Tensions of time at the end (of life)

Alex Broom, Katherine Kenny, Nadine Ehlers, Henrietta Byrne and Phillip Good

Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 372, issue C

Abstract: Perhaps the most valuable asset in our cultural imaginary is time. Yet, this notion of time-as-asset intensifies, is contested, and is often derailed at the end of life. When faced with death, time can become many things, including both personal and interpersonal asset and liability. Bringing the concept of time and dying into focus, this paper draws on qualitative interviews with 15 people nearing death in an Australian specialist palliative care unit. We examine the normative expectations of time and its unravellings in their lived experiences, findings which are critical given time near death has not been extensively studied. We consider five key themes, ‘agency and physical decline across time’, ‘negotiating the time of death’, ‘the relational affordances of waiting’, ‘resisting prognostic time’, and ‘the cost of waiting’, all relations to and in time, that were variously woven through people's accounts of the end of life. These themes highlight connections between time and agency, juxtapositions of swiftness and sometimes interminable slowness, and how busyness and paralysis play crucial roles in the practices of dying. Sitting in stark contrast to the rather typical representation of time as a ‘good’ to be protected or used ‘well’, especially close to death, more nuanced accounts of dying-in-time emerge, highlighting tensions, troubles, and vitalities as we all collectively confront the end (of life/time).

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117995

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