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Summer 2004 Our Guest EditorToday, a widow might not choose to make her husband's jawbone into a necklace, as Robert Kastenbaum tells us the early Trobriand Islanders did, but newly bereaved people have had much in common across the ages. Rituals and other practices to dispose of the deceased's body, to honor and remember the person's life, and to console those left behind have been universal. How are these functions performed now? And how can service providers be of help to older people and their families who are facing a death and making "final arrangements"? In this issue of Generations, Kastenbaum, our guest editor, guides us on a tour of past and present practices, from anatomical artifacts, to traditional ceremonies, to nursing home rituals and cyber-memorials. Kastenbaum is a renowned scholar and the preeminent authority on the psychology of death, with impressive credentials as a researcher, author, and clinician. His book The Psychology of Death, first published thirty years ago, is said to have served as the basis for this area of study and is only the first in a long list of pioneering works. He is the editor of the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death, a coeditor of The Encyclopedia of Aging and the Humanities, and served as editor of the International Journal of Aging and Human Development. His popular textbook, Death, Society, and the Human Experience, is now in its eighth edition. "As a student in psychology in the 1950s," Kastenbaum says, "I was interested in 'the basic questions,' which psychology wasn't addressing at the time. Where was the work on the core of life-creativity, time, love, and death? My professors thought I was strange, but they let me explore it. We all have to understand something about death in order to live. I hoped I could make a contribution." In some of Kastenbaum's first studies, he asked elders questions about the meaning of time. "They had amazing stories," he says. "All throughout my work with older people, I've seen them coming to terms with limits-with death and dying and finite time. It's then, when they are about to jump into the void, that people sometimes become most alive, most creative." Kastenbaum himself is known for his creativity as well as his wry wit and the sense of humor he brings to a subject some might call depressing. He is a prolific playwright. He recently wrote the libretto for an opera, Dorian Graying, about a professor whose video image ages while he does not. "He realizes that you can't live a real life unless you are going with the flow of time," Kastenbaum says. These days, Kastenbaum is a professor emeritus at Arizona State University, where he has also served as director of the university's Adult Development and Aging Program. His current work, of which On Our Way: The Final Passage Through Life and Death (University of California Press, 2004) and this issue of Generations are the latest examples, has allowed Kastenbaum to examine more fully how we deal with death in the past and present. Characteristically, he uses his skills to bring together the fruits of clinical practice, humanities, and science. "In this way, we can make the connections that gerontologists are always looking for," he says. "We can be of most help to the elders we serve."
- Mary Johnson
From Generations Summer 2004 issue, 28(2): 4. © 2004 American Society on Aging
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