My experience with illness is not much, I've seen my little brother get a cold and everyone else I know but experiencing some one who has been seriously ill I have not. Dying unfortunately I have had experience with, I had a class mate die in front me ( honest truth not trying to sound melodramatic) in middle school. At first the feelings I felt were of confusion, why did he collapse when he seemed so healthy? It kinda hits you how quickly a person can go from seeming so alive at one moment and the next be dead. And the thoughts one has after, of the dead can be "was it my fault this happened? Or why couldn't I have done anything to save him/her?" and even feelings of pain, loss, regret come to mind as well.
The way I've been taught to see dying is that if he/she was a good person and followed god's path, he/she would join him in his kingdom, if not he/she would go to hell. My entire life I've been brought up to believe this due to my family's religion. Illness I was taught was something that one should avoid by keeping healthy and choosing the correct life style. It is also something that must not to be avoided and should be treated right away. But for my family, the medicine doctors prescribe aren't the always the answer to an illness because they can fix your problem but can cause another in a long run. So my grandparents and mother are huge believers of homeopathic medicine, because it is natural and will still treat the problem but without causing any other.
A social norm of illness and dying is to always rush a person who is ill or dying to a hospital to be cured or to find them a cure. The idea of a hospital brings several images to my mind: blue uniforms, hospital beds, seat right next to bedside, curtain, and the smell of plastic and fear. Hospital; Someone being born in a hospital at the same time that someone is dying is what comes to mind when I see the word. How life and death can all occur under the same roof. A second social norm is to visit the sick and accompany them through their pain because you know one day you will have the same fate. Another social norm is to shrink away from the idea death, to avoid the thought and topic, so we occupy our mind on everything else and try to forget. Last social norm I can think of at the moment as I mentioned before is to use medicine as the answer of many illnesses and research to find one for those that are still incurable.
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