Analyzing and Comparing Death Rituals

¶ … 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 important people in the society and that it was caregivers and not priests that helped individuals in the dying process (p. 112). Comparison of the Ritual of Dying in the U.S. to that in Muslim Countries According to Gire (2014), regardless of where we are born or how we are born or the kinds of lives we live, the one thing that unites us all is the fact that we all eventually die.

This fact unites every culture in the world. However, despite the fact that we all die, different cultures conceptualize death differently and also explain the process of death differently. There is a difference between a "good death" and an "acceptable death" for the individual who is dying. On one hand, an acceptable death is defined as a disciplined, non-dramatic death with very little emotion.

This is the kind of death that seems to be common among cultures in the U.S., in environments such as hospitals and other healthcare facilities where the majority of people die. A good death, on the contrary, is said to be one that permits for personal arrangements and social adjustments by the dying individual and his/her family. This is a period when the dying individual tries to complete the incomplete tasks, to say goodbyes, and for the family to start preparing for life without the dying individual.

This is very evident in the Muslim community, which normally takes three days to prepare for the death of the dying person (Gire, 2014). According to Gire (2014), the most common reaction to the thought of one's death, or a loved one's death, is worry or fear of death. Death anxiety is conveyed in nearly all cultures, but some seem to manage the thought of dying better than others. The U.S. is a death-defying society whereby even the idiom of expression is that of opposition.

Individuals invoke images of fighting sicknesses, or battling death whereby they even attempt alternative modes of treatment after.