HW 23 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

Jamaica has grown to resent her obligation to care for her brother. She encounters a doctor who tells her that her brother's life will be extended if he has access to certain medicine. This medication is not accessible for him in Antigua. She has a doctor friend from the united states send the procreation to her. She likes that she is able to help her brother but contemplates weather it is worth it to spend that much time away from her family. Someone tells her she should take him to the United States for the appropriate medical care. She is angered and offended by this comment. She feels that everyone pays no mind to her emotions. Eventually he dies.

"My brother died. I had expected him to, sometimes it seemed as if it would be a good thing if he were to just die. And then he did die. When he was still alive I used to try although  imagine what it would be like when he was no longer alive, What the world would seem like the moment i knew he was no longer alive. but when that moment came, The moment i knew he was no longer alive, I didn't know what to think, I didn't know what to feel" p.87

This feeling is often described as numbness. A friend of mine says that she felt guilty for not feeling sad automatically when she found out about her grandmothers death. My friend and Jamaica are both being faced with guilt. Guilt that is imposed when they see movies that make them think they are supposed to feel sad and fall into tears and have a break down.

"On one side, there is life, and on the other, there is death with a small patch of life attached to it. This latter is the life of AIDS; this was how i saw my brother as he lay in his bed dying." p. 96

Many people would consider this to be pacifistic and morbid. Maybe it is just a truthful way of looking at her brothers. I was so moved by this quote I shared it with my mother. She said, "This sounds like something a person who is afraid of death would." Not all people who are afraid of death would say this. Jamaica Kincaid may be afraid of death. But she just found a wise way to analyze her death.

"I said nothing about the death of my brother, which had actually occurred hours before (though really he had been dead for at least a year before the breath left his body) I had vowed to tell her nothing about and his illness and now his death"

I will be honest what initially drew me into this quote was the fact that it had the name of the unit in it "Illness and Dyeing" Besides the name of the unit the quote contains evidence of conflicting feelings. She says her brother had died a year before that but does that mean that he had died in the eyes of her family? Had he died to the doctors taking care of him? Had he died to her? Has he died to the whole world?