ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book discusses the Hindu parable in which four blind men were faced with the task of describing an elephant. It describes the shift from industrial to postindustrial living, and between the modern and postmodern eras. The book focuses on implications of how we are dying. Sequestration is a term sometimes used to connote the idea that those touched by death are somehow isolated, or sequestered, from the rest of society and, as a result, even from the awareness of death itself. Secularization is a term that was originally used in relation to the seizure monastic lands and property by the state. The field of thanatology—the study of death, dying, and bereavement—is not only an academic area of study but a very personal subject that affects all of us.
