Death and Dying American Style
5 min readAug 27, 2019
Often not up close and personal
In many countries, most people die at home. But in America, many people are not present at the death of their loved ones because death in America rarely occurs at home.
Most Americans die in hospitals where visitation rules limit who and how many people can be in the dying patient’s room.
According to the Stanford School of Medicine,” 60% of Americans die in acute care hospitals, 20% in nursing homes and only 20% at home” even though 80% would prefer to die at home.
Death in America is usually expensive, clinical, and prolonged by machines or other palliative methods. Dying alone can be very frightening.
According to a 2019 survey conducted by Statista:
- 11% of people are very afraid of death,
- 31% are somewhat afraid,
- 27% are not very afraid,
- 25% were not afraid,
- and 7% said they don’t know.
When one of my very religious aunts was in her 90s, her greatest fear was that she would die. She claimed to be certain of her personal salvation and certain to go to heaven, but she didn’t want to die…
