A Slow Death
This article is based on an ethnographic research conducted over 18 months with residents suffering from major neurocognitive disorders (Alzheimer’s or others), in two long-term care centers (CHSLD) in Montreal. Data are drawn from more than 200 hours of participant observation with residents (n = 8) in the last stage of the disease (bedridden and having lost the use of speech), photographs as well as interviews (n = 20) with relatives and staff. This foray into the world of severe cognitive losses, where people are no longer able to express their needs and their wishes on their own, reveals the long wait for an unforeseeable yet always present, and sometimes awaited, death. It highlights a rapport to death and the end-of-life defined by feelings of helplessness and ambivalence, as relatives and staff struggle to make sense of the current condition and life of these residents. The article explores the blurring of the status of “living” which takes place in this singular end-of-life context, making an innovative contribution to Quebec’s reflections on medical aid in dying for incapacitated people.