For the better (224)

It would add nothing to the account of my friend’s death to see it as an example of death.

At one level, of course it is an example. So what? What does that tell me? Nothing about him, or his people and friends- who showed at the funeral, who did not. Nothing about me and all that he taught me, among other things.

At another level, it allows a theorist to generalize, from what might be called the concept of death and then introduce models so he can say:

“Look how this one went. Look when he went into that stage, and his wife was only here, at this one. He was ahead of his wife.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model

It allows the theorist to change the subject and develop a school of thought, to which my friend’s demise is of no account.

And then his is not, certainly not, a death as seen in A Death in the Family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Death_in_the_Family