Death!
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In memory of Jeanne Martin Beckerman
Dear Family: Tuesday 07/03/07
My heart goes out to Neil, Ken, Teri, Barb R and Barb G., Karen, Harold, Wally, Earl, Dorita, and all of us who have first hand watched our Mom's become ill and dependent for our care and our advocacy in the geriatric medical world. I was stunned as I heard about my mom's medical crisis on Friday. She was found on the floor of her bedroom unresponsive. She was in intensive care for two and a half days and was actually released to a regular hospital bed just a few minutes before my arrival at her side onMonday evening at around 7:30 pm. She had asked for me several times on Sunday night and Monday as I was traveling. She was asking as if she wanted to stay alive until arrived and then dramatically die, perhaps she knew the same opera I was humming as I heard about her requests. In the opera version, the soprano amazingly has enough strength to sing a stunning duet with the tenor before she falls limp and dies. But neither my mom nor I sing and the orchestra had the night off. We even had a false start because my niece, Wendy, met me in the hospital lobby to walk me up to her room. In the time that Wendy waited for me, the hospital staff moved her to a new part of the hospital, and her new status out of intensive care.
We went to where. Wendy thought my mom was in Intensive Care and the bed was empty. That was very disconcerting. When we asked where they moved the lady in room 520, all they said was that she was in 518 on the other side. We rushed to 518 and there was this very large black lady with very long black hair. "That's not my Mommy!" What the heck was going on! Upon further inquiry, we were told that the "other side" referred to a different building which connected with a common hallway, but had similar numbering.
She was in 518-M, not 518. Wendy and I were practically running down the hall with some abandon to finally see my mom.
By the time I got to her room it was 7:30 pm and we were all exhausted and yet she was happy to see me and I was amazed to see her. Amazed to have another look into those soft hazel colored eyes that I thought I'd never see again. I wonder if I remembered ever seeing how nice they really were. I had plenty of sleep on the plane and still had the energy as if it was 4:30 in the afternoon. My mom had just been moved around and just couldn't imagine how we ever found her in this new location. She
was slightly disoriented. She was officially out of ICU and the care level was going to change to normal from fabulous. Her crisis was on Friday, she was in a drug induced coma Friday through Sunday afternoon when her breathing apparatus was removed, and this was now Monday evening. My mom still couldn't figure out if she was dead or alive and why. But she did want to see all her kids one more time and now she had. The confusion was obvious. Every question posed to her got an honest answer and then a shrug as if to say, "Yes, I'm feeling better, but I really don't know for what purpose." This wasn't from some sort of dementia, but really from a sense of overwhelm.
She was very upbeat today and there was no sign of the doubt which I had seen Monday night. We had several visitors today. A psychiatric assessment, a speech and swallow test, and a physical therapy analysis. All of this is part of the assessment which will be used to determine the next steps for us. And through out it all, I saw the possibilities of a whole new ball game for Mom as we began to look to the future. Perhaps there is a future; maybe only another minute. But whatever happens, there has been lots of healing amongst us caregivers and patient alike as we have learned more about each other under the strain of this situation. We learned more about what we have in common instead of the obvious differences between us which have haunted me for decades. My Mom has finally talked about her mortality in a real way and I have received the love and respect from many of my siblings who have truly appreciated my point of view during this endeavor and odyssey. I have learned again that we can make plans and then all we get to do is see how the plans may or may not fit into what happens and what will happen. It's nice to make plans so long as you don't take it too seriously.
Ken, my teacher, has been available to me for spiritual and medical and medicalmedicaid advice and I know that your love sustains me and I know that I will now be more patient in dealing with outcomes. I'm sorry to go on and on, but this barely scratches the surface, too. You are in my prayers and thoughts as I continue. I have reservations to return to Oakland on Friday, but I have the luxury of a flexible return and will stay for an extra day or two if necessary. I'll be sure and write more if I can.
love,
Dear Family: Saturday 07/07/07
Oh Seven, Oh Seven, Oh Seven: July 4th was the best day of the week for my mom. She was eating on her own; a plate of food was put in front of her and she ate and ate until it was all gone. She was eating like she was one of the boys when they were on the team. She had tied up the game in the bottom of the 9th and we were now into extra innings. We know who wins this game, but the thrill was still real. On Tuesday her sister and niece came for a visit. It's only Saturday as I write this and already the days are blending one into the next. On Wednesday, my brother Andy and his wife drove three and a half hours each way from Vermont for a three hour visit to see Mom. Rick and his wife Lanie came in from Westchester. Wendy and I were a great team making decisions and just being together for everything....... The fourth was a very active and fun day and my mom was sitting up all day although still no longer ambulatory. She was using a bed pan and since then demoted to diaper within just a day. She hated the idea of it as it came to that and really grew angry and violent with one small fit. On the evening of the fourth, something changed and we still don't know what caused it. Now it doesn't really matter. She seemed more disoriented then ever and quite disconnected. The nurses and staff have been wonderful and helpful. They write their name and the day on a white board within the patient's view at each bed and there's sign below which invites us to use the call button whenever we want. One time I was feeling stuck in not knowing what to do; my eye caught that sign and it reminded me of just what I needed to do. Help came in a jiffy.The nurse, Jullianna, heard Wendy and I describe how we saw Mom and it sounded like a phenomena called Sundowner - The patient gets disoriented at the end of the day; overtired and over stimulated and exhausted like a four year old child. I had noticed it briefly that morning, but it totally disappeared when she had her first bites of breakfast. So Wendy and I went home blissfully content on the evening of the fourth thinking that Mom would return to her normal self certainly after breakfast on the fifth. We returned for breakfast on the fifth and she ate her first few bites of food and then began to refuse offers of food. She had some trouble feeding herself on the evening of the fourth and we were feeding her by now. She had so little food for lunch that my oldest brother was practically forcing her sustenance at dinner time. I don't know how much more detail to go into now. I want to remember and really don't at the same time. My mom has been taken off of all food because too much of the liquid goes into her lungs, but most because she hasn't really wanted it. So it wasn't the Sundowner phenomena, it was her inevitable downturn.
Yesterday, the sixth has been more of the same. No dramatic downturn, a gentle downwardly turn. On Wednesday the staff were talking about discharge and now we're holding off; we will begin a Hospice program on Monday. In the meantime, I began to express my feelings to the doctors and they looked relieved and encouraged to see my accurate assessment of the situation. They looked better because now they could offer some reduced medical treatments for these next two days until Hospice begins. No more daily blood draws and some sort of patch to absorb phlegm so that they can stop the suction tube treatments into her lungs, which is the most distressing procedure she must endure.
My brothers and I had a conference phone call last night. Through out this, we have respectfully done everything with full consensus. I laid out a course of action which we all agreed to. The brothers all assigned themselves the task of researching
Hospice situations - an institution versus a hospice at home. We will then institute that on Monday morning as I must leave at 11:00 am on Monday to go the airport. I will be taking a 3:30 pm flight back to San Francisco on Monday and will see you all as soon as I can.
I miss you something awful. I can't wait to see my family again.
Dear Family: 07/09/07
When my dad died forty-seven years ago, my brother and Mom had just come in the door from their daily visit to the hospital. My brother was gently calling us all downstairs. But before we could gather my mom yelled out, "Your daddy's gone!" Yesterday was an amazing day. I kept my mom peaceful and in the dimly lit room at her bed near the door all morning to be rested for expected visitors. My nephew, Ken, came unexpectedly first thing in the morning and aroused my mom with a cheerful, "Hello, Grand ma ma!" as he always called her. He brought a video for her to watch of an interview that his preteen sons did of her and her two sisters only a few weeks ago. She didn't see it. She really couldn't focus, but I saw it and in it Mom was alive and seemingly free of the effects of last October's stoke. It was really a high water mark. I'll be getting a copy of it to share when I return home. Three of my four brothers all showed up during the day and were there at the same time for a while. My mom's slightly younger sister wanted to visit but was frightened and upset and asked us in a sense to facilitate her coming. We easily did. Andy stopped and got her as I continued my seven day vigil with Mom. My Auntie Ev came and you'd have to really know her to see what a powerful experience this was for her. My Auntie Ev and my mom had a daily phone appointment at 11:30 am for years and years.They only live a few blocks away, but have been house bound for the past few months. Aunt Ev's walking stride is about half the length of the foot in front of her as she shuffles slowly along. Her walk is kind of like waiting at the post office. If she were any slower, she'd be walking backward. During a visit on the fourth of July when my mom was quite animated, Aunt Ev eschewed the use of a wheel chair in the hospital because she didn't want her dying sister to see her in a wheel chair. But we insisted and wheeled her down the hall and allowed her to walk into my mom's room. Go figure, but the members of "The Great Generation" are a proud bunch and have turned the facade of reality into an art form. Living through the Great Depression and the W.W.II, I suppose they had to. Well, we got Aunt Ev to the room yesterday and this
time she walked the entire length of the hallway to my mom's room - the last room down the hall on the right. We sat for a while and aroused my mom from her semiconscious state. My mom had shown very little reaction to stimulus for a day or two and yet when she heard her sister's voice she became the most animated I could imagine for her in that condition. I remembered that my friend, Steven Wallace, had lost the ability to form words on his last days and when my mom also couldn't form words I explained to her sister, Ev, that speech is quite a high brain function. By now I could so easily read my mom's lips and her body language that I was able to translate for her.
Evelyn, following my instruction, put her face right up to my mom's and clearly spoke to her. She told her that she loved her and then just chatted as if it was on one of their daily phone calls. Evelyn noticed how nicely I had combed my mom's hair and said that she wanted to know who had "done" her hair and she'd like to call that person to do her hair, too. AH stereotypes! That aside, Aunt Ev spent about an hour in a chair by my mom's side. She'd get up and talk for a while and the sit quietly for a while. My mom didn't speak a word but had the most sweet and contented smile on her face that you could imagine. Then I spoke the words that made my aunt shutter. I reminded her to say, "Goodbye" and she said that she didn't want to think about that happening. Aunt Ev said that she was hoping for a miracle that her sister would live. I said that we had a miracle and I related a story about my work with my teacher, Chuck, and how I had learned to identify miracles rather than have the false hope of the miracle I wanted - a reversal of what was happening. We had that miracle when my mom recovered for these past four days and we all got to say goodbye and acknowledge that the end was at hand. This was truly a miracle because until last Friday my mom had not recently acknowledged her mortality. It was quite a moment. After a while, Aunt Ev was feeling better and it seemed like time to leave. Andy had picked her up from her home earlier and was now headed back to the parking lot to retrieve the car as I was walking my dear aunt way back down the long hallway to the elevators. The hallway is about 35 yards long and it took for ever. Then there's a left turn down the next hallway a short distance to the elevator. We talked and walked and as we approached the elevator, Aunt Ev looked up at me and said, " Want to go back." I simply acknowledged her request and said that I understood. But we never broke stride and we were at the elevator and back to the lobby in a minute. Next it was time to go back to the room and continue to implement some plans my brothers and I started the day before. We had decided on Friday night to begin a hospice program but were informed that the palliative care people didn't do intakes on weekends and we'd begin that process on Monday morning. In the meantime, I asked the doctors what steps we could begin during the weekend. We disconnected her hydration and other medical treatments on Saturday afternoon and had to then go through the process of getting a doctor to order a time released opiate patch to assure respiratory comfort. My oldest brother is the health care director so I had to get him to consult with the doctor and then order it. The order came through on Sunday afternoon and the patch was actually placed on my mom's back at around 4:30 pm. Stephen and I were finally the last two ducks in the room on Sunday. I usually stayed each day with my mom until 8:00 pm so we waited until about 6:30 pm to see the patch begin to take effect. I was expecting my mom to be more settled as the opiate began its journey though her body but she seemed, instead, a bit restless though not agitated. From 6:30 pm until about 7:30 pm we tried to get my mom to lay more comfortably in her bed. She just wouldn't lay flat and kept tilting her head far to her right side. After messing around for a while we just didn't feel that we could equalize the pressure on her body and particularly the pressure on her edematous right arm. We called the nurse, who changed her bedding again for us and faced her entirely on her left side. As she regained her nice rhythmic breathing, we left for the evening and had a luxurious steak dinner a local steak house.
It's interesting because my oldest brother and I both had cars in the hospital parking lot and we walked into the parking lot realizing that we had not made plans for where we were going to eat. First he suggested a steak and then as we considered some other choices the image of a fine charcoal steak stayed in my vision. We went back to our first choice of steak and the picture of a perfect steak from my head was soon sitting on the table in front of me. Steve and I talked and talked. We talked about the past, we talked about the future, and we talked as long lost friends. We went to my mom's apartment after dinner, talked a bit more and soon were in bed. When the phone rang at 3:30 AM, I was already awake and restlessly trying to find some music to help me sleep. "I'm sorry to tell you that your mom has passed away." I am relieved and not surprised at how wonderfully this has gone. I look forward to seeing you soon. love,
Bill B.
Death
Death has many potential causes: disease, injury, Poisoning, among others. Any of these may result in irreparable damage to tissues and organs, and disturb the inner balance that allows vitality (homeostasis). All living creatures die, even if they have no particular affliction. Furthermore, every species has its own typical life expectancy. Humans, for example, don't usually pass the 100 year mark, even when they are generally healthy and living in a secure environment. In humans, similar to most mammals, one can discern a slow deterioration in the body's vitality, which eventually results in death.Current research aims to discover the cause of the body's natural deterioration upon entering old age. Even though findings are generally inconclusive, several theories have been proposed. One theory proposes that the body's deterioration is caused by genetic reasons, as the human genome contains a self-destructive mechanism that kicks off after a specific length of time. Another theory suggests that there is a limit on the rate of cell division which ultimately leads to cell demise (see Telomere). However, many studies show that a proper and nutrition together with regular physical activity can extend life expectancy.
In third world countries, inferior sanitary conditions and lack of access to medical technology makes death of infectious diseases much more prevalent than in developed countries. On the other hand, some of the causes of death in the developed countries are almost nonexistent or quite scarce in the third world - diseases resulting from unhealthy, high fat and high cholesterol foods or diseases stemming from air pollution.
Death Determining when death actually occurs
Human remains found in scrub, circa 1900e1910.Historically, attempts to define the exact moment of death have been problematic. death was once defined as the cessation of heartbeat (cardiac arrest) and of breathing, but the development of CPR and prompt defibrillation posed a challenge, rendering the previous definition inadequate. This earlier definition of death is now called "clinical death", and even after it occurs, breathing and heartbeat may be restarted in some cases. Events which were causally linked to death in the past are now prevented from having an effect; even without a functioning heart and lungs, a person can be sustained with life support devices. In addition to such extremes, there are a growing number of people who would quickly die if their organ transplants or artificial pacemakers failed.Today, where a definition of the moment of death is required, doctors and coroners usually turn to "brain death" or "biological death": people are considered dead when the electrical activity in their brain ceases (cf. persistent vegetative state). It is presumed that a stoppage of electrical activity indicates the end of consciousness. However, suspension of consciousness must be permanent, and not transient, as occurs during sleep, and especially a coma. In the case of sleep, EEGs can easily tell the difference. Identifying the moment of death is important in cases of transplantation, as organs for transplant (the brain excluded) must be harvested as quickly as possible after the death of the body.
Among human beings, brain activity is a necessary condition to legal personhood in the United States. "It appears that once brain death has been determined no criminal or civil liability will result from disconnecting the life-support devices." (Dority v. Superior Court of San Bernardino County, 193 Cal.Rptr. 288, 291 (1983)
However, those maintaining that only the neo-cortex of the brain is necessary for consciousness sometimes argue that only electrical activity there should be considered when defining death. Eventually it is likely that the criterion for death will be the permanent and irreversible loss of cognitive function, as evidenced by the death of the cerebral cortex. All hope of recovering human thought and personality is then gone. However, at present, in most places the more conservative definition of death cessation of electrical activity in the whole brain, as opposed to just in the neo-cortex e has been adopted (for example the Uniform Determination Of Death Act in the United States). In 2005, the case of Terri Schiavo brought the question of brain death and artificial sustainment to the front of American politics. Generally, in such contested cases the cause of death is anoxia. Oxygen deprivation for roughly seven minutes is sufficient to kill the cerebral cortex.
Even in these cases, the determination of death can be difficult. EEGs can detect spurious electrical impulses when none exists, while there have been cases in which electrical activity in a living brain has been too low for EEGs to detect. Because of this, hospitals often have elaborate protocols for determining death involving EEGs at widely separated intervals.
There are many anecdotal references to people being declared dead by physicians and then coming back to life, sometimes days later in their own coffin, or when embalming procedures are just about to begin. Owing to significant scientific advancements in the Victorian era, some people in Great Britain became obsessively worried about living after being declared dead. Premature burial was a particular possibility which concerned many; inventors therefore created methods of alerting the outside world to one's status: these included surface bells and flags connected to the coffin interior by string, and glass partitions in the coffin-lid which could be smashed by a hammer or a system of pulleys (what many failed to realise was that the pulley system would either not work because of the soil outside the coffin, or that the glass would smash in the person's face, covering them in broken glass and earth).
A first responder is not authorized to pronounce a patient dead. Some EMT training manuals specifically state that a person is not to be assumed dead unless there are clear and obvious indications that death has occurred. These indications include mortal decapitation, rigor mortis (rigidity of the body), livor mortis (blood pooling in the part of the body at lowest elevation), decomposition, incineration, or other bodily damage that is clearly inconsistent with life. If there is any possibility of life and in the absence of a do not resuscitate (DNR) order, emergency workers are instructed to begin rescue and not end it until a patient has been brought to a hospital to be examined by a physician. This frequently leads to situation of a patient being pronounced dead on arrival (DOA).
In cases of electrocution, CPR for an hour or longer can allow stunned nerves to recover, allowing an apparently-dead person to survive. People found unconscious under icy water may survive if their faces are kept continuously cold until they arrive at an emergency room. This "diving response", in which metabolic activity and oxygen requirements are minimal, is something we share with cetaceans (whales, dolphins, etc) called the mammalian diving reflex.
As medical technologies advance, ideas about when death occurs may have to be reevaluated in light of the ability to restore a person to vitality after longer periods of apparent death (as has already happened when cessation of heartbeat was seen to be inadequate as a decisive indicator of death). The lack of electrical brain activity may not be enough to consider someone truly dead. Therefore the concept of information theoretical death has been suggested as a better means of defining when true death actually occurs.
Death in culture
In most cultures, before the onset of significant decay, the body undergoes some type of ritual disposal, usually either cremation or deposition in a tomb. Cremation is a very old and quite a common custom, if you take into account the sheer numbers of next of kin (of dead) practicing it. The act of cremation exemplifies the belief of the concept of "ashes to ashes". The other modes of disposal include deposition in a grave, but may also be a sarcophagus, crypt, sepulchre, or ossuary, a mound or barrow, or a monumental surface structure such as a mausoleum (exemplified by the Taj Mahal) or a pyramid (as exemplified by the Great Pyramid of Giza).In Tibet, one method of corpse disposal is sky burial, which involves placing the body of the deceased on high ground (a mountain) and leaving it for birds of prey to dispose of. Sometimes this is because in some religious views, birds of prey are carriers of the soul to the heavens, but at other times this simply reflects the fact that when terrain (as in Tibet) makes the ground too hard to dig, there are few trees around to burn and the local religion (Buddhism) believes that the body after death is only an empty shell, there are more practical ways of disposing of a body, such as leaving it for animals to consume.
In certain cultures, efforts are made to retard the decay processes before burial (resulting even in the retardation of decay processes after the burial), as in mummification or embalming. This happens during or after a Funeral ceremony. Many funeral customs exist in different cultures. In some fishing or navy communities, the body is sent into the water, in what is known as burial at sea. Several mountain villages have a tradition of hanging the coffin in woods.
A new alternative is ecological burial. This is a sequence of deep-freezing, pulverisation by vibration, freeze-drying, removing metals, and burying the resulting powder, which has 30% of the body mass.
Cryonics is the process of cryopreservating of a body to liquid nitrogen temperature to stop the natural decay processes that occur after death. Those practicing cryonics hope that future technology will allow the legally deceased person to be restored to life when and if science is able to cure all disease, rejuvenate people to a youthful condition and repair damage from the cryopreservation process itself. As of 2006, there were nearly 150 people in some form of cryopreservation at one of the two largest cryonics organizations, Alcor Life Extension Foundation and the Cryonics Institute.
Space burial uses a rocket to launch the cremated remains of a body into orbit. This has been done at least 150 times.
Graves are usually grouped together in a plot of land called a cemetery or graveyard, and burials can be arranged by a Funeral home, mortuary, undertaker or by a religious body such as a church or (for some Jews) the community's burial society, a charitable or voluntary body charged with these duties.
Whole body donations, made by the donor while living (or by a family member in some cases), are an important source of human cadavers used in medical education and similar training, and in research. In the United States, these gifts, along with organ donations, are governed by the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act. In addition to wishing to benefit others, individuals might choose to donate their bodies to avoid the cost of Funeral arrangements; however, willed body programs often encourage families to make alternative arrangements for burial if the body is not accepted.
Death Settlement of legal entity
Aside from the physical disposition of the corpse, the legal entity of a person must be settled. This includes attributes such as assets and debts. Depending on the jurisdiction, laws or a will may determine the final disposition of the estate. A legal process, or probate will guide these proceedings.Death Customs and superstitions
Death's finality and the relative lack of firm scientific understanding of its processes for most of human history have led to many different traditions and cultural rituals for dealing with death.Death The number 4 in southeastern Asia
In China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan the number 4 is often associated with death because the sound of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean words for four and death are similar (for example, ? in Korean is the Sino-Korean number 4 and the word for death, as in (brain death). For this reason, hospitals and hotels often omit the 4th, 14th, etc. floors, or substitute the number '4' with the letter 'F'. Koreans are buried under a mound standing vertical in coffins made from 6 planks of wood. 4 of the planks represent the respective 4 cardinal points of the compass, while a fifth represents sky and the sixth represents earth. This relates back to the importance that the Confucian society placed upon the four cardinal points having mystical powers.For a study of death, burial, and beliefs in the afterlife in 4th century BC China, see the book by C. Cook, Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man's Journey (Leiden: Brill, 2006) ISBN 90-04-15312
Consciousness after death
Many cultures, past and present, have had some belief in an afterlife. Such beliefs are usually manifested in a religion, as they pertain to phenomena beyond the ordinary experience of the natural world. Through the ages, various evidence has been advanced in attempts to demonstrate the reality of an afterlife, but nothing has ever been proven about either the existence or nature of an afterlife so the topic remains highly speculative.Scientific study of the afterlife is impossible because the only repeatable experiment that would prove the hypothesis "humans continue to have conscious experiences after death" is to kill a human, wait a while, then bring that human back to life for questioning. Since death is (by definition) a permanent state, if a person can be "brought back to life" after being "killed", then they never experienced death in the first place, making the after life experiences impossible.
Personification of death
Death, a tarot card from the Tarot of Marseilles.death has also been personified as a figure or fictional character in mythology and popular culture since the earliest days of storytelling. Because the reality of death has had a substantial influence on the human psyche and the development of civilization as a whole, the personification of death as a living, sentient entity is a concept that has existed in many societies since the beginning of recorded history. In the United States, death is usually shown as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe, and wearing a midnight black gown with a hood, while in Europe it is often depicted similarly, but dressed in white, which is the traditional colour worn at funerals in many places.Examples of death personified are
In modern-day European-based folklore, death is known as the "Grim Reaper" or "The grim spectre of death".In the Middle Ages, Death was imagined as a decaying or mummified human corpse, later becoming the familiar skeleton in a robe.
Conversely, Death is portrayed in the DC Comics Universe as a beautiful young woman.
Death is sometimes portrayed in fiction and occultism as Azrael, the angel of death (note that the name "Azrael" does not appear in any versions of either the Bible or the Qur'an).
Father Time is sometimes said to be Death.
A psychopomp is a spirit, deity, or other being whose task is to conduct the souls of the recently dead into the afterlife.
Glorification of and Fascination with Death
'Charge of the Light Brigade'. An Example of the artistic glorification of death.Whether because of its very poetic nature or because of the great mystery it presents, or both, death is and has very often been glorified in many cultures through many different means. War, crime, revenge, martyrdom, suicide and many other forms of violence involving death are often glorified by different media, often in modern times being glorified even in spite of the attempts at depicting death meant to be de-glorifying. As film critic Roger Ebert mentions in a number of articles, Francis Truffaut makes the claim that it's impossible to make an anti-war film, as any depiction of war ends up glorifying it. The most prevalent and permanent form of death's glorification is through artistic expression. Through song, such as Knockin' on Heaven's Door or Bullet in the Head, many artists show death through poetic analogy or even as a poetic analogy, as in the latter mentioned song. Events such as The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Battle of the Alamo have served as inspiration for artistic depictions of and myths regarding death.Whether death is in fact glorious is a subjective matter, and depends on one's belief in the presence or lack of an afterlife and their perception of the goodness or badness of said belief in what follows death. That is to say, if one believes there is no afterlife but that 'soaring' into death in some way, perhaps violently or in some other shocking or poetic way, is still glorious and better, despite there being nothing but unconsciousness in death by their view. A perhaps more common view, that there is an afterlife, makes the chief struggle that of being able to overcome one's fear of death to proceed into that afterlife, or perhaps reassuring one's belief in said afterlife. Some believe death to be the beauty of life.
The presence of this glorification, of course, and its opposite, the demonization or avoidance of death as a terrible thing, is such a prevalent topic because of the prevalence of death in society and the eventual death of every living thing. Of note, but generally the most common reaction to death, is an intense fear of or sometimes hatred of and frustration with it.
