A start: normal dying processes
I’ve heard a lot of stories of dying people needing to get a good sleep before they have enough energy to die, or of dying at contrived times like right before an annoying doctor is due to show up, or right after seeing a new baby relative.
I’m sure a lot of those stories are coincidence, but I’m intrigued by the idea that dying is an action the body takes, rather than an event that just happens when the body fails. Zoe pointed out the other day that many people think of death as a failure of medicine, rather than as a normal event in everyone’s life. To me, thinking of death as an active, biological process makes it seem more like a normal function (which I’m interested in, for now).
This morning I’ve been hunting for information about the normal dying process, and how it varies, and whether there are conflicting models for “normal” death responses the way I’m familiar with different, biased models of sexual response from working on my vagina website (and indeed, Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief seem to draw similar controversy to Masters and Johnson’s model of the human sexual response cycle).
Zen Hospice has a great overview of the physical changes a person goes through as they die, from a hospice perspective. I recognize all of those symptoms from the few people I’ve known at the end of their lives. I can see immediately why there are so many comparisons between giving birth, having orgasms, and dying: all involve extreme physical responses that start to seem normal when you know what to expect. Learning about the physical symptoms of dying feels a little like getting to know the birds in your neighbourhood or something: gaining context.
Graceful Exits:How Great Beings Die apparently deals with conscious dying and dying on purpose, such as the idea of elders wandering off alone into the woods to die. It sounds a bit flaky (i.e., possible use of ambiguous generalizations like “aboriginal cultures”), but still really compelling to me. I’m all for special skills, and this intro sort of makes dying sound like a superpower:
Then the person is left alone. He or she sits down, and within a matter of minutes is able to intentionally close down the body and die.
That would be both more and less useful than being able to cry on command.
But, from my scattered reading this morning, I gather that I should do some searching for literature about “deathing” and “timing of death” rather than the process of dying. It’s a bit weird that “dying” gets used more as adjective than as a form of the verb “to die.” When a person “dies” that describes the moment of death fairly precisely, but when a person “is dying” that could refer to almost any stage of life or illness or injury.
This is the kind of jargon I should figure out soon— it’s hard to organize notes when you don’t know the names for things (and stuff).
I have a tidbit about timing of death, conscious dying, etc. Six years ago my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and it quickly became obvious that it was terminal. His physical and mental states deteriorated quickly, and he became only periodically lucid in little over a month. But then he seemed to hang by a thread for several more months, and we couldn’t figure out how he was doing it. Then, on the second anniversary of his own father’s death, my dad decided that it was time to let go. I wasn’t there, but his wife said that he regained his senses, said goodbye, and then died. The timing may have been coincidental, but having known him, I feel like my dad was waiting for something.
I know that this is anecdotal information for you, and thus is not strictly scientific, but stories like this seem to be fairly common (along with long-time spouses dying very close to each other in time, etc). I wonder if you will come across different versions of this kind of story as you get on in your research, and would be interested to hear about what kind of academic research has been conducted on this (willful death, significance of timing, etc.). I think it’s fascinating stuff, and will stay tuned in to your site.
— Amanda · 28 September 2006, 16:15