Paper short abstract:

I discuss how, in a context of dementia, people live toward the end of life, demonstrating that this is a future-oriented temporal project. I argue that future-making is not necessarily open-ended, but also works to define endings. In this finitude-as-future, potentiality is sought in a ‘good’ end.

Paper long abstract:

Dying takes time—it has duration and a temporal shape. Through ethnographic research in nursing homes in the Netherlands, I explore how people with dementia, their family members and professional caregivers live toward the end of life, and demonstrate that managing the end of life is a future-oriented, temporal project. From when death is still considered distant until the last moment when it has drawn nearest, death figures as future and as a marker of finitude. Dying was often seen as “heading downward,” “stepwise,” “gradual,” or “fluctuating,” and death itself described as “timely,” “lingering,” or “unexpected.” These endings are diffuse; they are lived in the present through experiences of gradual loss and involve constant expectation and anticipation. I show that future-making is not necessarily ongoing and open-ended, but also works to define endings.

Further, I demonstrate that this future-making particularly involved striving towards a ‘good’ death. This process of attributing value and meaning to the end of life—the extent to which death may be considered ‘good’—is dependent on a moral evaluation of life and on the value ascribed to experiences and projections of time. Taking the ending of life as object of ethnographic inquiry, and rather than focusing on the potentiality in continuation or renewal, I explore how, in this finitude-as-future, potentiality is sought precisely in a ‘good’ end.