There are several possible definition of death according to one’s point of view. We can distinguish the physical death from the spiritual one’s. A short conclusion is that death escapes all definitions, it is the great Unknown, the ultimate truth. Monstrous does not want offense this mysterious entity and mainly focus on the macabre which is the representation of death by humans.

Spiritual death

A classical point of departure in defining death, seems to be life itself. Death is perceived either as a cessation of life - or as a passage on the way to a continuation of life by other means. A logically more rigorous approach, would be to ask "who dies" when death occurs. In other words, the identity of the dying is essential in defining death. But how can we establish the dying entity's unambiguous and unequivocal identity?. Death escapes all definitions, it is the great Unknown, the ultimate truth.

Physical death:  The cessation of normal body functions. In legal terms defined as brain death.

The irreversible loss of both components of consciousness, arousal and awareness.

Before the discovery that the heart could be resuscitated, people assumed that death came when the heart ceased to function. With resuscitation came the uneasy feeling that what appeared to be death might merely be coma, overdose, or shock. Such fears in the 19th century led to the recently deceased being watched for a period of days, and to crypts and coffins being made 'escapable'.

This century saw the rise of defibrillators, artificial respirators, and organ transplants. It became clear for medecine, that only the brain was immune to resuscitation or replacement, leading to a focus on the brain as the 'vital' structure separating life and death."

In 1965, the term "brain-dead" was coined when a renal transplant took place using organs donated from a patient with no recorded brain function. In many countries brain stem death is considered legal death, even if the body is kept alive with artificial means. This opens up for organ transplants of heart, liver and lungs, where the donor has to be dead.

A 1981 President's Commission found that cessation of blood flow, lack of respiration, and loss of full brain function defines death. But because the body can be kept alive by only one primitive part of the brain -- the brainstem -- confusion remains. Cases like anencephalic babies -- born without the more evolved parts of the brain but with beating hearts and functioning organs -- raises the question as to what constitutes life, as well as what defines death.

Some argue that higher brain function command personality, memory, and consciousness which constitutes the personhood," or cognition. Therefore, anencephalic infants and brain-dead patients maybe considered as organ donors.

Macabre

Macabre is a French word that makes its first known appearance in the fourteenth century, in a fragmented poem by Jean Le Fevre; Je fis de Macabre la danse. The term is supposed by some sources to have developed from Maccabee, the name of the Christian martyrs who by tradition invented the prayer of intercession for the dead in Purgatory. Macabre was a word created to describe the interaction of the dead, or death, with the living, and with this uncanny shudder retains this use to this day.