Death

This article aims at scientifically investigating the anticipatory grief/mourning phenomenon, which is referred to the psychic processes before the death of a loved one, using the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The IPA is grounded on a phenomenological hermeneutic: the indepth study of the meaningprocess of a subjective experience by a person. This analysis is applied to the case of a woman caring for her spouse suffering from a cancer, in end-of-life. The findings give an insight of the psychological functioning of a person facing the impending death of a relative, and offer reflection-tools concerning prevention of psychic distress in the bereavement field.

This article examines how 'safety case' experts working on Finland’s nuclear waste repository project at Olkiluoto summoned, conjured, or channeled memories of Seppo—a deceased colleague whose ‘specter,’ as some put it, still ‘haunts’ their scientific community. For some, Seppo’s postmortem presence manifested as gaps in knowledge left behind by an expert often reluctant to document the methodological assumptions underlying his knowledge-practices. For others, it manifested as anecdotes about Seppo’s stubbornness, irritability, and intellectual intensity as well as his more jovial demeanor during sauna nights, workplace parties, or trips abroad. Still others caught themselves asking ‘What Would Seppo Do?’ while troubleshooting at work. Inspired by anthropological and philosophical work on ancestors and haunting, the article unpacks how the multi-millennial time horizons of nuclear waste risk, the intergenerational time horizons of expert succession, and the everyday time horizons of a single expert life-course shared entwined fates. It focuses less on what knowledge disappeared when an expert’s body died – or how it could have been preventatively backed-up or managed – and more on what has lived on of the expert in and through surviving colleagues. Analysis of 'afterlives of expertise' like these can, it concludes, provide insights for a current moment of intergenerational transition in nuclear energy sectors in Europe, North America, and beyond.

Techniques of molecular biology have improved diagnostic sensitivity, accuracy and validity in forensic medicine very much, especially in the field of identification (paternity testing, stain analysis). Since more than 10 years these techniques -meanwhile well established in clinical disciplines -are used also for other applications in forensic medicine: determination of cause and manner of death, tissue identification by mRNA and microRNA, examination of gene expression levels (survival time, time since death, cause of death), toxicogenetics.

Prólogo de Carlos Blanco Pérez ❖ Muerte, mortalidad e inmortalidad derraman su esencia en el crisol de la mundana vida humana; horrores que nos arrojan a soñar, leer y escribir. Los libros filosóficos, literarios y poéticos aparentan ser creaciones estáticas que rescatan vivencias delicadas. Sin embargo, esas obras viven, poseen vida propia, y en cada hoja y cada palabra hay tiernos gestos de almas que desean ser acariciadas por ojos hambrientos de letras. Según nos revela Carlos Blanco, el libro del escritor malagueño es «un despliegue de sensibilidad, un canto al hermanamiento entre filosofía y poesía que lo convierte en un intento inspirador de fusionar el pensamiento con el arte». El subtítulo Crisálidas de cristal, que designa la forma larval del pensamiento joven del autor, sugiere una frágil metamorfosis respecto a los presagios confesados en su primera obra. En cada página, «uno tiene la sensación de que está leyendo un poema, rítmico, cadencioso, aderezado con palabras de hermosura diáfana que envuelven al lector en una crisálida de pureza y dulzura».

The Bible is full of references to magic and divination, but we rarely find attestations of witches and witchcraft, i.e. women performing acts of black magic. However, there is a mysterious passage in the Book of Ezekiel which seems to relate exactly that. In this compelling lecture Dr Alinda Damsma throws light on the identity and practices of these women, seeing them in the context of other known activities in the Ancient Near East. More info: https://www.treadwells-london.com/events-1/the-bibles-own-witches?mc_cid=27225007b0&mc_eid=50358b363f

Using the dual lens of Death Scholar and bereaved family member, this chapter explores the meaning of the R.I.P. T-shirt to African American mourning customs and death material culture. The author examines how race, memory, and material culture affects death and mourning by seeking to understand the function and purpose of R.I.P T-shirts to those in the Black community. The goal of the chapter is to illustrate how African Americans draw solace, comfort, refuge and even heed a call to action in the act of wearing the R.I.P. T-shirt.  The aim of the chapter seeks to understand the shirt’s prevalence within traditional African American mourning. Questions asked and considered are: Why do you wear Willie’s R.I.P. T-shirt and how did wearing it make you feel? How often do you wear it and why?  In my findings I (a) distinguish between official and unofficial R.I.P. T-shirts, different ways family/friend honor and memorialize the decedent; (b) unravel various origin stories of the R.I.P. T-shirt; and (c) unpack and comprehend the use and purpose of R.I.P. T-shirt during and after active grieving.

This article tackles rituals and beliefs around death in the Kingdom of Aragon at the end of the Middle Ages. The presence of both the so-called macabre feeling and death and the afterlife are considered in Aragonese royal coronation parties. At the same time, it becomes clear that the Church had to deal with the fact that some people were agnostic and therefore rejected the idea of resurrection and afterlife. We inquire into diverse eschatological conceptions and consider testaments to focus our audience's attention on some pious endowments that often have been overlooked: for example, the act of ordering chalices (an indicator of the rootedness and diffusion of the eucharistic cult), wax ex-votos (so scarcely documented) and the restauration of holy images located in temples.

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

Results: Twenty five (58%) control patients died at home compared with 124 (67%) patients allocated to hospital at home. This difference was not significant; intention to treat analysis did not show that hospital at home increased the number of deathsat home. Seventy three patients ...

Part I – Spirilla Theory and Cosmology
Stephen Hawking once proclaimed that String Theory may be able to unify the various forces although later he became disillusioned thinking that there may be no Theory of Everything. This very condensed book pulls together the various forces into the Spirilla Theory which supersedes String Theory and introduces the Relativity of Consciousness.

The foundation of the Spirilla Theory is based on the writings of H. P. Blavatsky, A. B. Bailey, and A. Besant. By overlaying the works of Einstein, Bohm, de Broglie, Dirac, Bell and other great scientific minds, on top of the foundation, the unification of the various forces and theories starts to appear; each field of study supplying a part of the puzzle but only a holistic view of ALL endeavors will solve the mystery. The book starts by laying the groundwork through the Introduction, a review of Bell’s Theorem and p-adic mathematics; following this, each major section begins with a quote from the foundational works followed by the quotes from scientific papers demonstrating the current known thinking on the various topics; no attempts are made to edit the works (except with a few exceptions for clarity and/or length) of the various authors and references to the scientists’ works are maintained. Each section is pulled together so that a picture can be seen.
This section;
1. Redefines the atom with the addition of a subquark;
2. Defines the Spirilla Theory which unifies Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, and explains Quantum Entanglement;
3. Defines new particles;
4. Redefines time and space;
5. Defines and solves the mystery of Black Holes and links the cosmic and quantum black hole through the spirillae;
6. Delves into the mystery of the Macroverse;
7. Outlines the steps in the origins of the universe;
8. Adds an equation to Einstein’s original 1905 paper on relativity which sees the speed of light approaching infinity;
9. Gives the foundation for developing space travel; and, as an appendix,
10. Gives detailed information for the development of a new energy source – Quantum Energy.

Part II - Ontology, Epistemology & Manifestations
Part II is divided into three sections:
1. Ontology and the fundamental concepts of reality which discusses:
a. consciousness and delves into the mystery of human consciousness having cosmic origins;
b. reincarnation and gives the various laws affecting rebirth, with a discussion on the principle of mutation and the perfecting of form;
c. the work of form-building, transmutation of form and the building of a human form.
2. Epistemology which covers a great deal of topics however; for the purposes of NOE the subject is restricted to;
a. evolution including a definition of the Law of Evolution, the cyclic ebb and flow and the rhythmic work of creation, the process of substitution, the evolution of man and the genesis of the pithecoid stocks; and
b. death including the processes of death, two main reasons for cremation and the sequence of events at death.
3. Manifestations of the various religions including:
a. why Christians don’t believe in reincarnation;
b. the coming science of invocation and evocation;
c. Quantum Entanglement Over Time (QEoT) or The Law of Cause and Effect, and The Law of Karma with a discussion on The Golden Rule ; and
d. The New World Religion.

This essay is a comparative study of certain elements in the three texts named in the subtitle above: Havamal, from the Elder Edda; The Dream of the Rood; and The Lord of the Rings. The paper will focus on selected passages, to examine their nature as turning points, cruces, within their narratives. The passages, and the works as a whole, have several similarities, for example each -Norse Myth, Anglo-Saxon poem, and twentiethcentury prose fiction -embodies aspects of the northern heroic ethos that so attracted Tolkien. (St. Clair) Moreover, each work presents one culture through the filter of another's world-view. Tolkien and the author of the Dream of the Rood both present Christian virtues through the veil of the northern heroic tradition, while Snorri Sturlason looks back at the Norse pagan tradition from a Christianised northland (Fouracre 498-9) much as Tolkien argued was the case with the Beowulf-poet. (MC, 26-27) However, the focus of this essay will be upon similarities of narrative structures and shaping within the texts.

This article is specifically situated on Mount Auburn Cemetery, Maryland’s first Black owned and operated cemetery, examining the numerous social and historical factors that shaped, transformed, and ultimately led to a small African American burial ground becoming a business.  Founded in 1807 by the seven trustees of Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church (Baltimore’s oldest African Methodist Church which dates back to 1787), Mount Auburn Cemetery gave African Americans, free and enslaved, a right to freedom through death. African Americans could not control their enslaved and marginalized lives, but they could control their deaths. Post emancipation, the cemetery strategized a move to South Baltimore, bought more land, embarking on an economic partnership with a newly formed African American community by the name of Hullsville. The cemetery professionalized and became a business paving the way for independent African American undertakers. This article places Mount Auburn Cemetery as a unit of analysis in order to illustrate the historical significance of Mount Auburn Cemetery to the African American community.

This paper has been published in a somewhat different form in Meg Harris Williams' "Aesthetic Conflict  and its Clinical Relevance." - Karnac, 2018.

It outlines the various "knife-edge" defenses the infant mind must struggle with in the face of the emotional impact of the mother's beauty, particularly when there is no absolute guarantee of this being reciprocated.
An attempt is made to disambiguate this vulnerability from those which call into play defenses against (Kleinian) unconscious envy.
Both serve to protect the internal good/beautiful mother from destruction, in the infant mind.
One aspect of Narcissism, not usually emphasized, is the lack of conscious awareness of one's rejection of love and beauty when offered by another.
Instead, the narcissist remains almost totally merely conscious of his or her own feelings of being rejected, especially aesthetically.

Moving Beyond Personal Loss to Societal Grieving considers how secondary English language arts teachers can thoughtfully teach pieces of literature in their classrooms in which large-scale deaths are a significant aspect of the texts. Each chapter provides practical activities for students to engage with loss through writing, projects, and prompts.

Through content analysis, employing qualitative and quantitative methods, Canadian media representation of people with cerebral palsy (PWCP) in public life was examined. Canadian NewsDisc, an online biographic database service, was used to examine the use of ...

de elementos contextuais. Esta pesquisa, que integra os métodos quantitativo e qualitativo, utiliza escalas do trabalho e entrevistas semiestruturadas. Conclui-se que a presença de mácula moral nos motoristas paramentadores influencia para a maior coesão do grupo, e que elementos como a classe e a raça estão na construção social desses trabalhos desprestigiados e operam na produção das identidades maculadas.

Philosophically, the most interesting objection to the reliance on advance directives to guide treatment decisions for formerly competent patients is the argument from the loss of personal identity. Starting with a psychological continuity theory of personal identity, the argument concludes that the very conditions that bring an advance directive into play may destroy the conditions necessary for personal identity, and so undercut the authority of the directive. In this article, I concede that if the purpose of a theory of personal identity is to provide an answer to the question What is it for a person to persist over time?, then reflection on personal identity poses a potentially serious threat to the moral authority of advance directives. However, as Marya Schechtman observes, questions about how a single person persists through change are not what most of us are interested in when we think about who a person is. Rather, we are interested in what it means to say that a particular...

Do moral judgments hinge on the time available to render them? According to a recent dual-process model of moral judgment, moral dilemmas that engage emotional processes are likely to result in fast deontological gut reactions. In contrast, consequentialist responses that tot up lives saved and lost in response to such dilemmas would require cognitive control to override the initial response. Cognitive control, however, takes time. In two experiments, we manipulated the time available to arrive at moral judgments in two ways: by allotting a fixed short or large amount of time, and by nudging people to answer swiftly or to deliberate thoroughly. We found that faster responses indeed lead to more deontological responses among those moral dilemmas in which the killing of one to save many necessitates manhandling an innocent person and in which this action is depicted as a means to an end. Thus, our results are the first demonstration that inhibiting cognitive control through manipulations of time alters moral judgments.

Flower Show is the novel for all lives' death once they suffer, but cannot be familiar with it at all. The characters in this novel faced to their deaths in front of camera shot by the step of a television program. This novel shows the stories of the remains described as a viewpoint of humanity and this work is one of Örkény's masterpieces.
This paper can be devided two parts. One is for describing about the censorship and self-censorship and the other is for analyzing this novel, so this paper is not only for focusing to analyze the novel. Many famous writers like Dante, Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Goethe, George Orwell, and even James Joyce whose work was selected as the best novel of the 20th century by scholars and reviewers in America could not avoid the censorship from the authorities including governments which wanted to hold their courses for literature. It is needless to say that the actual problem from this is the writers could not express themselves as they intended. In case of Hungary, they also took experiences concerning to the history of censorship with other european countries. But considering their history they should suffered double censorship from the hungarian authorities, and the upper power as well like Habsburg or others.
I don't and I can't deny the main motive of this novel is related to death as everybody may accept it who read this novel. In this paper, rather I tried to analyze this novel based on the censorship and self-censorship. To prove it, I examined the background of story writing, some parts of this novel where I can assume and the interviews once given by the writer.

U.S. Army mortuary affairs (MA) soldiers experience stressors of deployment and exposure to the dead, increasing risk for post-traumatic stress and depression. This study examines Troop Education for Army Morale, a postdeployment early intervention based on Psychological First Aid. MA soldiers (N = 126) were randomized to intervention or comparison groups 1-month postdeployment. Intervention sessions were held at 2, 3, 4, and 7 months. Assessments of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and quality of life (QOL) were conducted at 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 10 months for both groups. At baseline, 25.0% of the total sample had probable PTSD (17-item PTSD Checklist M = 35.4, SD = 16.9) and 23.6% had probable depression (9-item Patient Health Questionnaire Depression Scale M = 7.8, SD = 6.9). Over 10 months, PTSD and depression symptoms decreased and QOL improved for the total sample. At study conclusion, intervention and comparison groups were not different. Intervention group males showed a transient symptom increase at 2 to 3 months. Males attended fewer intervention sessions than females. Lower attendance was associated with more symptoms and lower QOL. Higher attendance was associated with greater intervention benefits. Findings highlight the need for better understanding postdeployment interventions and facilitating attendance. Further intervention for MA soldiers is indicated.

In this study, 421 undergraduate students evaluated their natural mothers, natural fathers, and stepfathers (where applicable) by rating them on the Personal Attribute Inventory. The findings front this study indicated that parents from families broken by divorce were consistently more negatively evaluated than were parents from either intact families or families where the father had died. These findings held regardless of whether or not the mother had remarried and regardless of the sex of the students doing the evaluations.

Introduction. Intravenous injection of mercury has seldom been reported, especially in cases of attempted suicide, and is associated with variable clinical outcomes. Case report. A young woman came to our attention after self-injecting and ingesting mercury drawn from 37 thermometers. The patient suffered lung embolization complicated by adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), toxic dermatitis, anemia, mild hepato-renal impairment, and died after 30 days. Mercury was monitored in biological fluids (blood, plasma, urine, and bronchoalveolar fluid) to study its toxicokinetics and to evaluate dose-effect relationships. Its urinary clearance significantly increased after a chelation challenge test with meso-2,3-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) (median values of 2.48 and 8.85 before and after the test, respectively, p < 0.05). Conclusions. Mercury poisoning by intravenous injection is a clinical emergency, potentially leading to death. When injected, the element has a very slow clearance, mainly renal. Our data do not allow any conclusion about the effectiveness of chelation therapy.

One of the presuppositions of this paper is that is indeed possible to conceive of Bowies death as an ‘event’ that was staged, mediated and performed by means of the Blackstar-album, and more particularly, by the song Lazarus. To further support that claim, I situate the Bowie case within a scholarly discourse on the representation and framing(s) of death in contemporary Western societies. Following the work of the Danish sociologist Michael Hviid Jacobsen (2016), I argue that we can further interpret and conceptualize the death of David Bowie through the lens of what Jacobsen coined ‘Spectacular Death’, a term that designates a ‘’revival of interest in death, dying and bereavement’’, in which we ‘’see the rise of new rituals and the reappearance and reinvention of old ones in many ceremonial practices [and] media representations’’.  Central to these media representations is a globalized culture of digital media, which makes it increasingly difficult to draw any spatial or geographical boundaries whatsoever.

Even though people know everyone has to die one day, it seemsnobody realizes that this is a truth of life and they themselves aregoing to die. This is apparently a universal problem for all people andit causes them to live their lives in forgetfulness until the day theyhave to encounter death. This article aims to explore how the narrativetechniques employed in Margaret Edson’s Wit and Chart Korbjitti’s Timeinduce each individual reader to contemplate death and meaning of lifeand stimulate them to question, criticize and evaluate his/her own life. Key Words: Alienation effect; Brechtian techniques; Chart Korbjitti;Comparative literature; Death; Margaret Edson; Narrativetechniques; Time; Wit

1. The relation between attachment styles and fear of personal death was assessed. We classified a sample of Israeli undergraduate students into secure, ambivalent, and avoidant attachment groups and assessed the extent of, and the meaning attached to, overt fear of personal death as well as the extent of fear at a low level of awareness. Ambivalent subjects exhibited stronger overt fear of death than did secure and avoidant subjects, and both ambivalent and avoidant subjects showed stronger fear of death at a ...

We analyze longitudinal data from a demographic surveillance area (DSA) in KwaZulu-Natal to examine the impact of parental death on children’s outcomes. The results show significant differences in the impact of mothers’ and fathers’ deaths. The loss of a child’s mother is a strong predictor of poor schooling outcomes. Maternal orphans are significantly less likely to be enrolled in school and have completed significantly fewer years of schooling, conditional on age, than children whose mothers are alive. Less money is spent on maternal orphans’ educations, on average, conditional on enrollment. Moreover, children whose mothers have died appear to be at an educational disadvantage when compared with non-orphaned children with whom they live. We use the timing of mothers’ deaths relative to children’s educational shortfalls to argue that mothers’ deaths have a causal effect on children’s educations. The loss of a child’s father is a significant correlate of poor household socioeconomi...

Near-death experiences reportedly foster value transformations and decrease suicidal ideation. Eighty-nine survivors of near-death experiences judged values related to material and social success as less important than did 175 control subjects. Decathexis of personal failures may account for the reported suicide-inhibiting effect.

The final Book of The Mind’s Journey into God is unlike the earlier six in several ways. One is that a substantial portion is quotation from the Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite. It is important, although Bonaventure did not know this, that the quotation carries the theology of the great pagan philosopher – theologians: Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, and the last of the “successors” of Plato at his Academy in Athens, Damascius. Damascius was driven to Persia with his colleagues by Christian persecution in the 6th century, closing the Neoplatonic Academy. These two considerations require us to think about quotation and the transmission of ideas. We shall do so under the dictum of the Postmodern philosophers: “nothing is repeated identically,” a law medieval theology confirms ceaselessly.
We shall approach this through a series of questions. The first is one we have already asked: Why after the introduction is the peace supposed to be described in this Book never mentioned again? This question leads to the next: What is the theology governing the quotations from the Mystical Theology? This philosophical theology is central for Bonaventure’s mysticism, although he transforms it. What do they derive from their pagan sources? How does placing the Platonic theology within Dionysius’ work transform it? Again how does placing Dionysius in Bonaventure’s text here change it? Finally, what does this continuity and difference between pagan and Christian, Greek Patristic and Medieval Latin tell us about philosophy, theology, and Christianity? These questions we shall consider this week.

La conciencia de la muerta llega para nunca olvidarse. Es fácil recordar con precisión el momento en que caímos en la cuenta de que también moriríamos. Podemos recordar el día, dónde estábamos, qué hacíamos o algún detalle muy preciso cuando dijimos: yo también me voy a morir. El hombre es el único ser vivo que tiene la capacidad de ser consciente de su mortalidad. Los animales no saben que van a morir. Sienten dolor, expresan tristeza, pero nunca son conscientes de su mortalidad. La conciencia de mortalidad es un llamado a la realidad. En mi caso toda esta conciencia se presenta como una llamada de teléfono. La primera, el día en que muere mi padre. Soy el último en una familia de 10 hijos. A los 3 más chicos nos resguardan quizás para "protegernos" y evitar el encuentro con esa realidad. Aunque mi padre fallece en casa y no en un hospital, el resto de la familia consideró mejor evitarnos vivir la realidad a los 9 años que yo tenía. La muerte ya no es parte de la vida diaria, se lleva a los hospitales. Es extraño, esta fuga funeraria se contrapone con la violenta realidad de asesinatos, violencias y muerte que vemos en las noticias y en las calles. El teléfono suena en la casa de Luis, hermano mayor donde nos llevaron para evitar la experiencia del deceso. Su esposa abre la puerta y se asoma para dar la indicación: no levanten la extensión. Según ellos era mejor no escuchar. Minutos más tarde caminamos a casa y mi hermano va tratando de explicar la muerte. Eso no se explica, eso no se entiende. No puedes explicar lo que no se vive. Se vive el morir y eso lo vivió mi padre, que ya no puede explicar nada. El siguiente llamado de la muerte vino 15 años después. Un llamado esperado y hasta deseado. Anunciaba el final de mi madre, tres meses después de estar en coma por un derrame cerebral. Difícil desear la muerte para un ser querido. Una vida ya no es vivía así..

BACKGROUND: Intensivists must provide enough analgesia and sedation to ensure dying patients receive good palliative care. However, if it is perceived that too much is given, they risk prosecution for committing euthanasia. The goal of this study is to develop consensus guidelines on analgesia and sedation in dying intensive care unit patients that help distinguish palliative care from euthanasia. METHODS:

Between 5% and 10% of patients die or are urgently readmitted within 30 days of discharge from hospital. Readmission risk indexes have either excluded acute diagnoses or modelled them as multiple distinct variables. In this study, we derived and validated a score summarizing the influence of acute hospital diagnoses and procedures on death or urgent readmission within 30 days. From population-based hospital abstracts in Ontario, we randomly sampled 200 000 discharges between April 2003 and March 2009 and determined who had been readmitted urgently or died within 30 days of discharge. We used generalized estimating equation modelling, with a sample of 100 000 patients, to measure the adjusted association of various case-mix groups (CMGs-homogenous groups of acute care inpatients with similar clinical and resource-utilization characteristics) with 30-day death or urgent readmission. This final model was transformed into a scoring system that was validated in the remaining 100 000 pati...

This paper presents the progress achieved during a brief stay within the framework of a postdoctoral research that the author conducted in 2009 with the aim of acknowledging the conditions under which the "hospice" movement emerges in Argentina and Brazil, and assess to what extent this has enabled innovation in the treatment of disease. We consider that 'palliative care' is a polysemic concept, which results from a process of "refocusing" of caring, through which new meanings appear from contributions of doctors, philosophers, theologians, psychotherapists, nurses, social workers, caregivers, pastors, religious and social activists, etc., in both theoretical and practical aspects and in its complex links with religion, morality and culture.

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Drawing on the true story of the actions of a middle manager in a major industrial company after the unexpected death of one of his employees, while participating in one of the most important social rituals to humans and society -the creation of meaning of death -we take an analytical approach to corporate social responsibility (CSR). This is done by discussing the overlap between CSR and human resource management (HRM). The story induces us to question the upholding of CSR an HRM as separate theoretical fi elds, since the managerial practice seems to indicate that these have merged into one. Also, the story indicates that the borders between the 'private' and 'public' roles in managerial practice are blurred and that to be a middle manager today is quite complicated. The article fi nishes with a discussion on why the writing of policies may not be the answer to this problem.