Dying Well: The Unspoken Dimension of Aging Well

In: American behavioral scientist: ABS, Volume 39, Issue 3, p. 336-360

Abstract

I have observed, as a matter of fact, that it is only people who exceed the age of ninety who attain euthanasia—who die, that is to say, of no disease, apoplexy or convulsion, and pass away without agony of any sort; nay, who sometimes even show no pallor, but expire generally in sitting attitude, and often after a meal—or, I may say, simply cease to live rather than die. To come to one's end before the age of ninety, means to die of disease, in other words, prematurely. —Zygmunt Bauman (1992, p. 19, fn 6)