This dataset is an ATLAS.ti copy bundle that contains the analysis of 86 articles that appeared between March 2011 and March 2013 in the Dutch quality newspaper NRC Handelsblad in the weekly article series 'the last word' [Dutch: 'het laatste woord'] that were written by NRC editor Gijsbert van Es. Newspaper texts have been retrieved from LexisNexis (http://academic.lexisnexis.nl/). These articles describe the experience of the last phase of life of people who were confronted with approaching death due to cancer or other life-threatening diseases, or due to old age and age-related health losses. The analysis focuses on the meanings concerning death and dying that were expressed by these people in their last phase of life. The data-set was analysed with ATLAS.ti and contains a codebook. In the memo manager a memo is included that provides information concerning the analysed data. Culturally embedded meanings concerning death and dying have been interpreted as 'death-related cultural affordances': possibilities for perception and action in the face of death that are offered by the cultural environment. These have been grouped into three different ‘cultural niches’ (sets of mutually supporting cultural affordances) that are grounded in different mechanisms for determining meaning: a canonical niche (grounding meaning in established (religious) authority and tradition), a utilitarian niche (grounding meaning in rationality and utilitarian function) and an expressive niche (grounding meaning in authentic (and often aesthetic) self-expression. Interviews are in Dutch; Codes, analysis and metadata are in English.