ABSTRACT
In 1997, 83 per cent of all deaths took place among people over the age of 65, yet, as Field (2000) points out, limited academic attention has been given to this most common of deaths. A related area of neglect is the inevitable bereavement of older widows and widowers. Yet as Bennett (1997) notes in one of the few studies in this area, this ‘high-probability life event’ has been experienced by 36 per cent of the population over 65. While the ‘positive ageing’ emphasis within the gerontological literature tends to mean that death and bereavement are given low priority, the apparent ordinariness of older adults’ deaths and bereavements seems to have made them invisible in the thanatological literature too.
