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3. Good Death, Bad Death (I): In Other Times and Places
- University of California Press
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T H R E E d GOOD DEATH, BAD DEATH (I) In Other Times and Places Does it make any sense to think of a person as having either a “good” or a “bad” death? History suggests that it does. People in many times and places have developed strong preferences about ways to live and die that are deeply rooted in religious beliefs and cultural values. “The good (or bad) death” actually refers to the end phase of life. The latter term usually describes what medical people call terminal illness and the rest of us call dying. Death may also come suddenly, though: alive one moment , dead the next. Is it good or bad to die in a twinkling? Not everybody has the same opinion. But an even larger question seeks our attention : what is the relationship between how we die and (1) how we have lived and (2) how we fare after death? In this chapter we explore the anguish , inspiration, wisdom, and, perhaps, foolishness of societies in times and places other than today’s mainstream NorthAmerica.Particular attention will be given to the concepts of the deathbed scene and the moment of death. In the next chapter we work up the courage to look in the mirror to view the “good death” in our own lives. I had spoken with Mr. Carter the previous morning. He didn’t have much to say and not much breath to say it with. We didn’t have to talk about death. That had become a worn-out topic. Life had been pretty much worn out, too, as can happen after more than ten years as a bedand -chair resident in geriatric facilities. “Another day, another dollar,” he had wheezed. Now I was standing in a cool, sparkling-clean room 4 3 two doors down from the converted broom closet that had become my office as psychologist. The consulting pathologist was completing the postmortem exam. He commented that Mr. Carter probably had engaged in vigorous physical activity in his earlier years; he was still a strong and healthy man, allowing for his age and deadness. “The ward says he died in his sleep,” I dutifully noted. Dr. Rimini produced one of his elegant snorts. “Or he died in the nurses’ sleep. No matter. He died.” I felt sad that Mr. Carter had died, that Mr. Carter had to die, that anybody did. I also wondered what I would find in my studies of death and dying—did most people want to pass on in their sleep, or what? Later, another thought hit me as I met with students who had signed up for my strange new kind of class on death and dying at Clark University (in Worcester , Massachusetts) in the 1960s. Few had had direct experiences with the dying or the dead. Not many of these college students had lost a family member or close friend, and the deaths themselves had been processed and packaged by professionals. I might also have been isolated from the dying and the dead had I not embarked on what was then a beyond-thefringe career of working with the aged and the life-threatened. Mr. Carter’s life and death had been more instructive to me than any textbook on death (which did not exist at that time). If my office had not been so close to the morgue (a little joke on the part of the hospital administration ), I would not have been acquainted with the unprocessed body of a person I had known. My experiences with the dying and the dead did not come through everyday life in our society. We have succeeded more than most societies in reducing the presence of the dead. In part this has been accomplished by keeping people alive longer. In part, though, we have cultivated techniques for keeping not only the dead but also the dying from general view. For most people in other times and places, death and the dead were more a part of everyday life. We begin with a visit to the Lugbara of Uganda and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Our guide is anthropologist John Middleton, who studied the Lugbara during the 1960s.1 The world has much changed since these observations, but they offer insights into a culture much different from the Euro-American mainstream. We step now into that time and place. 4 4 / C H A P T E R T H R E E...