When someone dies Lesson 24 of the adult life course of Mova's primary school: 20 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Every living thing dies one day. 1 When a person dies, their body stops working for ever; it is not sleep, and they do not come back. 2 Grown-ups often use soft words for it, like "passed away", "we lost him" or "she's gone", because the plain word is hard to say. 3 Picture a living room in Melbourne: Dad sits you down and says, "Grandad is dying. 4 The doctors say it's weeks, not months." Later he cries, and it is the first time you have seen him cry. 5 The sadness after a death is called grief. 6 It comes and goes like waves, and people show it in many ways, from tears to casseroles on the doorstep. 7 Different families believe different things about what happens after death, and nobody knows for certain. 8 When doctors say someone is dying, the illness cannot be cured and the body is slowly stopping; they can often guess roughly how long is left. 9 "Passed away" is a gentle way of saying "died"; underneath, it means the person has died and will not come back. 10 Being dead means the body has stopped working for ever; it is not the same as sleep. 11 A hospice is a calm place, a bit like a small hospital, that cares for people near the end of their lives; the aim is comfort and no pain, not a cure. 12 Grown-ups cry when they are very sad, just like children; crying lets out big feelings and does not make them any less able to look after you. 13 Grief, the sadness after someone dies, comes in waves: fine one day and terrible the next, sometimes set off by a song or a smell. 14 Grief gets gentler over months and years; playing and laughing during that time does not mean you have forgotten the person. 15 "At least it was peaceful" means the person died calmly, often without pain; people say it kindly, but "I'm sorry" is always a safer thing to say. 16 A sudden death happens without warning, from an accident or a heart attack, so there is no chance to say goodbye; it is rare in young healthy people. 17 When someone dies, neighbours and friends often bring food, so the family does not have to cook; it is a practical way of saying "we care". 18 A widow is a woman whose husband has died, and a widower is a man whose wife has died. 19 Different families and religions believe different things about death: some believe in heaven, some in rebirth, and some that life simply ends. ← previous When Grandma and Grandad need more helpnext → Funerals and remembering↑ back to Adult life This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/24-when-someone-dies/