Abstract
Being a dying person for an extended duration means existing under different circumstances than a non-dying person. Deciding what one wants to do with one’s very last days is simultaneously crucial, because there are no second chances; and yet extremely difficult, due to increasing weakness and changing perceptions of relevance. Getting weaker and dealing with restricted physical capacities has an impact on one’s identity as a sensory being. One’s own body might suddely appear to be a hostile stranger. Correctly perceiving the physical boundaries of oneself and locating the own position in space are not self-evident anymore. Seemingly stable preferences in terms of taste may differ, and a dying person has to redefine herself as a decreasingly sexually interesting and interested person. Medication and technical equipment may become close friends of persons who formerly regarded drugs and devices rather as foes of their autonomy. The activities and meetings which seem urgent and relevant may increasingly differ from what matters to non-dying persons. For the present situation of dying, but also retrospectively regarding one’s own biography, evaluations of lifestyle and importance may appear in a new light. These issues will be explored in the following subchapters.
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Notes
- 1.
To remind the reader briefly how different physical dimensions of a person have been conceptualized in chapter one: The term Leib is intended to describe the spatial extension of an animated sensual body, and capable of intentional actions, perceptions and emotions. The term body addresses only the physical dimension of a Leib.
- 2.
That dying persons are often ashamed to talk about sexuality, and that sexuality is seldom a topic in palliative care, is also discussed by Kränzle et al. (2007: 113-5).
- 3.
For a description of palliative care techniques of pain management see e.g. Radbruch et al. (2012).
- 4.
A frequent desire of dying persons, reflected in palliative care guidelines as the “wish to ‘be allowed’ to die without hi-tech medicine” (Seeger 2007: 9).
- 5.
An idea that also appears within academic discourse: Kaufman & Morgan (2005) do not present the anthropology of beginnings of life separately from the anthropology of lives’ endings, but deal with both in the same overview.
- 6.
Regret has been left out of the “Feeling right” section because, in fact, it was more an emotion that seemed interesting to many non-dying persons (including me) than an emotion that pressed upon many dying persons repeatedly. Additionally, regret was seldom a feeling that dying persons felt personally urged to display or that dying persons struggled with often. Talking about regret rather seemed something that dying persons thought about in connection to outward influences, like questions I asked and TV shows, than something they were often occupied with. In contrast, making regrets a topic rather provoked them to talk about differences between themselves and non-dying persons. So I chose to mention this topic as part of the description of how it feels when somebody has adjusted to the new existence of being a dying person, rather than framing it as a widespread emotional issue for dying persons in line with humor, envy, and the like (which actually were emotions dying persons dealt with quite often).
- 7.
“5 Dinge, die Sterbende am meisten bereuen: Einsichten, die ihr Leben verändern werden” [Top Five Regrets of Dying] by Bronnie Ware (2012), translated by Wibke Kuhn, was a bestseller in Germany.
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Menzfeld, M. (2018). Changing perceptions in dying. In: Anthropology of Dying. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-19826-8_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-19826-8_7
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