During this critical period, we may find solace and answers within our own culture. Our culture may help explain why a person is sick and why the death has occurred at this time and in this way. We look to our culture for advice on how to act, how to express grief, and how to remember the person who has died. We may find comfort in the rituals that our culture prescribes when death occurs, and culture presents a structure within which death takes on meaning.
Culture also affects healing.
It informs us on how to behave when we are sick, how to express or not express pain or suffering and what healing systems we turn to in order to treat an illness or to provide comfort. Complicating the mystery of death is the collision of medical, legal, ethical and socioeconomic issues that affects the experience of dying.