Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye
Me and the missus are getting down to some serious death planning. There’s no best time of life for doing this, of course, so long as you get it done afore ye croak. And the more I think about it, the more clearly I can see that it’s not an activity whose end result is, […]
End of life care for the homeless
The NHS has just published this booklet: End of life care – achieving quality in hostels and for homeless people. It is “designed to provide a practical guide to support hostel staff in ensuring that people nearing the end of their life receive high quality end of life care.” The average age of death among […]
Famous last moments
Here is a minuscule excerpt from a wonderful, sonorous account of the death of ex-President Ulysses S Grant. It’s not what we get any more, is it, the last deathbed moments of celebs and justifiably famous people? How, when we think of it, we wish we did. Public figures die so much more privately in […]
Normalising death
Back in 2008 neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick, in his book The Art of Dying, made this observation: ‘There are plenty of papers about palliative care and pain control, but very few about the mental states during the dying process.’ It’s something that’s often discussed, the un-joined-upness of dying and death, even in hospices. The National Council […]
Demos report: Dying for Change
There’s a report just out from Demos on death and dying (why don’t we get chronological and say dying and death?). It’s by Charles Leadbeater, somewhat of a hero of mine, and Jake Garber. It’s called Dying for Change. It comes out at the same time as the National Council of Palliative Care’s The Missing […]
Broken survivors
Superb if gruelling documentary examining end of life issues from PBS. One of the contributors is Judith E Nelson, professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and associate director of Mount Sinai Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit: The burdens of intensive care can be very, very heavy, and the outcomes are often not […]
It’s what she would have wanted
Here’s a new poem by Wendy Cope published in the current Spectator. I hope she’ll forgive the flagrant breach of copyright and see this instead as a promo. Its sentiments are very contemporary. My Funeral I hope I can trust you, friends, not to use our relationship As an excuse for an unsolicited ego-trip. I […]
Lifed off
As you read this Big Rinty is dying in Shepton Mallet prison. Big Rinty? You wouldn’t know of him unless you’d read Erwin James’ columns in the Guardian or his books. Big Rinty is one of the long-term prisoners with whom James became friends during the twenty years of his life sentence. Here’s James: Rinty […]
Letting go
Rhoda Partridge took up painting when she was 70. Now 90 she’s still hard at it. Her spirited life has also embraced scuba diving, gliding and ceramics. In an interview in this month’s Oldie magazine she is asked: Do you find that after 70 years you live in the shadow of death? She replies: Oh […]
Blessed are the risk-takers
There’s a strong feeling among funeralistas that making money out of death is wrong, naff, reprehensible. This is good news for consumers. I’ve met a good many vocation-driven undertakers who could charge far more than they do but they won’t because they think it’s… wrong. Ironically, even the greediest, porkiest undertaker will lend his or […]
