'Live and/or let die': Modes of social dying among women and their friends

Abstract

This paper considers social aspects of living at home with a terminal illness: a process referred to as social dying . Women's friendship dyads, where one of the women is dying and both are aware of the prognosis, are used to observe this process. Social dying among friends took place in mundane but complex social settings and understandings were negotiated within ongoing relationships. Even impending death had to be seen in the context of other social pressures, sometimes even competing deaths. Three modes for social dying were identified from the data: integration, segregation and transformation. The reflexive nature of friendship dyads was illustrated, as either the dying woman or her friend's mode of social dying could change, or end, the friendship. In some cases new friends, friends for death, so to speak, emerged. In contrast some friendships ended as part of the process of social dying. For some women, who were living in an uncertain 'liminality' beyond the predicted time of death, social processes were inhibited, leaving them 'in limbo'. Established conceptions of social aspects of dying, which have tended to be institutionally specific, such as 'social death'(Sudnow, 1967) and awareness contexts (Glaser & Strauss, 1965), have to be reconsidered in the context of people dying at home while managing changing social relationships.