Experience of empathy to death

Abstract

As part of the autoethnography approach the biographical reflection on death is presented. Various life situations of respondents allow to reconstruct the complexity and ambiguity of «on the verge of death» state of cancer patients and their relatives. The first participant had survived the growth of the tumor, the diagnosis and surgery. The diagnosis turned out to be negative, but it has not prevented a strong fear of death at the beginning, solitude and escape from people finding new place in the world that suddenly changed, return to life, and constant reflection. The second is operated patient with diagnosed throat cancer. From time to time he writes down his thoughts, answers, comments, participating in the conversation only gestures and faintly uterine sounds, which sometimes add up to a word. His wife is the third one and the main in interview. She talks about what happened, shares the fears, talks about the proximity of death, complaining about her lack of restraint and, at the same time, encourages the husband. The fourth is the one who is trying to link the text into a single narrative, who stumbled, seeing his friend’s emaciated, smiling, with a scar, did not believe at first the story right about the tumor, surgery, a whole year spent with the disease.