Chapter 3 Summary

Dr. Nuland explains the bureaucracy that dying has become. To accurately account for all deaths, dying must be classified appropriately as a death by a known entity. So says the Department of Health and Human Services in the United States as well as the World Health Organization. Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland offers the account of his grandmother and her death as evidence to elicit that old age is a fact of life and a cause of death.

Through the tale of 'Bubbeh,' as his grandmother was known, he relates the loss of her eyesight, her decreasing mobility, incontinence, and loss of short-term memory. He describes how she finally stopped praying and that travel to and from the church became physically impossible. While Dr. Nuland claims that there are clinical explanations for all of these, he says it is not in him to...