On Saying Good-bye Before Death

Abstract

IN RECENT years, increasing importance has been given to the role of the physician and his colleagues, not only in preserving life, but in easing the process of dying. Accumulated evidence suggests this is not solely for the comfort of the dying, but also for the health and well-being of the survivors. The social and psychological processes surrounding death are presumably universal, but more easily discerned in previous centuries and in cultures other than our own. The farewell is an element that is implied but not often described specifically in well-known works on this subject.¹This aspect of dying is enshrined in the myth of the Old Man Nagacork, as told by the aborigines in the Roper River district of the Northern Territory of Australia. And the old man Nagacork went on a long walkabout to see all the blackfellows, the birds, animals, fish and reptiles. And as Nagacork