ABSTRACT
Death, the cessation of biological functions, is a fact. Although age-specific death rates have changed over the centuries, the most elementary datum has not. Death is one per customer, and one for every customer. But, whereas death is a fact, something that happens to us, dying is primarily an activity. Persons, places, and things that represent death or bereavement to us are part of our death system. Whereas some places, such as a cemetery or funeral home, are consistently identified with death, there are other places, such as the emergency room in a hospital, the neonatal intensive care unit, and some churches, that have a death purpose for only a few moments but may be linked to death in a person’s mind for a long time. Death was perceived to be not a purely isolated act. Community integrity was stretched almost beyond the possibility of reintegration during the 14th century in Europe.
