Fact: My mom’s parents made tombstones for a living, and her family friends were in the funeral home business. My mom was one of those people who could watch Six Feet Under without blinking. I think because of this, I’ve always been around death, and have only seen it on an intimate level for families. In perusing for today’s BotD, I noticed Beyond the Good Death: The Anthropology of Modern Dying by James W. Green. Here’s a quick blurb from inside the bookjacket:
Death is political, as the controversies surrounding Jack Kevorkian and, more recently, Terri Schiavo have shown. While death is a natural event, modern end-of-life-experiences are shaped by new medical, demographic, and cultural trends.
Beyond Good Death takes a look at the factors in what people consider a “good death” or a “bad death”, whether it be heroic, peaceful, or an ethical madhouse, and peers into the evolution of societies that shape our modern views on one of the few inevitable events in life. Regardless of one’s own views, it provides an interesting dissection of why we think what we think when the end arrives.