The fourteenth-century Bubonic Plague took the lives of up to
two-thirds of Europe’s population. Death came quickly; less than a week
typically separated the first signs of illness from the grave. Families
and clergy had little or no time to prepare for death. In response to
such widespread devastation, Europe’s then leading social authority, the
Catholic Church, issued a series of texts on the preparation for death.
These were quickly translated into many languages and circulated
widely. The booklets assigned tasks to all members of the community,
tasks which were meant to be rehearsed over a lifetime. The central
theme of this Ars moriendi, or “art of dying” literature, was that you
die the way you live. And in order to die well, you have to live well.
One’s community provided the space for the instruction and cultivation
of this art.
The present day approach to death has been
characterized, not as an art, but as “medicalized dying.” The coldness
of the hospital bed, the brightness of the neon lights overhead, the
hospital’s dilution of difference into sameness, and the endless
manipulation of the unnamed dying body all seem to have stripped the
medicalized dying process of its art. And even though the death of a
child is an event more rare today than ever before, children who die in
hospitals also become subject to such artless deaths. Is it possible to
reclaim an Ars moriendi for children today? Is a high-quality pediatric
palliative care team sufficient? This webinar will draw from the content
of Dugdale’s new book Dying in the Twenty-First Century: Toward a New
Ethical Framework for the Art of Dying Well (MIT Press, 2015).