Death is the ultimate challenge to human vanity or pretension.
Exploring death awakens us to the precariousness of life and the preciousness of relationships with others. It fosters insight and knowledge and helps us come to terms with our own mortality.
Coming to terms with our own finiteness and mortality can be understood as a process of mourning—a lifelong experience in coping with uncertainty, impermanence, and vulnerability, all qualities inherent in being mortal.
Achieving cultural competence and a global perspective helps make a difference in attitudes and practices regarding dying, death, and bereavement.
The study of death takes into account the actions of individuals as well as the customs of entire societies; it leads naturally to the arena of political decisions and ultimately brings us to choices of an emphatically personal nature.
A "scholarship of application" and practice requires integrating research and practice.
The goal of "compassionate cities" denotes a model of public health that encourages community participation in all types of end-of-life care.
Achieving an appropriate death (defined as the death a person would choose for himself or herself should such a choice be possible) requires that we first rid ourselves of the notion that death is never appropriate.
The conceptualizing of death in the future raises intriguing questions relating to technology, ethics, law, and the whole range of customs and practices that have been part of the way humans traditionally have dealt with death. For example, given an ever-growing population and increasing demand for land, will ground burials continue to be a reasonable option for future generations?
Awareness of death enhances life and brings added dimensions to the circumstances of human experience.
