Scripts for Modern Dying: The Death before Death We Have Invented, the Death before Death We Fear and Some Take Too Literally, and the Death before Death Christians Believe in

Abstract

Modern scripts for dying in hospice or by euthanasia are inapplicable to the dwindling of long old age, often experienced as social ‘death before death’. The article critiques the rhetoric of ‘death before death’ used of Alzheimer’s patients, and draws attention to an alternative valuation of death of self in the Christian tradition.