The cause of death for Queen Elizabeth was listed as old age.

People are dying of old age in everyday speech. Who actually dies in the 21st century?

It can be difficult for family and loved ones to understand how someone died.

The many ways people die

Alzheimer's disease is one of the top causes of death in England and Wales. Chronic lower respiratory diseases are one of the notable causes.

"Old age" as a cause of death is often categorized under "symptoms, signs, and ill-defined conditions".

The category is in the top 10. Over the course of a five-year period, this is below both flu and pneumonia.

An interesting history

There is a long history of old age causing death. It was one of the leading causes of death in the 19th century.

The Births and Deaths Register Act 1836 (UK) was enacted in the mid-19th century.

The first publication about causes of death was written by a French statistician and demographer.

Ian Hacking wrote that dying of anything other than what was on the official list was illegal.

This might be a bit hyperbolic. It was not against the law to die of old age by the 19th century.

It is suggested that providing a precise cause of death is important because it is a useful tool for tracking mortality trends at different levels.

"Old age" was a last resort phrase to describe a cause of death. Where it was not practical to order an autopsy to find the exact cause of death, it became useful.

There's no closure

"old age" has not been used as the cause of death in the 20th and 21st century because it doesn't give any closure to the families of the deceased.

According to research, families want to know how their loved one died so they can manage their own health concerns, and at the same time provide a resolution to their loved one's death.

If the death was sudden, it can make grief and trauma worse.

Families form relationships with their loved ones after they die, according to researchers.

One of the ways the family members left behind manage their grief is by knowing how they died.

A good death

Asking for more information about the queen's death is just morbid.

Privacy surrounding the queen's death could be decided by us.

A specific cause of death can tell us a lot about how to lead a healthy life and plan for a good death.

There is a senior research fellow at La Trobe University.

Under a Creative Commons license, this article is re-posted. The original article is worth a read.