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?

When we start viewing people's lives as less or more worthy than we are on a a slippery slope ,I have a child with complex disabilities who is my world but I have been on threads where people think the deaths of people with disabilities is less tragic than those without no life is expandable.

The most profound thing my eldest daughter ever said to me, was that if some terrible incident occurred she would rather her younger sister survived than her. There are only six years between them, and DD1 is in her twenties and DD2 a teen.

DM in her 90's is hoping to catch Covid so she can hopefully, in her words, die. She is ready to go and is of the generation who accept mortality as part of life. She went through the war in an occupied country, so she has seen it all, and much of what she saw was indeed properly tragic.

It also depends on who is experiencing the loss. My husband's father died when my husband was a baby, my husband has no memory of him and he feels it was harder for me losing my father as an almost teen than it was for him as he never knew him. My husband is quite detached from it, I also worked with someone whose father died before she was born and she also felt it wasn't a tragedy for her as she never knew him. In both cases the mothers felt it was a terrible tragedy, they were young women and lost the love of their life. There was also the case that this was at the end of WWII and there was an inbalance of men/women due to how many young men had died in the forces so neither ever met anyone else. I'm sure they weren't considering that at the time but both of them had a couple of years of marriage and then 50 plus years alone.

I do certainly view deaths differently according to age. While I was naturally sad at the deaths of two much-loved close relatives, one in their late 80s and one in mid 90s, it was rather a different thing from what I felt at the death of a less close relative, only in his 30s, who left a wife and two very young children.

The two elder had had their lives, mostly pretty good ones, and were infirm. The much younger one had so much still to live for, his wife had lost her husband and their children their father. His death was a tragedy - the deaths of the two elder ones were not. They were just a fact of finite human life.

The thing about directing your wishes for end of life care though, is that its all hypothetical until it isn't.

Asked when healthy, my relative would have said being incurably ill, bed bound, unable to use a toilet and fed by a tube was no way to live and to pull the plug. But when that actually happened the urge to live was still so strong. He still thought he could beat it, he had more to do, he wanted to LIVE. I think that surprised even him.

@ReggaetonLente

The thing about directing your wishes for end of life care though, is that its all hypothetical until it isn't.

Asked when healthy, my relative would have said being incurably ill, bed bound, unable to use a toilet and fed by a tube was no way to live and to pull the plug. But when that actually happened the urge to live was still so strong. He still thought he could beat it, he had more to do, he wanted to LIVE. I think that surprised even him.

Amen to that.

I think if the virus had been much worse and healthcare really needed to be rationed, then the old three score year and ten should apply. This happened in Italy (well, the hotspots) at the height of the pandemic

The NHS became the Covid Health Service in the spring/summer, one reason why the UK has had a very excess death rate.

So sure, it didn't ration care, it just stopped do most other things.

I came on to say not this again!
But you're quite right with how you've phrased it.
I lost an old friend over the summer too, she had 2 kids and it was a total shock in a way that it wouldn't be if it was a 90 year old.
But older people arent valued and the way some are happy to lob them under a bus is despicable so I can understand why this is such a delicate subject.

@Keeva2017

I agree but I think some people consider the deaths of people on their 60’s early 70’s and maybe even late 50’s the same way the do as say your aunt in her 80’s 90’s.

I think there is a tendency, sometimes on here but mostly in my experience in real life, to group these generations together.

My mum is 65 and dad 69. They are no less active , needed by family or enjoying life than the average person in their 40’s and as an example their loss would be tragic and life changing to me and my family. But I think some people’s attitude would “well they’ve had a a fair few years behind them” or that sort of thing.

Yes, exactly!

If you have a 90 something person who is very frail, etc and clearly at the end of their life then yes, their death will be sad but not tragic.

But there are so many people in their 60s, 70s and even 80s who are still healthy and active, and have lots of living to do.

Sadly I think for Covid patients in ICU it might be quite a bad death - respiratory illness can be very unpleasant. And dying without your loved ones to say goodbye or hold your hand and comfort you in your last hours. And what's a bad death for patients is often a bad death for their loved ones harrowed by the thought of them suffering alone.

I think a covid death can be quite terrible but I just wanted to say that although you are right that is sad for families not to be able to see their loved ones I don't think they die alone. My DIL is a doctor on a covid ward, she has held peoples hands, held people in her arms and made sure they didn't die alone, I know other staff have done the same, I hope it might be some comfort to people to know that someone who cared die hold their hand at the end.

I agree but others think it means you had old people and think they are worthless. Not the case.

When my gran died (thank god it was pre covid otherwise she'd have had an even more miserable time of it), she was 96 and had been desparate to die for years. My Granddad had died fifteen years previously, most of her friends had died, she was much less mobile after a fall, she was in a home and though we visited her almost every day she was bored to death and utterly miserable.

I miss her every day but I was glad she died. Her death was much, much less tragic than the nine year old girl living near me who died a few years back from asthma brought on by air pollution.

Neither life was more worthy, but the death of the little girl was more tragic. I don't think that should be a controversial statement.

did hold their hand not die hold their hand.

I'm reminded of John Donne:

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls,it tolls for thee.

In general the British are weird about death though. As a society we aren't very good at dealing with it. So many people agonise, for example, on whether to take their children to funerals. In my culture (I was born and raised here but in a "foreign" family), it would be unthinkable not to take them. Grief is accepted - crying at funerals isn't seen as embarassing (nor is not crying, I hasten to add). Children are exposed to death as part of life. I think it's much healthier. When my grandma died my son was 2 and we took him to the funeral - people thought that was completely weird.

I think peoples views of death are skewed by how they have been / are expecting to feel about losing somebody. They do not take the perspective of the one having to do the dying, so to speak.
In my family there are currently two people well in their 90ties isolated in care homes waiting to go. They are religious, are prepared to go, one is praying daily for delivery. It is not my place to tell them they have to go on, so I would not feel sad.
Same for my parents (dying aged 60 and 84 respectively) - they had their stuff in order and DNRs in place.
DH and I are nearing 60 and are well aware that we might get ill and die (I already had cancer). I wouldn't like it much at the moment, but death is a natural part of life. Sth I have tried to teach my children, too.

I think a covid death can be quite terrible but I just wanted to say that although you are right that is sad for families not to be able to see their loved ones I don't think they die alone. My DIL is a doctor on a covid ward, she has held peoples hands, held people in her arms and made sure they didn't die alone, I know other staff have done the same, I hope it might be some comfort to people to know that someone who cared die hold their hand at the end

@ancientgran thank you for posting that.

Yes I absolutely agree. Children should not die before their parents.

I once read some old Chinese proverb about the definition of a happy life. The proverb was "grandparents die, parents die, children die". I found it quite thought provoking.

Thinking about this. Many people are answering how they as individuals feel about other individuals in their life dying. So all the question is really, is, how do you feel about that person, what place do they have in your life? Because that will affect how you feel about them dying.

bibbitybobbitycats I hope it has helped someone.

*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"

This isn't a theory - it's just an obvious truism. Of course death is inevitable and of course it's more tragic when a young person dies than when a much older person passes away at the end of a 'normal' lifespan.
The elderly are still entitled to as much protection and consideration as anyone else. In the current context, even if they were close to the end of their lives, I would not want any relative or friend to die of Covid: alone, terrified and unable to breathe.
I've voted YABU, not because I think you are wholly wrong, but because I think this type of attitude nudges us towards unpleasant ageism, as mentioned by a few PP.

@Yesyoudoknowme

Most comments on here are about losing grandparents - you wait until it is your parents. The longer you have them the worse it is

This is a distasteful thread which I'm going to report for the ageism on display but I do need to challenge your statement. It's not a competition but if a parent dies whilst you are young then as well as missing out on their guidance, love, support during those vulnerable formative years; you experience the pain of knowing they are missing out on so many of their child's milestones as well as all the things the parent still wanted to do in their own life.

But like I said, it's not a competition over which is worse.

It's not a competition, which is the premise of this thread.

I've reported it.

My dad died aged 79, he was one of my best friends apart from being my dad, I enjoyed his company so much. I was devastated when he died, but he had a long and happy life, so there wasn't a feeling of unfulfilled potential and although I miss him dreadfully I don't find myself thinking 'oh if he were still alive he might be doing such and such right now'.

On the other hand I had an ex-boyfriend who died suddenly when he was 31 and I do from time to time wonder what he might have been doing etc had he still been alive and his death does seem more of a tragic waste than my dad's - even though the grief I feel for my dad is stronger. So I do agree with you OP, age does have a bearing of how tragic an individual death is perceived.

Yanbu with the exception of horrible circumstances like murder.

Nice attempt to start an ageist thread by stealth, OP. As if MN wasn’t ageist enough without your help.