Abstract
In this study, the social significance of death is re-flected upon; specifically, the study looks at how feel-ing the presence of death can allow the reinterpreta-tion of one's own life and affect the representation of life experiences. Therefore, death is part of the social framework of memory, and is thus a representation as well. This reflection on the presence of death is based on narratives that were obtained during doc-toral research, whose basic theme was the represen-tation of cities in the memory of eldery residents. Thirty interviews were carried out in 1997 in munici-palities of the central region of São Paulo state in Brazil The narrators were elderly men and women who were adolescents during the first half of the 20th century. This work focussed on the discussion of memory and the narratives obtained from memories. A recurring theme in both areas -memory and narra-tives- was the presence of death. This presence was not only physical death, foretold by an increasingly tired, frail body, but also the death of a social uni-verse and a way of life that was expressed in the death of friends and relatives who contributed to memory and, consequently, to the continued con-struction of identity.