ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the PPCT (pediatric palliative care team). We set the stage for understanding the terrors of living with illness invading and darkness approaching. We explain the micro-macro juxtaposition we take in the book. Treating the experience of death as both wholly personal (it is the self that dies) and cultural, we die as human beings who share similar conceptions of what it means to perish. How our social order and broader culture conceives of death informs our individual comprehension of the end. In addition, we cast a wide evidentiary net and argue for a multi-faceted treatment of death drawing from an expansive range of discursive formations. We also introduce Terror Management Theory (which asserts that it is human’s fear of death and awareness of our ultimate mortality that is the overriding motivation to find meaning in our lives) as the overarching theory influencing our discussion of death.
