think it’s a similar argument to ‘the poor Africans have nothing but they’re so happy’ nonsense. It enables us to dismiss black deaths as less important, older people as less important and builds a notion that somehow it’s acceptable to have loved ones die because there were more of them. If you extrapolate then a mother with three children would grieve the loss of one more than the mother of two children. Clearly that isn’t the case. I worked in Ethiopia during the 80s. Those mothers, those families grieved and felt just as much pain. If the answer to grief was simply to have more children, why have we worked so ferociously to reduce avoidable mortality? I suspect there is equal pain but more acceptance. The two are different.

Whilst all deaths are very sad the difference is: those passing at 80years+ we can celebrate their life and all their accomplishments.

When a child dies, we morn the life they never had the chance to live.

The narrative around women who are in societies now or in the past who had lots of children is somehow that they somehow were less affected when one of their children died

I certainly think people's expectations may have been lower when infant mortality was so much higher, iyswim. People may have been more accepting of child mortality, but I doubt if it hurt any less.

I’ve always thought it interesting that the narrative around Queen Anne’s private life has always been nudges and giggles about her possible lesbianism, and not about how it must have shaped her life to lose 18 children.

Definitely, ReallySpicyCurry's post encompasses everything in my opinion.

I get heartily sick of the posters banging on about ageism. That isn't what this thread is about but you're at liberty to report the posts that you think are guilty of it. I think it's lazy thinking in many cases, overlaying somebody's post against your own circumstances and finding that you don't like what's been posted. It's.Not.About.You!

Everybody's life has value and that value is largely based on the impact to other people based on that person not being there anymore. People feel grief for people they know (of any age) but sometimes confuse that with sadness they feel at the loss of people they don't know, on a sliding scale based on age and whether that person had a family or not.

Perhaps if we stopped reading other people's views via our own immoveable filters we could have meaningful discussions about this actually really important topic.

@EdithWeston

I think it is circumstances which make a death 'tragic'

Not age.

This a million times over.

I think a sudden unexpected death is much harder to come to terms with, than when illness and likely death is 'planned' for. Not having the chance to say 'goodbye' is so hard. DF died earlier this year, he had been ill for many years his death was sad but a relief for everyone. DM died a few weeks ago, out of the blue totally unexpected she was mid 70s and seemingly in good health and just getting her life back after three years of caring for DF, It's left a huge hole for all of us.

I think a sudden unexpected death is much harder to come to terms with, than when illness and likely death is 'planned' for.

I think a sudden death and unexpected is harder for those left behind, but kinder for the person dying.

I think a lot of people on this thread are confusing tragic (unexpected, unusual, life cut short, etc) with sad (where they feel grief at bereavement, which of course can happen whatever the circumstances).

I get heartily sick of the posters banging on about ageism

Wait until you've been the victim of it. I reported this thread not because I wanted it to be deleted in its entirety (I'm really fed up of that happening), nor did I want certain posts zapped) but because I'd like MN to engage in the discussion about ageism on this site. MNHQ are too detached from their membership these days to do that though.

I think the premise of the thread was distasteful and some replies disgraceful but there has been some interesting posts from thoughtful contributors.

How do you know I haven't been, MoiraRoseisupSchittCreek? You're making assumptions there. Most of us will come up against that as ageing women, however old or young we currently are.

I too think it would be good for MNHQ to engage on the subjects that its members talk about but, perhaps they have their own viable reasons for not doing that.

I find very many threads distasteful. This one is about a hard subject and everybody does have a contribution to make if they choose to.

[quote Bumpitybumper]@TheSeedsOfADream
*So you were starting a goady thread? And the people against ageism weren't supposed to "pile in".

Soz. Didn't get the memo*
Just because a topic is emotive and some people might find it distressing doesn't mean that it shouldn't be discussed or that it's automatically "goady". Somebody suggesting that a concept is ageist doesn't make it so and disappointingly for you, you are not the definitive authority on what is and isn't ageist.[/quote]
No, HQ is. And they've commented on the thread which was prompted by this one that they won't tolerate ageism on here.

It's easy to talk in extremes; to state confidently that the death of an 89-year-old is obviously 'less tragic' than the death of a 25-year-old.

But what about the grey area? What happens when you compare the death of that same 25-year-old, yet to meet a life partner or have children, with the death of a 39-year-old mother of two small children?

In my (admittedly limited) experience, death is either kind, or it is not. And it can be either at any age.

Failing to help the frailest out of a burning building first is just utter shit

That's exactly what my nan would want to happen. Save the youngest first as they still have most of their lives left to live.

So those “against ageism” : if you are being weighed up for life-saving treatment, do you think you at age, let’s say, 55, are absolutely equal with a 90-year-old with dementia? Should there simply be a queue for heart surgery, with no account taken of age at all? This is indeed what some “age activists” want. That for a heart transplant, it should simply be first come, first served.

If you believe this, then that’s your view. But argue your case rather than trying to get a thread deleted.

Loving how you are so ageist you think being anti ageist is worthy of inverted commas and derision.

Sadly for your narrative, I don't think that.

Ageist for me is the type of language used to speak about the elderly. Someone on this thread has even coined a new word a "dementee". Someone on another thread talked about "random 80 year olds with dementia" and another about " dribbling 90 year olds sitting in dirty nappies"

On non Covid threads, the "old bags", the elderly neighbour who stopped to talk to the little girl playing barefoot on her garden who literally said "haven't you put your shoes on?" to have the OP's husband threaten to beat him up if he spoke to them again because he was obviously a sick paedo. The old woman looked at my baby threads. The list is endless.

Those are the anti ageist comments I'll continue to report.

(I've only reported one comment on this thread. Yes, it's goady, yes it's giving the ageist enough rope to hang themselves with, but the general language hasn't been of the abusive and repulsive level in some of the threads)

I remember working nights in one particular residential home when we were discussing what to do in the event of a fire.
The building was a massive old detached property with three floors and no lift. There were 17 rooms occupied by old ladies and some were twin rooms.

The owner of the home who was a nurse and worked there also, said to us that the ladies on the top floors had had their lives, and we should not risk our lives to save them.

I’ll admit to being ageist... and I am quite old!

But there is a difference between thinking a 50+ woman is a useless old bag and judging that someone of 85 with dementia is less worthy of medical intervention than someone younger with their faculties.

I repeat from upthread that I absolutely believe, with much personal experience, that dementia is the decider as it is that which removes a person’s personality and very essence. For those that are dispiritingly and inevitably going to argue that a baby doesn’t have much personality, they will .