The Sociology of Death

According to sociologists, people make linguistic masks as ways to refer to death without using the word itself. Instead of dead, we use the terms, for example "gone," "passed away," "no longer with us," or "at peace now." This perhaps helps in internalizing the sorrow and making the death more humane.
Blauner suggests that before industrialization, social and economic reasons made the lifespan of people short. It was common for the family to care of the sick at home, and the sick died at home. It was common for most children seeing a sibling or parent die or vice versa.
The 19th century with the Industrialization and subsequent modernization changed this aspect. As secondary groups came to dominate society, the process of dying was placed in the hands of professionals in hospitals. Dying now started taking place behind closed doors managed by strangers.
According to Cerulo and Ruane not only did new technologies remove the dying from our presence, but they also created technological life-form of existence that lies between life and death. The "brain dead" in hospitals through technology keeps the body alive. This muddles the boundary between life and death, which used to seem so certain.
Psychologist Elisabeth Kler-Ross studied how people cope during the living-dying interval, that period between discovering they are going to die soon and death itself. After interviewing people who had been informed that they had an incurable disease, she concluded that people who come face to face with their own death go through five stages:
1. Denial: At first, people cannot believe that they are going to die. They avoid the topic of death and situations that remind them of it.
2. Anger: After a while, they acknowledge that they are going to die, but they view their death as unjust.
3. Negotiation: The individual tries to get around death by making a bargain with God, with fate, or even with the disease itself.
4. Depression: During this stage, people become resigned to their death, but they grieve because their life is about to end, and they have no power to change the course of events.
5. Acceptance: In this final stage, people come to terms with their impending death. They also express regret at not having done certain things when they had the chance.
Sociologically, death is a process, not just an event. People who expect to die soon face a reality quite different from the one experienced by those of us who expect to be alive years from now. Their impending death powerfully affects their thinking and behavior.
Today, we take it for granted that most people will see old age. Due to advances in medical technology and better public health practices, most deaths usually occur after age 65. People want to die with dignity, in the comforting presence of friends and relatives. There people experience what sociologists call institutional death surrounded by strangers in formal garb, in sterile rooms filled with machines, in an organization that puts its routines ahead of patients' needs.
Hospices emerged as a way to reduce the emotional and physical burden of dying and to lower the costs of death. Hospice care is built around the idea that the people who are dying and their families should control the process of dying. The term hospice originally referred to a place, but now it generally refers to home care. Hospice care is dedicated to providing dignity in death and making people comfortable during the living-dying interval.
People experience different kind of emotions after the death of a loved one. Along with grief and loneliness, they may feel guilt, anger, or even relief .The period of mourning allows the family members to come to terms with the death. They also reorganize their family system to deal with the absence of the person who was so important to it.
When death is expected, family members find it less stressful as they have begun to cope with the coming death by managing a series of smaller losses, including the person's inability to fulfill his or her usual roles or to do specific tasks. In contrast, unexpected deaths like accidents, suicides, and murders bring greater emotional shock. The family members have had no time to get used to the idea that the individual is going to die.
Credit:James M Henslin (SOCIOLOGY - A Down to Earth Approach)