HE "PASSED"

Now I know I have a different outlook on life in general from other people, or so it seems from the people I've come into contact with the majority of my life. My latest musings are thus on what I would call "new terminology".

This "new terminology" is not something totally new, as I began hearing this word a few months ago, but just silently shook my head at what I thought was a peculiar new "phrase".

I'm talking death! Death, as in dying, as in a person or animal dying.

Years ago, I was a home hospice nurse. The word "hospice" says what type of work I dealt with. Because I worked in homes, I only went into the office 1-2 times a week for scheduling or "in service". The director decided, I guess, to have a board on the wall and would write down the names of patients who had died that week. But below the names were not "died", but "expired".

Hmmm, I thought. I don't like that word. "Expired" is something that happens to a can of food, or cosmetics. To Contact Len's solution or vitamins etc. The person DIED, he did not "expire". I thought it was an insult to the person who died to use the same terminology as one would a can of vegetables.

I found out today that my boss's father died last night. I feel terrble for her as she was so close to him. He'd had a heart attack (three actually) two weeks ago and never got out of the hospital. Things kept going downhill for my boss's father, yet when she and I went out to lunch yesterday, she was saying things were getting better, and that she wasn't ready to have him "pass". Previously, my boss, in talking about those whom she has lost, has used the term "Passed" or as I said, "Pass". Instantly my mind says, "passed what? A can of beans?" What did he pass? I mean, don't we say "pass the bread? pass the dip"?

So is "Pass" or "Passed" the new terminology to say someone had died?

Why can't people say the word "died"? For that is what happens. My parents are dead, they both died years ago. My friends have died, my pets have died, those whom I don't know personally but know of have died. That is what has happened.

They have not "expired", "passed" or even the old phrase which I can recall my mother saying, which was "passed away". Even as a small child I thought it odd someone would "pass away" when I mentally thought, "no, they have died".

People look at me odd when they find out my parents have "died". I don't avoid the word. This is what happens. They DIE.

I just don't get it...and can only wonder what the next "new" catch phrase will be. I hope it is better than the current ones. I only know that when death is upon me, I want to DIE, I do not want to "expire" nor to "pass".

If I "expired" or "passed", I'd be searching in the other life to see what I "passed" (a gallstone?).