Dying

Death is a state of the total disappearance of life. Dying is a process of decay of the vital system, which ends with clinical death. In current perspectives there are several approaches to research on death and dying; these are the clinical, the humanistic, the philosophical, the psychological, the anthropological, and the sociological perspective.

We will die one day, sooner or later. Traditionally, we approach death from a stoic perspective (Gawande, 2014, p.170). Dead bodies are covered up and quickly whisked away as if there is a shameful connotation affiliated with viewing them. The bereaved, who hide their grief to the point that no one would guess anything had happened, receive social praise. Philippe Ariès delivered a series of lectures at Johns Hopkins in 1973. He pointed out that at the start of the 1930s, there had been a cultural shift regarding how Western societies viewed death. “Death,” he wrote, “would become shameful and forbidden.” (Didion, 2006, p.45) We can attribute this dismissal of grieving in public based on contemporary trends. This epicurean philosophy dictates that we must enjoy ourselves conscientiously, without disturbing others amidst their similarly hedonistic world. Mourning without shame is perceived as disgraceful and self-indulgent. (Didion, 2006, p.45)

Adam Smith closes the first chapter to Theory of Moral Sentiments, 'Of Sympathy', with a harmless enough assertion: 'We sympathize even with the dead'.  Death is not a topic that much interests Smith in Theory of Moral Sentiments. With the exception of a few miscellaneous thoughts in the text, the one paragraph Smith devotes to it is the extent of his interest. It is, however, a matter of interest in his Glasgow lectures on jurisprudence. To the extent we wish to observe the rights of the dead, how far may we extend these rights without infringing upon the rights of the living?  Which is the question: what are the demands the dead may make upon the living?

In this project I explore the realities of grief through personal experiences and artistic practice. My research considers how remaining objects and memories of the deceased are interconnected and can be re-imagined as artworks to deepen commemoration. It also explores an acceptance of the inevitability of one’s own death, and considers impacts on loved ones still living. The result of this project is a moving image work and a collection of sculptures. I also propose the use of artificial grottoes as spaces that invite viewers to contemplate loss of life and confront their own mortality.

Contextual research draws on the work of contemporary artists dealing with death. The video works of Sophie Calle and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook are particularly discussed in relation to my moving image work, 1 million years. When recounting the death of my brother-in-law, I consider an installation work by Tracy Emin and reflect on a photographic series by Anne Noble. Sculptural works by Mike Kelley and Callum Morton are examined in relation to artificial grottoes as devotional spaces. My art practice has also been informed by Martin Heidegger’s philosophical notion of Dasein as a way of accepting all the possibilities in life, including death.

Progressive discourse regarding death, including alternative funeral rites and ways of dying, is still in its infancy in Western societies. However, talking about death is increasingly becoming less taboo. Over the course of this project, a methodological opportunity for information sharing at Death Café events has been invaluable. While questioning societal concerns with death, this project acknowledges that the conversation currently rests in a transitional space anticipating further development. My final series of works, together with this exegesis, contributes to this conversation on death and memorial through the medium of visual art.

CARDAN E&V, Death and Medicine, 2016

This book consists of 21 chapters dealing with the entire series of important peri-mortem issues; it is neither a handbook nor a simple lecture, but a compendium of general medical knowledge on death.
Beyond a couple of short introductory chapters examining the various ways of dying and their semiotics, a good part of the text considers a range of pathologies in terms of their causal relationship to death. The first of these takes a detailed look at medical conditions of interest to intensive care units, including cardiac arrest and resuscitation, chemical pneumonia, malignant hyperthermia, drowning, and electrocution. Smoking, alcoholism, and irradiation disease come next, whereas the remaining pathologic entities are ‘allocated’ a place according to how and when they fatally interfere with the course of life.
As medicine today is no longer rigidly opposed to death, the book addresses the role modern medicine can play, on one hand, in generating organs for transplantation, and on the other hand, in engaging in society’s approach to euthanasia and – when useful – developing strategies to ease the process of dying. It is here that Dr J. Kevorkian’s contribution and Dignitas Clinic from Zürich are considered.
In addition to medical issues proper, the text also approaches several historical aspects of death, such as mummification, pandemics, the Crusades, the use of cadaveric blood, and the death penalty in its many notorious versions, including crucifixion and the guillotine.
A few short chapters are devoted to a number of postmortem matters, including autopsy, forensics, classic preservation and cryonics, cremation, and spontaneous decomposition, as well as the use of cadavers for teaching purposes, with Prof. von Hagens’ achievements. Since embalming is not currently addressed in medical materials, it is also discussed, along with – in the interest of thoroughness – contemporary taxidermy.
Finally, ethical concerns and a possible correlation between near-death experiences and paranormal phenomena are also given their due attention.
The 397-page text, supported by a list of 317 references and a thematic index, is firmly grounded in scientific and academic rigour. Its essayistic narration, some personal reflections in response to a selection of aphorisms, as well as several art reproductions, combine to strike a tone that is both accessible and memorable.
Efforts have been made by the publisher to offer a book that is easily readable. With a friendly graphic, and a robust physical structure, the volume remains open throughout, both figuratively and in the proper sense of the word.

Among the greatest questions ever asked, perhaps the greatest is whether some part of us survives death of the body. Whole religions, individual philosophers, scholars of all types, scientists and ordinary people have all tried to answer this question, so far without any verifiable success. Yet most people continue to believe that some form of a soul survives, but not much more than that is known. This book describes in general terms a new fundamental theory of physics based on a five-dimensional space-time continuum that includes new scientific definitions of life, mind and consciousness, Given these, the book explains a scientific model of the survival of consciousness and mind when the physical body dies. Other cultural beliefs about death are described and their essential points are compared to this new physical model of the afterlife.

There is no death.  There is entrance into fuller life .  There is freedom from the handicaps of the fleshly vehicle.  The rending process so much dreaded does not exist, except in the cases of violent and sudden death, and then the only true disagreeables are an instant and overwhelming sense of imminent peril and destruction and something closely approaching an electric shock.  No more.

This paper was presented at the 12th edition of the biennial “Death, Dying and the Disposal of the Body” (DDD 12) International Conference, that took place for the first time in an Eastern European country – Romania, at the “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, between 2 - 6 September 2015: http://death-studies.ro/ddd12/; http://www.deathandsociety.org/pages/ddd12-conference.php.

This paper is a case study which reveals the inner life of a dying person. More specifically, it aims to present and examine the personal, private experience of Zsófia Torma (1832-1899) – a pioneering Hungarian woman archaeologist of 19th century Transylvania – with dying, in the socio-political and cultural context of the time, based on her unpublished diaries and documents, which can be found in several museums and archives in Romania and Hungary.

Reaching senescence, Zsófia Torma is haunted by the imminence and fear of Death which, in her eyes, has antithetic features: Death is soothing, rescuing, but also terrifying. On the verge of death, Zsófia Torma reflects on life, both on a general and personal level. In addition to this, she raises questions about afterlife and seeks answers in several philosophical and religious works, doctrines, Oriental beliefs, with the hope of finding the assurance of a posthumous existence. Moreover, Zsófia Torma’s notes suggest that she was observing and analysing her own states, as if she wanted to keep their evidence in order to recognize the “signs” of death. As death draws nearer, loneliness becomes a burden for her and she is flooded with memories which unveil a difficult life, full of suffering and concerns, caused by family, financial and especially professional problems. All these problems are external factors that accumulate towards the end of Zsófia Torma’s life, causing her psychological, physical and spiritual collapse, as well as making her experience of dying tormenting. Archaeological research represented Zsófia Torma’s only consolation and motivation, which gradually transformed into an obsession and, along with the other factors, finally contributed to her destruction.

Some ideas from this paper were published in 2012 (see Coltofean Laura, When Passion is Stronger than Death… Zsófia Torma’s Reflections. In: Brukenthalia. Romanian Cultural History Review 2, Sibiu (2012), p. 67-77: http://www.academia.edu/3303421/COLTOFEAN_Laura_When_Passion_is_Stronger_than_Death..._Zs%C3%B3fia_Tormas_Reflections). However, while that article only examined a diary that dates from Zsófia Torma’s last years of life, this paper is the result of a research that has since been largely and continuously extended. Therefore, it offers a broader picture, as well as a better understanding of Zsófia Torma’s experience with dying.

It is only reasonable to ask why do the northern Thai have so many proscriptions and rules and constraints about the conditions of dying? This is a culture that is obsessed with controlling the details and events surrounding death and dying. Why so much cultural emphasis is placed at this point in the lifecycle is worthy of continued serious investigation by students and scholars. If so much attention is given to the details of dying, how does this affect the individual and family of the dying? How does it affect the neighborhood? I believe if we can comprehend the culture of death and dying in northern Thailand we will confront this culture at its deepest level. The engine of the architecture, the symbolism, the ritual, and day dreams and yearnings of the northern Thai comes down to one concept: merit.
To understand death in this society is to understand the mechanism that makes everything work. It is the supreme generator of all events, all happenings, all successes and failures, all diseases, all  lottery wins, all births and all deaths. For the Westerner I dare say it is virtually unfathomable how extensive and penetrating is this notion of Buddhist merit, tied to karma.
If merit and merit-making is the means to influence your karma then the project of accumulating merit is paramount. Death in northern Thailand invokes a massive cultural attempt to increase merit by all means possible and for the old and departing to beneficially dissolve into the great process of dying and being reborn.
Let us look at some of the proscriptions and cultural details the Northern Thai have evolved to achieve a good death.

Death is a phenomenon inextricably linked to life and such as to accompany art since the dawn of time. The Egyptians made the afterlife almost the only subject of their art and their highest culture.
The Greeks, in archaic times, produced vases richly decorated with funeral scenes that housed the ashes of the dead. And then all the sacred art, the Baroque, Neoclassical art, the nineteenth century, and up to the wonderful works of Bocklin, Klimt, Otto Dix, and many others.
Until the late Middle Ages, our civilization has always dealt with it. Then, with the Age of Enlightenment, with Positivism, and finally, in the contemporary era, Death was relegated to an inevitable burden to be rigorously ignored, almost as if it were a transitory problem that could one day even be defeated by our omnipotent Science.
Consumerism, finally, has definitively deconsecrated it, avoiding any representation except for the bare essentials, surrounding it with superstitious suggestions (worse than in the Middle Ages) that are produced in its ridiculous exorcism through childish apotropaic rites of touching that we all know.

I am convinced that the life we ​​know is only a marginal aspect of the Life of our Consciousness, which I believe draws on higher energies. But this is a totally personal position, which I hope you tolerate me.
Well, in the light of this small existential excursus, I must say that the counters with the Vision of the Beyond by Bosch cannot - in my opinion - be ascribable only to the imagination of a genius, also because they constitute almost a unicum of its kind without precedents or successors.
Bosch's perhaps is simply the fruit of a brilliant fantasy or perhaps the expression of a mystical personal experience that goes beyond faith, to reach supreme forms of Awareness that we ignore.
I do not know. I believe everyone should come up with their own idea based on their sensitivity and their beliefs.
In the four wooden panels present at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, there is a mystical vision of the journey to the beyond, with the Fall of souls, Hell, the earthly Paradise with a vision in which men and women, accompanied by guiding angels, they turn to the Fountain of Life, and finally the Ascent to the Empyrean.
The latter is what I publish. The ascent to the Empyrean describes souls that proceed according to a helical pattern in a kind of zig-zag.
They meet a tunnel of light, painted with an incredible chromatic definition.
A clear shape, that of the tunnel, whose walls are made evanescent, of very thin material. Not even the clouds seem to hold a candle to the substance that covers that tunnel. In the end, a figure awaits the soul, and behind him a source of bright light: he emanates rays that are directed directly to recall both the angel and the soul at his side.
An artist who is remembered, sometimes unjustly, above all for his bizarre visionary nature, his curious monsters, but who actually refer to complex symbologies to which Bosch evidently had access, while we, modern repositories of shaky certainties, still flounder in the search for improbable, but often naive, interpretations.

Hieronymus Bosch (1453-1516)
Four branches with a Vision of the Afterlife: Ascent to the Empire, c. 1490 Oil on wood cm. 87x40. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.

This article presents contexts in which a preschooler learns terms related to death and dying Death is a consequence of a certain behavior in the world, a consequence of illness, a part of consuming humans, fantasy and Christian world The child learns the individual meanings parallel to the communication mechanisms within the family, cultural aspects and psychological development A research methodology targeting preschoolers is introduced, including steps and an evaluation The research showed that the transition between life and death is perceived by each child uniquely and the child is not aware of its finality (the irreversibility). Theologizing and philosophizing help the child to develop the concept of hope which is for such discussions very important.

Bravená, Noemi. How do Czech Kindergarten children speak about death and dying. Theologos. 22(1), 2020. s. 7 – 20. ISSN 1335-5570.

This article considers the implications that recent euthanasia developments in Belgium might have for the Australian debate on assisted dying. Through media  database  and  internet  searches four  significant  developments  in  Belgium  were  identified:  three  cases  involving  individuals  who  requested  access to euthanasia, and recent changes to the Belgian Act on Euthanasia 2002,  allowing  children  access  to  euthanasia.  The  article  outlines  these developments  and  then  examines  how  they  have  been  discussed  in  Australia  by  the  different  sides  of  the  euthanasia  debate.  It  concludes  that  these developments are important considerations that legislators and policy-makers  in  Australia  should  engage  with,  but  argues  that  that  engagement  must be rational and also informed by the significant evidence base that is now  available  on  how  the  Belgian  (and  other)  assisted  dying  regimes operate in practice.

This is a comforting and uplifting book with poems for parents and families in which a child died. Renata Leuffen shares her belief in life after death and her intuitive conversations with her son Danny (Siegfried)  who died in 2011 at the age of 27 of Sudden Death Syndrome.

(rok powstania: 2013)

Odejdź w mroki, Przechodniu: nie masz tu nici ni cienia (*) /
Słów trafniejszych, ładniejszych niźli pradawne kazania /
W kraju Greków wybrzmiałe. Z tamtych się mądrość wyłania: /
Homer, Heraklit, Parmenid. Tutaj – bezradne skamlenia. ***

(*) W przytoczonym tu wstępie do eseju, w pierwszym wersie, słowo „nici” nieszczęśliwie przeistoczyło się podczas składu w słowo „nic”, za co trudno co prawda winić zapracowanego wydawcę, nie mogącego wszak skonsultować z autorem każdego szczegółu, ale co na tyle zmieniło, w moim przeświadczeniu, znaczenie, że pozwoliłem sobie przywrócić tę jedną literę w odsłonie zeskanowanej.

(rok powstania: 2016) Philosophy is, first and foremost, the art of self-discovery. It has been that since its dawn, from the Delphic oracle to the present day. This is why pieces of ancient writing should be read as stimuli to one’s own thinking, so as to (in the name of hermeneutic fairness) not offend the old masters. A fragment which serves this purpose better and better as uncertainty of the author’s intentions grows is “μελέτη θανάτου” (Plato, "Phaedo"). The variety of possible translations enables this: “practice of death”, “care for death”, “exercise in death”, along with a range of thanatological questions, all but independent from the translations themselves. The abundance of possible interpretations also helps remind us of something which is well worth remembering: words are more of a tool aiding understanding than the actual aim of that understanding.

Dying is not merely biological, it is also a social process. Just as humans cannot have a good life in isolation, they cannot have a “good death” in isolation. This article explores the factors that should be taken into account when designing a culturally sensitive dispute systems design (DSD) that incorporates conversations about end-of-life care in a community. Conflict practitioners and attorneys could actively participate in reducing end-of-life care inequalities in advance care planning (ACP) by moving DSD beyond the purview of health care and legal institutions and into the community. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2998336

Mortal Dilemmas: The Troubled Landscape of Death in America is an accessible and informative contribution to the public conversation over death and dying. To the many scholarly and popular voices, Donald Joralemon adds the anthropologist's to explore five end-of-life challenges through political, legal, religious, and bioethical lenses: assisted dying, uncertain mental states, the definition of death, the role of grief, and memorialization. He bookends his discussion with the question of whether America is a death-denying culture, and he draws on his research into these five dilemmas to argue that, despite some popular claims to the contrary, U.S. culture has adapted some sophisticated means of embracing death.

"Nichts im Leben ist so gewiss wie der Tod und die Tatsache, dass jeder sterben muss. Gleichzeitig ist kein zum Leben gehörendes Phänomen so unbekannt und so sehr mit projektiven Deutungen versehen wie eben das des Sterbens und des Todes. In der vorliegenden Studie wird auf der Grundlage eines Erinnerungsprotokolls die Struktur einer Erfahrung, die in der vielfältigen Literatur dazu als „Nah-Tod-Erfahrung“ bezeichnet wird, rekonstruiert. Dabei wird den methodischen Schwierigkeiten der Erforschung solcher Grenzerfahrungen durch eine detaillierte Sequenzanalyse Rechnung getragen. Die bisherige Literatur bewegt sich einerseits zwischen dem Pol praktischer Interessen – etwa dem Versuch, ein Leben nach dem Tod ‚wissenschaftlich zu beweisen‘ – und dem Pol wissenschaftlicher Demystifikationsversuche, andererseits zwischen dem Pol der Behauptung von universellen Erfahrungsmustern und dem Pol der Reduktion der Erfahrung auf je kulturspezifische Konstruktionen.
Demgegenüber werden in der vorliegenden Studie die Erfahrung der nicht vorstellbaren Gegenstandslosigkeit im Sinne der völligen Abwesenheit von allem, die Erfahrung der nicht vorstellbaren Einsamkeit im Sinn der völligen Abwesenheit von anderen und die Erfahrung des nicht vorstellbaren Selbst-nicht-mehr-da-Seins als der universelle Kern der Sterbenserfahrung, als ihr Handlungs- und Deutungsproblem erwiesen. Dies erlaubt, die vielfältigen Beschreibungen der sogenannten „Nah-Tod-Erfahrungen“ als je kulturspezifische Antworten darauf zu begreifen. Eine in der Konstitution der Gattung Mensch begründete universelle Struktur des Sterbens muss also mit den notwendigerweise kulturspezifischen Inhalten seiner Erfahrung und Deutung zusammengedacht werden.
Da Sterben nur als inkomplettes Spuren hinterlässt, die methodisch aufgeschlossen werden können, sind Aussagen über die Erfahrung des eigenen Todes nicht möglich; gleichwohl nähert sich die Studie unaufgeregt und sorgfältig den ‚Zugängen zur Festung des Todes‘ (Montaigne) soweit an, wie dies nur möglich ist, und erlaubt es dem Leser so, sich eine fundierte Vorstellung vom Unvorstellbaren zu erarbeiten."

Decalogue 5 appears to be overtly preoccupied with the specific political issue of capital punishment, yet it is equally concerned with the larger moral contexts which are inherently social - the Law, as the film decrees, manifests our responsibility to each other. While Kieslowski presents us with a murder paradigm which is fundamentally depersonalised, moral choice remains intimately subjective, even if the motivations of the characters are obscured here. The emphasis placed on observation and dissociation throughout Decalogue 5 implicitly critiques the emotional distances wrought between Modern subjects. From the outset, the narrative is framed as Piotr’s story, and the journey he undertakes (along with the audience) moves from an ideal of clinical objectivity - the detached moral frameworks of the Law - to the final annunciation of the personal ("I abhor it"). This article seeks to investigate that journey, highlighting the complexities of these seemingly irreconcilable positions.

Despite the longstanding research tradition looking at administration of the death penalty jurisprudentially, scholarship has only begun to examine such punishment within the paradigm of “emotionally intelligent justice.”  By mapping the intersections of sanctions and emotions, emotionally intelligent justice has been advanced as a way to reduce the cruelty of offenders and of the justice system itself.  Utilizing executed inmates’ final statements for the period December, 1982 through early June, 2005 and controls for offense and offender characteristics, this study examines the manner in which starkly personal pronouncements manifest in the Texas execution chamber.  Descriptive analyses illustrate a broad swath of emotions as offenders approach their deaths, while multivariate models suggest that the presence of homicide survivors (victims’ families and friends) at executions facilitates expressions of guilt and repentance, but not defiance, in offenders.  Implications for future research are discussed.

Death is a reality of life. Despite this inevitability, death today remains unwelcome and has been sequestered into the enclaves of medical practice as a means of quelling the rising tide of fear it provokes. Medical practice currently maintains power over the dying individual, actualised through the selective collaboration between medicine and law as a means of subverting the individual who attempts to disrupt the contemporary accepted norms of dying. There is, however, a shift on the horizon as to whether we can make the notion of a true choice become a reality in New Zealand. This serves to offer a compelling movement towards individuals seeking control of their dying trajectory to actualise the notion of individual choice. With this shifting landscape there is an opportunity to be grasped to change how we manage our dying trajectory away from the biomedical patterns of behaviour when dying, in order to balance life decisions. To achieve this prospect, we need to engage with a framework upon which to pin the changes. This paper offers a re-framing and representing approach, using illustrative examples that draw upon British and New Zealand literature, together with over 50 years of professional nursing, and the Ars Moriendi to reflect upon the self-centricity of the contemporary Western individual to access a 'good death' of choice.

How did I learn to understand that there can never ever be any acceptable alternative to immortality and living indefinitely forever young?

Is there any better way to learn and permanently remember the understanding that any possibly imaginable alternative to reverse all adverse effects of aging and happily live indefinitely forever young, healthy and energetic would have the same long-term negative consequences as intentionally committing suicide than I have described in this authentic experience report?

When I was only 6 years old, I went through an emotional trauma, from which I am still suffering today and that has led me to come here and be the only one working in the EIT building during Christmas break. On October 2nd, 1980, only one day before my daddy’s birthday, my aunt Frieda, who I liked a lot because she paid lots of attention to my long stories and actually took them serious, suffered from a sudden heart attack. My daddy succeeded to bring her back to life with CPR and my mom called the emergency doctor in the mean time. The doctor was a quiet man from Romania. He had short back hear and looked like being around 30 years old. His voice was very quiet and emotionally detached when he asked my grandma about the age of my aunt. My grandma replied: "She is 83 years old." And then something happened, which I never expected, i.e. the doctor went on in his empathy-lacking quiet voice to say the few German words, which I still remember as if my aunt had died yesterday. He said “Ich denke, wir hoeren auf.” In English this means, “I think, we are going to quit.” He meant going to quit any efforts and even medical interventions at our disposal to bring my aunt Frieda back to live and to make sure she’ll stay alive. When the doctor said this, it was spooky quiet, as if a ghost would kill my aunt. I felt like screaming into the face of the doctor, YOU MUST DO YOUR JOB AS EMERGENCY DOCTOR, TO DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO MINIMIZE MY AUNT’S RISK TO DIE FROM THIS PARTIAL HEART ATTACK REGARDLESS OF HER AGE!!!! But I was only six. I was scared and confused. It was my first real encounter with death. I helplessly looked at my parents and looked at my grandma. I wanted them to demand from the doctor not to use my aunt Frieda’s advanced age against her. Although I was only six years old I strongly felt that no medical provider has the moral right and should be punished harshly when using his patient’s age as a shallow absolutely unjustified excuse for refusing to save their lives. But it was so quiet this time, which I recall must have been around 7.30 p.m. on October the 2nd, 1980, when my aunt laid diagonally across the carpet on the floor of the children’s room. Neither my mom nor my daddy nor my grandma nor my 2 younger siblings opened their mouth.

Although I was furious beyond anyone’s imagination, the fact that my otherwise very confident parents and even my grandma, who was best friends with my dying aunt, i.e. all three adults in the room, who’d I expect to fight for my life if I ever needed urgent medical care, and who’d otherwise readily expressed their opposition to anything they did not agree with or considered unfair, did not even attempt to pressure the doctor on a mental, emotional emphatic, moral, medical or legal level, to take his job seriously regardless how he personally felt about my aunt’s advanced age. When something totally unexpected like this happens, i.e. in case of such kind of second degree murder due to medical neglect and intentionally withholding readily available medical interventions without any apparent rational reason for not even trying to save my aunts life, when we still had a chance, I became speechless. I felt like screaming to my parents to not allow the doctor to let my aunt die, after my daddy had brought her back to life already. My daddy is very good in CPR. He’ll fight for everyone’s life as if it was his own. My daddy waited for the doctor’s instructions on how to proceed after restoring my aunts consciousness to the point where she had her eyes opened and could hear every single word, which was spoken by anyone in the children’s room. When all this happened I stood about 4 feet away from my aunt. I was afraid to move any closer because I was worried of accidentally bump into something I could not see but which would kill here. Now something happened that I can never forget. My daddy got up from the carpet and stopped CPR! I felt like screaming “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!” “WHYYYYYYYYYY???” “DON’T!!!!!!” “KEEP BREATHING MORE AIR IN HER MOUTH!!!!! Don’t listen to this evil doctor. He has no respect for life! He does not deserve to be an emergency doctor!!! What if she were his aunt???? She is conscious and will most likely fully come back to life if you’ll just give her enough time to get over this medical crisis!!!! Actually, she was already over the hump because apparently her heart was beeping already independently and all my daddy was still doing, was breathing air in my aunt’s mouth. I wanted my mom to call another doctor. I wanted him to be a German doctor, who treats our aunt as if she was his aunt. I felt that this Rumanian doctor had no empathy for Germans because when my entire family looked up to him for help, he indirectly killed by neglect.

Even if is negative medical intuition should turn out to be true and all of our medical interventions were doomed to fail this evening, I felt he should at least try anyways or else there would have been no point in the doctor making the trip to our home. Then he could have stayed in his killer-hospital. At least that way he would not have had the opportunity to encourage my daddy from reviving my aunt with CPR. When I was six, my daddy was still very powerful. He would have kept performing CPR for hours to save my aunt’s life, if this disguised killer-doctor, would not have instructed him to stop and let her die, just because he felt no old people deserve resources intensive medical care, unless they are his own relatives. Would he let his aunt or grandmother dies like that if he had good chances to prevent or at least postpone death? This I felt would have certainly give my aunt enough time to get over the fear, which is an inherent feature of anyone surviving a heart attack, especially when the doctor is instructing my daddy to stop keeping her alive. I felt like being in a madhouse. I could not speak. My otherwise very attentive parents and grandmother did not seem to be aware that I felt so much emotional pain with such a mental intensity that I almost felt as if I was the one dying instead of my aunt. This god dam Rumanian doctor! Why did he have to be on duty when my aunt needed dedicated professional medical help to get over her heart attack? Why did the hospital not send a German doctor with a strong voice, who’d be much more assertive in his speech and actions to instruct my parents to do everything in their power to save my aunt’s life? Why did my aunt deserve such an indecisive foreign doctor, who lacks the kind of strong loud confidence inducing voice, patients and their relatives need in their struggle of succeeding in overcoming any medical crisis? Why did this stupid hospital send us this absolutely useless and even counterproductive foreign physician, who refused to even say a single word when my parents and grandma looked up to him and expected rational life-saving medical advice? What was he thinking when he condemned my aunt with the only very ambiguous sentence, I still remember verbatim from this cursed Rumanian doctor, “I think we are going to quit.”? Was he asking my parents, whether they’d approve his proposal to quit saving my aunt’s life? Did he order my daddy to quit CPR and let my aunt die? This doctor showed lack of leadership when everyone is expecting him to take charge of the medical crisis at hand and to maximize the odds for the best possible medical outcome.

I remember not being able to feel anything that evening. My aunt laid dead diagonally across the carpet in the children’s room when I started to understand that everyone expects me to go to sleep as usual. I hid under my blanket and wanted to die. I cried so hard. What if I had a heart attack? Would my parents and grandma follow the medical advice of the doctor, if he told them that he thinks, we should quit saving my life? Luckily, I only was 6 and no doctor would even dream about using my age as an excuse for letting me die. But, what about 80 years from now? From then onward, I wanted to become strong, innovative, energetic and knowledge to defeat death before it would inevitably kill me only about 80 years later. That is why I came to America.

Actual and perceived social isolation have both been associated with increased risk for mortality.  The objective of this meta-analytic review is to establish the overall and relative magnitude of social isolation and loneliness and examine possible moderators.  Data sources were established via a literature search of studies (January 1980 to February 2014) using MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Social Work Abstracts, and Google Scholar.  Studies were included that provided quantitative data on mortality as affected by loneliness, social isolation, or living alone.  Across studies that statistically controlled for a variety of possible confounds, the independent random effects weighted average effect sizes for social isolation OR=1.29, loneliness OR=1.26 and living alone OR=1.32, corresponding to an average of 29%, 26% and 32% increased likelihood of mortality respectively.  No differences were found between measures of objective and subjective social isolation.  Results remained consistent across gender, length of follow-up, and world region, but initial health status influenced the findings.  Results also differed across participant age, with social deficits being more predictive of death in samples with an average age younger than 65 years.  Overall, the influence of both objective and subjective social isolation on risk for mortality is comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality.

Objective: Attitude toward dying and death is a conceptual response to the various aspects of death, which is based on an individual's psychosocial and cultural experiences. The present study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Multidimensional Orientation toward Dying and Death Inventory (MODDI-F) among Iranian students. Methods: A total of 320 subjects were selected from students in universities of Tehran in the academic year 2016-2017, using the convenience sampling method. The study data were collected using the following instruments: the MODDI-F, the Existential Anxiety Scale (EAS), the Oxford happiness questionnaire, the general health questionnaire, and the Death Anxiety Scale (DAS). Data analyses were performed by factor analysis, Pearson correlation, and Cronbach's alpha coefficient in SPSS V. 22. Results: Factor structure was assessed using the confirmatory factor analysis. The proposed model for the MODDI-F with 8 factors had a good fit to the data. Besides, the reliability of the MODDI-F was assessed using Cronbach alpha and test-retest reliability coefficients. The Cronbach alpha values of higher than 0.7 were found for all of the subscales, except for death denial. Moreover, using the Pearson correlation coefficient, significant relationships were found between the scores on the factors of the MODDI-F and scores on convergent and divergent factors of other questionnaires, indicating the convergent and divergent validity of the inventory. Conclusion: MODDI-F enjoys acceptable psychometric properties regarding the ease of administration, scoring, and interpretation, as well as the suitable validity and reliability of the questionnaire. Thus, researchers can safely use it in their studies.

People ascribe a different meaning to dying and, therefore, approach their own death or grief for the other in various ways. Such approaches are the product of the intersection of people’s identities and experience; these go part and parcel with the way individuals view the world. Consequently, to be cared for when dying or grieving requires concrete knowledge and understanding of own identities from the professionals’ perspectives. In this premise, by means of a survey (n=55) and interviewing (n=10), the present paper reports on empirical data from Hawai`i about death conceptions and the gender divide. The study concludes that men and women share many conceptions about death but differ based on what constitutes normative grief and how it is expressed. This information adds to the knowledge held by helping professions like social work, counselling and psychology, with the aim to advance evidence that informs practice with the dying and/or bereaved from this background.

This essay argues that the terminally ill patient may still experience healing at the end of life and in the face of inevitable death. I will argue that healing is something that we experience quite apart from what happens to our biological make-up. While healing is often correlated with a change in the state of our bodies, it need not be. The essay begins by defending a distinction between two pairs of related concepts, viz., between disease and illness and between cure and healing. With those distinctions in hand, I examine four aspects of the experience of illness. I then argue that these aspects of illness can be transformed in the life of the ill patient such that she can experience healing even if she cannot be cured.