16.1 Death and Hope

A multicultural life-span perspective reveals that reactions to death are filtered through many cultural prisms and are affected by historical changes (see Table EP.1) and regional variations, as well as by the age of both the dying and the bereaved. We will examine some of these differences.

You will see that one emotion is constant: hope. It appears in many ways: hope for life after death, hope that the world is better because someone lived, hope that death occurred for a reason, hope that survivors rededicate themselves.

Cultures, Epochs, and Death

Few people in developed nations have actually witnessed someone die. This was not always the case. Those who reached age 50 in 1900 in North America and who had had 20 classmates in their high school class would have already seen at least six of their classmates die. The survivors would have visited and reassured several of their friends dying at home, promising to see them in heaven. Shared religious beliefs led almost everyone to believe in life after death.

Now fewer people die before old age, and those who do usually die suddenly and unexpectedly, most often in motor vehicle collisions. Ironically, death has become more feared as it has become less familiar (Carr, 2012). Accordingly, we begin by describing various responses to death, to help each of us find the hope that death can provide.

Ancient TimesOne of the signs of a “higher” animal is reacting with sorrow when death occurs. Elephants and chimpanzees have done that for hundreds of thousands of years. Jane Goodall reported that when the chimp Flo died, Flo’s older daughter was away, so Flo’s youngest son (Flint), alone, became “hollow-eyed, gaunt, and utterly depressed, huddled in the vegetation near where Flo had died” (Goodall, 2000). Within weeks, he was also dead.

Humans have developed ways to deal with their grief. Paleontologists believe that 100 000 years ago, the Neanderthals buried their dead with tools, bowls, or jewellery, signifying belief in an afterlife (Hayden, 2012). The date is controversial: Burial could have begun 200 000 years ago or only 20 000 years ago, but it is certain that by 5000 years ago death had become an occasion for hope, mourning, and remembrance. Two ancient Western civilizations with written records—Egypt and Greece—had elaborate death rituals, described here to help us see what is universal and what is unique about the human response to death.

The ancient Egyptians built magnificent pyramids, refined the science of mummification, and scripted written instructions (called the Book of the Dead) to aid the soul (ka), personality (ba), and shadow (akh) in reuniting after death, blessing and protecting the living (Taylor, 2010). The fate of a dead Egyptian depended partly on his or her actions while alive, partly on the circumstances of death, and partly on proper burial by the family. That made death a reason to live morally and to honour the past. The Egyptians believed that if a dead person was not appropriately cared for after death, the living would suffer.

For the ancient Greeks, continuity between life and death was an evident theme, with hope for this world and the next. The fate of a dead person depended on past good or evil deeds. A few would have a blissful afterlife, a few were condemned to torture (in Hades, a form of hell), and most would exist in a shadow world until they were reincarnated to live another life.

Three themes are apparent in all the known ancient cultures, not only those of Greece and Egypt, but also in the Mayan, Chinese, and African cultures:

• Actions during life were thought to affect destiny after death.
• An afterlife was more than a hope; it was assumed.
• Mourners responded to death with specific prayers and offerings, in part to prevent the spirit of the dead person from haunting and hurting them.

Contemporary Religion and DeathNow let us look at contemporary religions. Each faith seems distinct. As one review states, “Rituals in the world’s religions, especially those for the major tragic and significant events of bereavement and death, have a bewildering diversity” (Idler, 2006). Some details illustrate this diversity.

According to many branches of Hinduism, a person should die on the floor, surrounded by family, who neither eat nor wash until the funeral pyre is extinguished. By contrast, among some (but not all) Christians, mourners gather at a family member’s home or in a church, and share in the fellowship of food and drink, sometimes with music and dancing. In many Muslim and Hindu cultures, the dead person is bathed by the next of kin; among some Aboriginal peoples (e.g., the Navajo), no family member touches the dead person.

Although religions everywhere have specific beliefs and rituals, there is a great deal of diversity within each religion. For instance, some Buddhist rituals help believers accept a person’s death and detach from grieving in order to escape the suffering that living without the person entails. Other rituals help people connect to the dead, part of the continuity between life and death (Cuevas & Stone, 2011). Beliefs and rituals vary by region, too. There are more than 600 First Nations bands in Canada, each with its own heritage: It is a mistake to assume that all First Nations peoples have the same customs.

Religious practices change as historical conditions do. One specific example comes from Korea. Traditionally, Koreans were opposed to autopsies because the body is considered a sacred gift from the parents. However, contemporary Koreans recognize that medical schools need bodies to autopsy in order to teach science to the next generation. This clash led to a new custom: a special religious service honouring the dead who give their body for medical education ( J-T. Park et al., 2011). As medical schools instituted such ceremonies, the number of bodies donated for research in Korea rose dramatically.

Diversity is also evident in descriptions of life after death. Some religions believe in reincarnation—that a dead person is reborn, with the specific new life dependent on the person’s past life. Other religions believe that souls are judged and then sent to heaven or hell. Still others contend that the spirits of the dead remain on earth, affecting the life of those still living. Finally, some religions hold that the dead live on only in memory, which leads to customs such as naming a baby after a dead person or honouring the dead on a particular memorial day.

The Western practice of building a memorial, dedicating a plaque, or naming a location for a dead person is antithetical to Eastern cultures, in which all signs of the dead are removed after proper prayers have been said, in order to allow the spirit to leave in peace. This difference in customs was evident when terrorist bombs in Bali, Indonesia, killed 38 Indonesians and 164 foreigners, mostly Australian and British. The Indonesians prayed intensely and then destroyed all reminders; the Australians raised money to build a memorial (de Jonge, 2011). Neither group understood the deep emotions of the other.

There are variations in what happens to a dead body. An open casket and then burial is traditional among Christians in North America. Caskets themselves can be luxurious, silk-lined, and protected from the elements with strong metal, or families can opt for a plain pine box (Sanders, 2010). By contrast, many Muslim groups believe that the body should return to the earth and thus be buried directly in the soil, not in a casket at all.

In most nations of Asia, from India in the west to Japan in the east, bodies are cremated and returned to the land or water, a practice that is becoming more common among other cultures, although regional variations exist (see Figure EP.1). Ashes may be interred next to buried coffins or may be scattered.

In some cultures, a home altar is created, where the living can commune with the spirits of the dead. Spirits not only hover in their special spot, but they also travel—especially during the Hungry Ghost Festival (in many East Asian nations), on the Day of the Dead (in many Latin American nations), or on All Souls’ Day (in many European nations). All of these beliefs can change as cultures do. For instance, while every Chinese home once had an altar honouring the ancestors, currently most do not (Chan, 2011).

In recent decades, people everywhere have become less devout, a fact evident in surveys of religious beliefs as well as in attendance at religious services. And yet, people worldwide become more religious when confronted with their own or someone else’s death, seeking reassurances of hope in an afterlife in the face of loss and potential despair. This is true even for people who do not consider themselves religious (Heflick & Goldenberg, 2012).

Regardless of the diversity of death customs and beliefs, death has always inspired strong emotions, many of which can be constructive or life-affirming. Paradoxically, the experience of death can often intensify one’s positive aspect toward life and its meaningfulness. It is the denial of death that leads to despair (Wong & Tomer, 2011). This may explain why, in all faiths and cultures, death is considered a passage, not an endpoint, and a reason for families and communities to come together.

Understanding Death Throughout the Life Span

Thoughts about death are influenced by each person’s cognitive maturation and past experiences. Here are some of the specifics.

A Child’s Understanding of DeathSome adults think children are oblivious to death; others believe children understand death and should participate in funerals and other rituals, just as adults do (Talwar et al., 2011). You know from your study of childhood cognition that neither view is completely correct.

Children as young as 2 have some understanding of death, but their perspective differs from that of older people. One idea they find particularly incomprehensible is that the dead person or animal cannot come back to life; it takes a while for the reality of the situation to sink in. As a result, a child might not be sad initially when a person or animal dies but might later have moments of profound sorrow, when they realize that their loved one is not coming back.

In addition to sadness, a child who loses a friend, a relative, or a pet typically demonstrates loneliness, anger, and other signs of mourning, but adults cannot be certain how a particular child might react. For example, one 7-year-old boy seemed to take in stride the loss of three grandparents and an uncle within two years. However, he became extremely upset when his dog, Twick, died.

That boy’s parents were taken aback by the depth of their son’s emotions. They regretted that they had not taken him to the animal hospital to say goodbye to the dog. The boy angrily refused to go back to school, saying, “I wanted to see him one more time.…You don’t understand.…I play with Twick every day” (quoted in K. R. Kaufman & Kaufman, 2006).

Because the loss of a particular companion is a young child’s prime concern, it is not helpful to say that a dog can be replaced. Even a 1-year-old knows that a new puppy is not the same dog and might be upset or confused that an adult would think that it is. Nor should a child be told that Grandma is sleeping, that God wanted his or her sister in heaven, or that Grandpa went on a trip. The child may take such explanations literally, wanting to wake up Grandma, complain to God, or tell Grandpa to come home.

If a child realizes that adults are afraid to say that death has occurred, the child might conclude that death is so horrible that adults cannot talk about it—a terrifying conclusion. Even worse, they may feel that adults are not to be trusted, since they lie about important events (Doering, 2010).

Remember how cognition changes with development. Egocentric preschoolers may fear that they, personally, caused death and may be seriously troubled that their unkind words or thoughts killed someone. As children become concrete operational thinkers, they seek specific facts, such as exactly how a person died and where he or she is now. Adolescents may be self-absorbed, philosophical, or analytic—or all three at different moments.

At every age, questions should be answered honestly, in words the child can understand. In a study of 4- to 8-year-olds, those who knew more about the specifics of a loved one’s death were less anxious about death and dying (Slaughter & Griffiths, 2007).

If a child encounters death, adults should listen with full attention, neither ignoring the child’s concerns nor expecting adult-like reactions (Doering, 2010). Children are more impulsive than deliberate, as their limbic systems mature more rapidly than their prefrontal cortexes. They may seem happy one day and morbidly depressed the next. In addition, each child is affected by the attitudes of other family members. Even if a parent dies, some children cope well—if their caregiving adult is able to cope well (Melhem et al., 2011). In general, children neither forget nor dwell on the death of a loved one.

Children who themselves are fatally ill typically fear that death means being abandoned by beloved and familiar people (Wolchik et al., 2008). Consequently, parents are advised to stay with a dying child day and night, holding, reading, singing, and sleeping, always ensuring that the child is not alone.

Understanding Death in Late Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood“Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse” is advice often attributed to actor James Dean, who died in a car crash at age 24. At what stage would a person most likely agree? Emerging adulthood. Worldwide, teenagers and emerging adults control their death anxiety by taking risks and valuing friends, perhaps expecting to die long before old age (de Bruin et al., 2007; Luxmoore, 2012).

Terror management theory explains some illogical responses to death, including why young people take death-defying risks (Mosher & Danoff-Burg, 2007). By surviving, they prove to themselves that they will not die. Especially when people aged 15 to 24 have access to cars and guns, the developmental tendency toward risk taking can be deadly (see Figure EP.2). Cluster suicides, foolish dares, fatal gang fights, and drunk driving are all much more common in those younger than 25 than older.

As already noted, many studies have found that when health promotion messages explicitly link negative behaviours with death, it may ironically increase the likelihood of engaging in that behaviour (Goldenberg & Arndt, 2008); for example, it may increase smoking in teenagers and young adults who want to protect their pride and self-esteem while defying death and adults. Likewise, college students who heard about the fatal risks associated with binge drinking were more, not less, willing to binge (Jessop & Wade, 2008).

Other research in many nations has found that when adolescents and emerging adults thought about death, they sometimes tried to hold onto their self-esteem and faith in their cultural world views, which, to some extent, protected them from death-related anxiety (Maxfield et al., 2007). Some people distance themselves from people with diseases such as cancer to avoid anxiety about their own death; others avoid funerals and blame people who died in accidents that occurred through no fault of their own (Hirschberger, 2006; Renkema et al., 2008).

Teenagers who themselves are dying of a fatal disease tend to be saddened and shocked (“Why me?”) at first, and then they try to live life to the fullest, proving that death cannot conquer them. One dying 17-year-old said

Understanding Death in AdulthoodA shift in attitudes toward death occurs when adults become responsible for work and family. Death is no longer romanticized; it is to be avoided or at least postponed. Fear of death builds in early adulthood, reaching a lifetime peak in middle age.

Many adults stop taking addictive drugs, start wearing seat belts, and adopt other precautions when they become parents. One of my students eagerly anticipated the thrill of her first skydive. She reserved her spot on the plane and paid in advance. However, the day before the scheduled dive she learned she was pregnant. She forfeited the money and shopped for prenatal vitamins instead.

When adults hear about another’s death, their reaction is closely connected to the person’s age. Death in the prime of life is harder to accept than death in late adulthood.

To defend themselves against the fear of aging and untimely death, adults often ask for details about a person’s death to convince themselves that their situation is different. Sometimes the deceased was much older and had been ailing; in that case, adults do not take the death personally. If the dead person was a contemporary or even younger, then adults seek to explain why that person’s genes, or habits, or foolish behaviour is unlike their own.

In other situations, adults may not readily accept the death of others—even others who are ready to die. Thus, when Dylan Thomas was about age 30, he wrote his most famous poem, addressed to his dying father: “Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (D. Thomas, 1957).

Nor do adults readily accept their own death. A woman diagnosed at age 42 with a rare and almost always fatal cancer (a sarcoma) wrote:

Reactions to one’s own mortality differ depending on developmental stage as well. In adulthood, from ages 25 to 65, terminally ill people worry about leaving something undone or abandoning family members, especially children.

One such adult was Randy Pausch, a 47-year-old professor and father of three young children. Ten months before he died of cancer in 2008, he delivered a famous last lecture, detailing his childhood dreams and saluting those who would continue his work. After advising his students to follow their own dreams, he concluded, “This talk is not for you, it’s for my kids” (R. Pausch, 2007). Not surprisingly, that message was embraced by his wife, also in mid-adulthood, who wrote her own book titled Dream New Dreams, which deals with overcoming death by focusing on life ( J. Pausch, 2012).

Attitudes about death are often irrational. Rationally, adults should work to change social factors that increase the risk of mortality—such as air pollution, junk foods, and unsafe transportation—and they should change their own life-shortening behaviours, such as smoking cigarettes, eating salty snacks, and having unsafe sex. Instead, many people react more strongly to events that rarely cause death, such as an avalanche, a mysterious poison, or a freak accident. For this reason, many more people are afraid of flying than of driving, when statistically more people are killed in Canada by motor vehicle collisions than die worldwide in airline crashes in a year (CBC News, 2013).

Death in Late AdulthoodIn late adulthood, attitudes about death shift again. Anxiety decreases; hope rises (De Raedt et al., 2013). Life-threatening illnesses reduce life satisfaction more among the middle-aged than the elderly (Wurm et al., 2008). The irrational reactions of terror management theory are less prominent in late adulthood (Maxfield et al., 2007). Some older people are quite happy despite knowing that their remaining time is short.

This shift in attitudes is beneficial. Indeed, many developmentalists believe that one sign of mental health among older adults is acceptance of mortality and an increasing altruistic concern about those who will live on after them. As a result, older people write their wills, designate health care proxies, read scriptures, reconcile with estranged family members, and, in general, tie up all the loose ends that most young adults avoid (Kastenbaum, 2012). Sometimes middle-aged adults are troubled when their elderly parents allocate heirlooms, choose funeral music, or buy a burial plot, but all those actions might be developmentally appropriate toward the end of life.

Acceptance of death does not mean that the elderly give up on living. On the contrary, most try to maintain their health and independence. However, priorities shift. In an intriguing series of studies (Carstensen, 2011), people were presented with the following scenario:

Imagine that in carrying out the activities of everyday life, you find that you have half an hour of free time, with no pressing commitments. You have decided that you’d like to spend this time with another person. Assuming that the following three persons are available to you, with whom would you want to spend that time:

• a member of your immediate family
• the author of a book you have just read
• an acquaintance with whom you seem to have much in common?

Older adults, more than younger ones, choose the family member. The researchers explain that family becomes more important when death seems near. This is supported by a study of 329 people of various ages who had recently been diagnosed with cancer and a matched group of 170 people (of the same ages) who had no serious illness (Pinquart & Silbereisen, 2006). The most marked difference was between those with and without cancer, regardless of age (see Figure EP.3). Life-threatening illness, more common in late adulthood but not directly caused by age, seems to change attitudes about life, people, and death.

Near-Death Experiences

Even coming close to death is often an occasion for hope. This is most obvious in what is called a near-death experience, in which a person almost dies but survives and reports having left his or her body and moved toward a bright white light while feeling peacefulness and joy. The following classic report is typical:

Near-death experiences often include religious elements (angels have been seen, celestial music heard), and survivors often adopt a more spiritual, less materialistic view of life as a result (Vaillant, 2008). To some, near-death experiences prove that “Heaven is for real” (Burpo & Vincent, 2010). Most scientists are skeptical, claiming that “there is no evidence that what happens when a person really dies and ‘stays dead’ has any relationship to the experience reported by those who have recovered from a life-threatening, episode. In fact, it is difficult to imagine how there could ever be such evidence” (Kastenbaum, 2006).

Nevertheless, a reviewer of near-death experiences is struck by the similarity of near-death experiences, and of religious beliefs about death itself, in many cultures. In every culture, although dying experience is varied, people tend to face similar realizations: (1) the limitations of social status, (2) the insignificance of material possessions, and (3) the narrowness of self-centredness (Greyson, 2009). Near-death experiences do this as well: Those who recall such moments seem more loving and hopeful than they were before.