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Thinking All Wrong about How You Die
Author(s) -
Battin Margaret P.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
hastings center report
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.515
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1552-146X
pISSN - 0093-0334
DOI - 10.1002/hast.473
Subject(s) - personhood , good death , identity (music) , psychology , psychoanalysis , philosophy , epistemology , law , sociology , aesthetics , medicine , palliative care , political science , nursing
How do we approach our deaths? By avoidance, for one thing—death, especially our own death, is hard to talk about, think about, even imagine in the dimmest way. Or we dwell on it, that black, feared vortex that will eventually engulf us, swallowing our identity and personhood. Mostly, we distract ourselves with things of the moment. But in our rational moments we make preparations. We write advance directives. We execute durable powers of attorney. We give instructions to loved ones: “No tubes, no machines.” That's the wrong approach, I think. All this stuff we put together doesn't guarantee that what we say we want will actually happen or that we'll have what we'd call a “good death”—what you would think of as a good death for you .