As Marina said, I think a good death impacts the family too. From my own experience, the death of someone that feels unfair or unjust because they have died in a painful way makes it harder to accept.
I found the paper by Walter really interesting, highlighting the role of societal norms and increasing individualism. Although he describes how this increasingness of slow degenerative death is harder to accept by our society, I think that this is not always the case. One that is unexpected and at a young age is more difficult to accept than an elderly person for whom death has been expected for months/years. In the latter case, people often console themselves saying that "at least they are at peace now".
Death has been so medicalised now that a quick, painful death is seen as unjust, and possibly more of a shock than say the Middle ages.
