Attitudes to death

Quote of the day

18 September 2012
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, Quotes

 

 

“If, as we get on each day living in the present, we spend some time seriously thinking about [death]; if we talk about it now and then – here, perhaps, and with friends and relatives; if we seek out and read what others have written about it; if we ponder it quietly from time to time –

Then one day we will realize it has come to pass that we understand; that leaving this world is the completion of the circle of life and that we will welcome it, in its time, as the next great adventure.

And we will realize then, too, that we will have arrived at our equanimity each in our own time as necessity presents itself.

At least, that’s how I hope it happens.”

 

Source

 

 

What price eternity?

3 September 2012
Charles
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Categories: Attitudes to death, Death education

Following Michael Jarvis’s piece earlier today, I’m beginning to wonder whether death-denial isn’t more prevalent among the elderly than the young.

In the September Oldie magazine (strapline: ‘ticking the right boxes’) agony aunt Mavis Nicholson prints a couple of letters from readers: 

Dear Mavis

Re your piece in the Summer issue on dying, I’m so glad I’m not the only one who thinks she is not destined for death! For no reason I can think of I’ve always had the feeling that I’m not going to die. I shouldn’t wonder if there isn’t a whole pack of us out there, suffering from this delusion. I wonder if it has a name? Perhaps we should coin one. I’ll be interested to know if you get more responses from people with this ‘complaint’. 

Vivienne Rendall

Dear Mavis,

As usual, I looked at my Summer Oldie back to front, so started with you, a mere 81, not believing you’d ever die. I’m 86 and also quite unable to consider not being here any more. Like your Rob Woods, I believe part of us goes on. 

But — let’s be realistic — the more likely answer is that our brains are just not programmed to comprehend nothingness, so we invent endless theories about what might happen in the afterlife: heaven, hell, reincarnation, whatever. I have now reduced my expectations from eternal life to aiming for 100, now no longer as rare as it used to be. 

Helga Harman. 

Immortality therapy might do the trick. A dose of Gulliver’s Travels for starters.

When he first lands in Luggnagg and beholds the Struldbrugs, Gulliver “cried out as in a rapture; happy nation where every child hath at least a chance for being immortal!”

Gulliver revises his opinion when he realises that “the question therefore was not whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health, but how he would pass an eternal life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it … The diseases they were subject to still continue without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things and the names of persons, even those who are their nearest friends and relations.”

It gets worse. 

Taboo or not taboo?

3 September 2012
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, Death education, Dress codes, funeral customs, medical interventions in dying, Natural Death Centre

Posted by Michael Jarvis, onetime Manager of the Natural Death Centre

For very many people in the UK ‘death’ is a subject left unmentioned. If you are reading this then you are part of a minority. A minority, furthermore, who would generally like to see more public openness regarding dying, death and funerals. We know the benefits: peace of mind from discussing one’s individual wishes, removing an unnecessary burden of decision-making from the bereaved, possible financial advantages from advance planning, and so on. 

Death seems to be a taboo subject for many, but does the general reticence to mention death, let alone discuss it, make it so?  We need to understand how it this has come to prominence. It wasn’t around in the time of our Victorian forebears despite their sensibilities in many areas (skirts on piano legs, for example). Rather, it was paraded with openness in art and literature and surrounded by a great deal of etiquette and ritual. Type ‘Jay’s of Regent St’ into a search engine to see details of a whole store devoted to mourning dress and accessories. So what happened in the last century to bring about such a seismic change? 

First, war and a pandemic. The First World War brought death on such a massive scale that repatriation was not feasible and Victorian and Edwardian notions of mourning were unsustainable. The scale of loss of life was immediately surpassed as a result of a global ‘flu pandemic and in the aftermath ‘death’ as a subject began to be swept under the carpet.  

Second, and there’s a degree of irony here, better living. In the 20’s and 30’s homes fit for heroes might have been a bit thin on the ground, but improvements in medicine and sanitation brought about a significant rise in life expectancy which had been less than 50 years for both men and women in 1900. Conversations http://www.mindanews.com/buy-cialis/ which began “We should talk about what happens when I die” would increasingly be answered by “Don’t be silly, you’ve got years ahead of you!” 

Third, and perhaps most relevant, is the simple fact that death is now largely institutionalised. Death happened in Victorian homes; now the event is most likely to occur in a hospital, outside the home and away from friends and family. It is most likely too that they will not see the body which will be removed by undertakers. Undertakers themselves would prefer the use of the term ‘funeral directors’, another example of the dead being at a distance from the family.  

Taboo? Perhaps on reflection it’s not so much that death is a forbidden topic as that for many people death happens to others, elsewhere, and is dealt with by someone else. And here’s the rub, denying the existence of death is unhealthy. Unless we can change that mindset we run the risk of creating psychological problems and we lose control: control of that which we wish for ourselves, that which will ease the pain of bereavement and even lessen the likelihood of family disputes and squabbles.  

Put bluntly it is my view that we would all be the  better if more people felt able to have conversations about death and its various implications. Projects such as the Good Funeral Guide and the Natural Death Centre have done and are doing sterling work but there’s a lot that individuals could do. Think of all the clubs and societies in your area – from the W.I. to Rotary via Probus, Lions, Mothers’ Union and countless others, the one thing they have in common is that from time to time they struggle to find speakers. Offer your services. Challenge them to put death on the agenda.

 

I hated my brother. When he died, all I felt was happiness…

4 August 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, bereavement, Children, Etiquette, Grief

Liz Hodgkinson writing in The Daily Mail 31 July 2012

The news came as a shock, yes, but it didn’t provoke tears, or even any sense of grief. I’d just heard from my niece that my brother Richard had died of a heart attack, aged 62, following an apparently minor operation. And all I felt was a surge of happiness and relief.

That day, five years ago, a long, dark shadow that had blighted my existence was lifted. You see, I hated my brother and he hated me to the point of pathology. So much so that we hadn’t even seen or spoken to each other for 20 years.

I imagine this sentiment will jar with many because it goes against everything we are  supposed to feel for our siblings. After all, it is meant to be the strongest and longest bond we will experience in life.

To admit such animosity is to break one of our strongest social taboos — but the feeling is far from rare, with psychologists estimating that in as many as a third of all families there is bitter hatred and rivalry between siblings.

Writer Margaret Drabble’s long estrangement from her novelist sister, Booker Prize-winner A.S  Byatt, is a case in point.

Their feud, which started at birth, is, according to Drabble, completely unresolvable, and has provoked much interest.

Ever since Cain slew Abel, stories and myths abound of siblings turning against each other.

But what does it actually feel like to hate a sibling? Well, it’s something that is always there, lying dissonant and dormant in the background. You dread the slightest contact, whether by letter, email or phone call.

In my case, before my brother stopped speaking to me altogether, he would preface any communication by saying: ‘You’re supposed to be so clever.’

Harmless at first glance, perhaps, but words designed to fill me with rage. And they achieved their goal, unerringly.

When there is hatred at this level, you can’t even pretend that person doesn’t exist, as it burns a deep and lasting hole in your psyche.

The animosity between my brother and me stems from childhood. Apparently my mother had only wanted one child, so when she became pregnant with my brother while she was still breastfeeding me, she was distraught.

He was born 18 months after me, following a very difficult birth which nearly killed our mother. Right from the start, I was the firm favourite of both parents and the question: ‘Why can’t you be more like your sister?’ was often asked.

Such favouritism, I believe, is the crux of it. American psychologist Jeanne Safer’s latest book, Cain’s Legacy, explores this very phenomenon.

Writing from her own experience of being estranged from her brother since birth, she believes it is favouritism that causes such bitter sibling rivalry. ‘When this happens, it sets you up for a lifetime of strife,’ she says.

‘The bond can never quite be severed, yet the bitter hatred gets ever worse. Because it happens before you can speak, it goes far deeper than anybody ever realises and can never be healed.’

Read the whole article here

From consumption to diabetes – changing causes of death in New England

1 August 2012
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, dying

Posted by Vale

Back in 1812 in Boston it was consumption that was most likely to kill you, although out of 942 recorded deaths, teething killed 15 and childbed 14, the same number that were killed by the quinsy.

In 1900 tuberculosis was near the top of the list, but pneumonia or influenza had overtaken it. A bad year for the flu?

By 2010 TB has disappeared, pneumonia languishes like a fading football team towards the bottom of the league buy cialis online aus table, while cancer has leapt to prominence.

From the three tables shown, it isn’t until 2010 that diabetes makes an appearance or suicide.

I’ve taken all the data from a fascinating article in the New England Journal of Medicine describing how, over 200 years, different diseases have come to the fore. More interesting are its reflections on the way that the different diseases that kill us are expressions of the society we live in.

Its worth a look.

Last things

11 July 2012
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, Death; Good death

Posted by Vale

When I was at school there was a short lived craze for making yourself faint. If I recall, you hyperventilated and then got a friend to squeeze you round the chest, at which point you passed out.

It’s now claimed that this is equivalent to a near death experience. There’s a discussion here, with descriptions of how to to do it (along with a firm warning about not trying them yourself).

Here at the GFG we don’t think it’s a very good idea either. It may be unsafe of course but we also disapprove because, while we believe strongly that people should prepare for death, self inducing a near death experience is, we feel, one of the less constructive approaches.

Religions have suggested alternatives. Hinduism promotes the idea that life has stages and that after the Celibate Student and Family Man the good Hindu will become a Hermit in Retreat and, finally, a Wandering Recluse. Not surprisingly it notes here that practice of the last two stages has become almost obsolete now.

The Christian tradition of meditating on the ‘Four Last Things’ (Death, Judgement, Hell and Heaven) may have more going for it.

Facing up to death, living with the knowledge of its inevitability, trying to prepare yourself all seem to me to be essential elements both of living and dying well. Meditating on Last Things would surely help prepare the mind.

But what Last Things might you meditate on? Death Judgement, Hell and Heaven don’t do it for me at all.

As an alternative I have started work on a personal list. It’s provisional at the moment but might include: meditation on ancestors and all that has made me the person I am; on the things that, from this vantage point, have turned out to matter; on the things that I have made or started; above all on everything that I have learned to love.

This feels like work in progress though. What would be amongst your Last Things?

Picturing Hell – in Lego bricks

1 July 2012
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to death

Posted by Vale

We all wonder about what might happen to us when we die. Well, Dante had the lowdown. While the rest of us wander lost in the woods, he described Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in great detail.

The funny thing is that while we might hope for heaven, we all have the sneaking suspicion that Hell might be more interesting. Dante certainly did and you can now enjoy his vision of Hell without reading his book because talented sculptor Mihai Mihu has now rendered all nine levels of the infernal regions in Lego.

The full set can be found here or here.

A modern Danse Macabre

25 June 2012
Charles
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Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to death

Posted by Vale

The tradition for images of the Danse Macabre is of death alongside all of the different classes and stations in society. The message is clear – he is coming for us all.

Here is a more recent version of the old tradition in a series of terrific woodcuts from the artist Hermann-Paul

(1864-1940).

The full series can be found here.

Learning to dance with death

25 June 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to death, bereavement, End-of-life issues

Posted by Vale

I was reading the vision statement for the Dying Matters Coalition recently (as you do) and stubbed my toe on their ambition to address death, dying and bereavement in a way that:

’will involve a fundamental change in society in which dying, death and bereavement will be seen and accepted as the natural part of everybody’s life cycle’

It made me wonder if there are any model societies where – in the terms of the Dying Matters Coalition – they have got it right.

I had the same reaction to those Tory statements about ‘Broken Britain’. I always wanted to ask when they thought it broke and when it was last ‘whole’. (My sneaking suspicion is that it was at about the time that this verse – never sung now – of All Things bright and Beautiful was written: ‘The rich man in his castle/The poor man at his gate/God made them, high or lowly/And ordered their estate’. But that’s a whole other argument).

Has there ever been a society with a truly healthy attitude to death, dying and bereavement? It would be interesting to hear some suggestions: is it Mexico with its Day of the Dead? Or Ghana with its glorious coffins?

My own mind flew back to the middle ages in Europe. It was a culture steeped in death and dying and supported by the consolations of a universal and unchallenged faith, but I am not sure they managed to naturalise death even then. The Danse Macabre – so often a representation of death-in- life – is no celebration of bereavement and dying, it is much more a metaphor for death’s disruptive power and the universality of its challenge.

Nothing, it seems to me, has changed.