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‘Just live for today’. Living, caring, ageing and dying

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 1998

GLENNYS HOWARTH
GLENNYS HOWARTH
Affiliation:
Department of Behavioural Sciences, University of Sydney
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Abstract

There is an assumption in western societies that death in old age is not only ‘natural’ but also ‘easy’. It is often characterised as death which occurs at the end of life with goals complete. By contrast death in youth is a traumatic and untimely end. This paper draws on interviews with people over the age of 75 to explore the nature of attitudes to death in old age. It focuses on the issues raised by elderly people themselves when given the opportunity to talk about death and dying. In so doing, attitudes to death and dying are separated into ‘death of self’ and ‘death of other’. Each of these categories is then divided thematically according to the issues raised by respondents.

Keywords

deathdyingattitudescaringselfdisengagement
Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 18 , Issue 6 , November 1998 , pp. 673 - 689
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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