'Just live for today'. Living, caring, ageing and dying

There is an assumption in western societies that death in old age is not on ly 'natural' but also 'easy'. It is often characterised as death which occu rs at the end of life with goals complete. By contrast death in youth is a traumatic and untimely end. This paper draws on interviews with people over the age of 75 to explore the nature of attitudes to death in old age. It f ocuses on the issues raised by elderly people themselves when given the opp ortunity to talk about death and dying. In so doing, attitudes to death and dying are separated into 'death of self' and 'death of other'. Each of the se categories is then divided thematically according to the issues raised b y respondents.