Analyzing and Comparing Death Rituals Essay

Death Rituals

A ritual is an observable behavior that is exhibited by a society. There are many different types of rituals, ranging from simple ones, which a person submits to on a day-to-day basis, to more complex ones such as a rite of passage ceremony in which boys are turned into adults (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2016). Researcher Kastenbaum (2012) defines dying as one of the many transitions that everyone must experience. He goes further to state that death often commences as a psychosocial incident, then organ systems shutdowns. However, death itself is felt in the social and personal spheres of an individual's life (p. 112).

Practices Associated with Death and Dying in the United States

Kastenbaum explains that death and dying have been medicalized in the United States. And that the medicalization of death has worked to insulate medical doctors and policymakers from appreciating the mortal realities of death. There are three trajectories towards death that end in healthcare facilities. These are:

Unexpected quick trajectories: the workers know, but do not expect that death might occur at any time. However, something happens when a patient suddenly enters a crisis, resulting in sudden deaths.

Expected quick trajectories: The workers often know that death is coming and they make the most use of the time they have left. The hospital staff may decide to undertake a risky procedure that might save the patient or put him or her in a riskier situation, resulting in death. There is a lot of observation in this trajectory. At times, the hospital staffs think that there is nothing that can be done and that the best course of action is to make the patient as comfortable as they can and to wait for death to come.

The lingering trajectory: in this case, the hospital staffs display a unique behavior since they feel that the patient's life is fading away. Caregivers try to keep the dying patient comfortable, however, it is their belief that they have done enough and that the patient has come to a logical end of a long struggle (pp. 117-118).

These trajectories show that medical models also involve the dying and death of persons. The models also show that the individuals who are dying are cared for by health care givers. However, it is the duty of health care givers to serve all patients and thus they cannot stay with every patient during their last minutes as they also have other responsibilities (Kastenbaum, 2012, p. 120).

All the practices involved in the three trajectories can be regarded as rituals. As was defined earlier, a ritual is a practice that involves the repetition of a certain behavior and the practices involved here are obviously repeated for many patients when the staff suspect that they are about to die. Kastenbaum (2012) explains that these practices by nurses started during historical times with the death of…