Constructing Death: Three Pathographies about Dying

Ours is a culture in search of an ars moriendi. Today's popular narratives about illness and dying propose a variety of models for “the good death.” Three such pathographies are discussed as examples. In each, the author organizes the phenomena associated with the illness and death of a spouse from cancer into a coherent pattern and gives them a specific meaning. The result is three very different paradigms of the experience of dying-“ritual death,” “victorious death,” and “one's own death”-three potential versions of an art of dying for our time.