Political Correctness

P.C. drives me mad.  If four-letter words can be shouted by schoolchildren in the bus all the time, why shouldn't they be used for the functions they actually describe, when needed?

However, it's not them I worry about.  My father was blind.  He was proud of being blind and the way he managed his life despite that.  He was indignant when it was suggested he was "visually impaired" as though "blind"  were a rude word, needing a euphemism.  Nor should "deaf" be a word we can't use. I must admit that "disabled" is much better than "crippled" because that word has so many other implications.  As for "black", well that is what my husband proudly calls himself. 

But what is bothering me at the moment very much is that we need to accustom ourselves to talking about death.  Old age can be a lonely time when your contemporaries begin to die, or be too old to visit and too deaf to enjoy phone conversations.  We can have lots of other friends and relations, but it is still the ones of our own age with whom we have a special bond.  This is because we understand each other and our situation and that situation is that we are going to die.  But younger people, mostly, and particularly those caring for the elderly are just too embarrassed to talk about death and if the old person brings it up they are likely to be told "Don't talk like that dear, you'll be with us many a year yet".  This is just what they don't want to hear.  And it makes them feel very lonely, because they know they must not bring up the one subject that they really need to think about.  Many don't want to be here for endless declining years, we just want to be able to talk, quite normally, about what lies ahead, which is death, inevitably, without embarrassing anybody.  So if there is one thing carers need to learn, it is that.  Please listen to me.  I know from talking to plenty of people in their final years.