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In Search of a Good Death

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Abstract

Spirituality and storytelling can be resources in aging successfully and in dying well given the constraints of modern day Western culture. This paper explores the relationship of aging to time and the dynamic process of the life course and discusses issues related to confronting mortality, including suffering, finitude, spirituality, and spiritual closure in regard to death. And, finally, the role of narrative in this process is taken up.

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Notes

  1. T Jennings, T Ryndes, C D’Onfrio, and MA Baily, “Access to Hospice Care: Expanding Boundaries, Overcoming Barriers,” Hastings Center Report Special Supplement 33 (2003): S3–S59.

  2. LA Roscoe, “What To Do When Things Fall Apart: A Book Review Essay,” Journal of Mental Health and Aging 4 (1998): 481–485.

  3. TR Cole, The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992) pp. xx–xxii.

  4. WR Fisher, “The Narrative Paradigm: In The Beginning,” Journal of Communication 35 (1985): 74–89 and Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action, (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1987).

  5. S Jackson, “Patchwork Girl,” www.eastgate.com/people/Jackson.html.

  6. D Callahan, “Letter to the Editor,” The Hastings Center Report 38 (2008): 6.

  7. DP Sulmasy, The Healer’s Calling: A Spirituality for Physicians and Other Health Care Professionals, (New York/Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1997): 101.

  8. A Verghese, “The Way We Live Now: Hope and Clarity,” The New York Times, 22 February 2004: 12.

  9. HG Koenig, “A Commentary: The Role of Religion and Spirituality at the End of Life,” The Gerontologist, 42, (2002): 20.

  10. Cole, xx–xxii.

  11. Ibid, 6.

  12. Ibid, 231.

  13. DP Sulmasy, “Is Medicine a Spiritual Practice?” Academic Medicine 74 (1999): 39.

  14. D Callahan, Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), What Kind of Life? The Limits of Medical Progress (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990) and False Hopes: Why America’s Quest for Perfect Health Is a Recipe for Failure (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).

  15. H Brody, Stories of Sickness, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) p 255.

  16. See especially JM Teno, VA Casey, LC Welch, and S Edgman-Levitan “Patient-Focused, Family-Centered End-of-Life Medical Care: Views of the Guidelines and Bereaved Family Members,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 22 (2001): 738–751; DL Patrick, RA Engelberg, and JR Curtis, “Evaluating the Quality of Dying and Death,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 22 (2001): 717–726; JR Curtis, LD Patrick, RA Engelberg, K Norris, et al., “A Measure of the Quality of Dying and Death: Initial Validation Using After-Death Interviews with Family Members,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 24 (2002): 17–31; DL Patrick, JR Curtis, RA Engelberg, E Nielsen, and E McCown, “Measuring and Improving the Quality of Dying and Death,” Annals of Internal Medicine 139 (2003): 410–415; LL Emanuel, HR Alpert, DC Baldwin, and EJ Emanuel, “What Terminally Ill Patients Care About: Toward a Validated Construct of Patients’ Perspectives,” Journal of Palliative Medicine 3 (2002): 419–431; PA Singer, DK Martin, and M Kelner, “Quality End-of-Life Care: Patients’ Perspectives,” Journal of the American Medical Association 281 (1999): 163–168; KE Steinhauser, NA Christakis, EC Clipp, M McNeilly, L MacIntyre, et al., “Factors Considered Important at the End of Life by Patients, Family, Physicians, and Other Care Providers,” Journal of the American Medical Association 284 (2002): 2476–2482; KE Steinhauser, NA Christakis, EC Clipp, M McNeilly, J Parker, and JA Tulsky, “Preparing For the End of Life: Preferences of Patients, Families, and Other Care Providers,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 22 (2001): 727–737; and AL Stewart, J Teno, DL Patrick and J Lynn, “The Concept of Quality of Life and Dying Persons in the Context of Health Care,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 17 (1999): 93–108.

  17. See especially L Balducci and R Meyer, “Spirituality and Medicine: A Proposal,” Cancer Control 8 (2001): 368–376; B Lo, D Ruston, W Kates, RM Arnold, CB Cohen, et al., “Discussing Religious and Spiritual Issues at The End of Life: A Practical Guide for Physicians,” Journal of the American Medical Association 287 (2002): 749–754; PS Mueller, DJ Plevak, and TA Rummans, “Religious Involvement, Spirituality, and Medicine: Implications for Clinical Practice,” Mayo Clinic Proceedings 76 (2001): 1225–1235; SG Post, CM Puchalski, and DB Larson, “Physicians and Patient Spirituality: Professional Boundaries, Competency, and Ethics,” Annals of Internal Medicine 132 (2000): 578–583; RP Sloan, E Bagiella, and T Powell, “Religion, Spirituality, and Medicine,” The Lancet 353 (1999): 664–667; and DP Sulmasy, “Is Medicine a Spiritual Practice?” Academic Medicine 74 (1999): 1002–1005.

  18. Fisher, “The Narrative Paradigm: In the Beginning,” and Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action.

  19. AW Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).

  20. Ibid, 53.

  21. ED Pellegrino and DC Thomasma, Helping and Healing: Religious Commitment in Health Care, (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1997) p 49.

  22. R Dworkin, Life’s Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom, (New York: Knopf, 1993) p 211.

  23. Frank, 55.

  24. R Charon and M Montello, eds. Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics, (New York: Routledge, 2002) p 63.

  25. Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness, 81.

  26. A MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984). See especially Chapter 15, “The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life and the Concept of a Tradition.”

  27. H Brody, Stories of Sickness, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) p 30.

  28. J Groopman, The Measure of Our Days: A Spiritual Exploration of Illness, (NY: New York: Penguin, 1997) pp 165–195.

  29. Ibid, 173

  30. Ibid, 194.

  31. Pellegrino and Thomasma, 48.

  32. Groopman, 195.

  33. LA Roscoe, J Malphurs, LJ Dragovic and D Cohen, “Dr. Kevorkian and Cases of Euthanasia in Oakland County, Michigan, 1990–1999,” The New England Journal of Medicine 343 (2002): 1735–1736.

  34. Pellegrino and Thomasma, 51.

  35. Sulmasy, The Healer’s Calling: A Spirituality for Physicians and Other Health Care Professionals, 128.

  36. M de Montaigne, Les Essais, ed. (P Villey Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965) p 88.

  37. Ibid, 89.

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    Google Scholar 

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  1. University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave, CIS 1040, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA

    David P. Schenck & Lori A. Roscoe

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  1. David P. Schenck
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  2. Lori A. Roscoe
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Correspondence to Lori A. Roscoe.

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Schenck, D.P., Roscoe, L.A. In Search of a Good Death. J Med Humanit 30, 61–72 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-008-9071-3

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