Breitbart William
Jimmie C Holland Chair in Psychiatric Oncology, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY.
Palliat Support Care. 2021 Feb;19(1):1-2. doi: 10.1017/S1478951521000043.
I read obituaries. I read obituaries every day. I have read obituaries every day since I was 11 years old. I wake up in the morning, and before I start my day I go to the front door, open it, and retrieve the New York Times that has been delivered to my home. I retreat to the bathroom and I open the paper to read the obituaries. Before I dress. Before my coffee. Before breakfast. I read obituaries. I check the ages of those who have died. 98, 102, and 89, perhaps there is hope. 62, 49, and 34, looks like it will be a bad day. I read the causes and circumstances of death. Died in his sleep of natural causes — a sigh of relief. I notice so many more musicians and artists and drummers for obscure rock groups of the 60s seem to die and get featured obituaries than doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and palliative care clinicians. Perhaps it’s a biased sample — those people who get that special obituary for noteworthy deaths with that special picture when they were younger in their prime. Why do I read obituaries so compulsively? Well, the answer is of course multi-layered. On the most accessible level, I am fascinated by the stories of peoples lives. The narratives of lives lived in all their variety, length, scope, and focus. They are dramas that have the potential to aid us all in the search for who we want to become and examples to measure ourselves against. As the Talmud taught us, “What is truer than the truth? The story.” However, on a perhaps deeper level, reading obituaries, for me, is an inquiry in how to create an attitude and a perspective to death. It is a re-confirmation, each day, that death is real, an inevitable part of life, and that, in fact, we live with death every moment. In creating the story of our life, we create a story of a life lived and a death that is ever present and can occur at any moment. It is a reminder that death is at the essence of life, reconfirms life, and that death punctuates life. Reading obituaries allows me to maintain a sense of mortality salience as I live each moment of life. Death is always present in our lives. It is a constant. But now, in the Age of the COVID-19 pandemic, death is even more constantly present. In fact, there are more deaths each day, and more deaths this past year, that at any time in our recent history. It is January 22, 2021, 1 year since the start of this global pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic “Numbers” are unfathomable: 100 million COVID-19 cases worldwide and 2.1 million deaths globally. In the United States alone, we have almost 24 million COVID-19 cases and more than 420,000 deaths. This excess mortality due to COVID-19 has resulted in more obituaries being printed in our newspapers than at any time in the recent past. And so I am reading more obituaries; more COVID-19 obituaries.
我读讣告。我每天都读讣告。从我11岁起，我就每天读讣告。我早上醒来，在开始一天的活动之前，会走到前门，打开门，取回送到我家的《纽约时报》。然后我回到浴室，打开报纸读讣告。在我穿衣服之前。在我喝咖啡之前。在我吃早饭之前。我读讣告。我查看那些去世者的年龄。98岁、102岁和89岁，也许还有希望。62岁、49岁和34岁，看起来会是糟糕的一天。我阅读死亡原因和相关情况。在睡梦中自然死亡——松了一口气。我注意到，与医生、精神科医生、心理学家和姑息治疗临床医生相比，似乎有更多60年代不知名摇滚乐队的音乐家、艺术家和鼓手去世并登上讣告特写。也许这是个有偏差的样本——那些因值得关注的死亡而获得特别讣告、配有年轻时风华正茂特别照片的人。我为什么如此痴迷于读讣告呢？嗯，答案当然是多层次的。在最浅显的层面上，我被人们的生活故事所吸引。各种各样、长短不一、范围各异且重点不同的生活叙事。它们是有可能帮助我们所有人探寻想成为的人以及可用来衡量自身榜样的戏剧。正如《塔木德》教导我们的：“比真相更真实的是什么？故事。”然而，在或许更深的层面上，对我来说，读讣告是对如何形成面对死亡的态度和观点的一种探究。这是每天的再次确认，即死亡是真实的，是生命中不可避免的一部分，而且事实上，我们每时每刻都与死亡共存。在创造我们生活的故事时，我们创造了一个生活过的故事以及一个时刻存在且随时可能发生的死亡故事。这是一个提醒，即死亡是生命的本质，再次确认了生命，而且死亡为生命画上句号。读讣告让我在生活的每一刻都能保持对死亡显著性的认知。死亡始终存在于我们的生活中。它是一个常量。但如今，在新冠疫情时代，死亡更是无时无刻不在。事实上，每天都有更多的死亡，过去一年的死亡人数比我们近代历史上任何时候都多。现在是2021年1月22日，全球大流行开始已过去一年。新冠疫情的“数字”难以想象：全球有1亿例新冠病例，全球死亡人数达210万。仅在美国，我们就有近2400万例新冠病例，死亡人数超过42万。新冠疫情导致的这种超额死亡率使得我们报纸上刊登的讣告比近期任何时候都多。所以我读了更多讣告；更多关于新冠疫情的讣告。
