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| A set of illustrated cards I made based on the connation's of died |
A villager died last week. It matters not the details, after all, there are family, friends and neighbours grieving including myself and it would be disrespectful to share details in such personal matters
However, their death has raised my curiosity and it reminds me to keep talking about dying matters however challenging or difficult the topic might be, especially if it raises some really important and perhaps potentially problematic issues. But I am the sort of person who likes to find solutions rather than bury my head in the sand and pretend death will never catch up with us all, and so the more I can learn about the potential scenarios, pitfalls and hazards of dying, the better equipped I can be to help support people and their loved ones through to the very end.
For example. Why does it take 3 emergency response vehicles to arrive at a dying persons residence?
There will of course be some very rational reasons for such course of action.
One of the biggest ones perhaps, was that no one knew they were dying. But given that they had been challenged with life-limiting health for very a long time, in a great deal of pain and discomfort that had been getting worse in very recent years and months, could not leave their home other than for long stay visits at the hospital, suggests that there wasn't a lot of quality to life towards the end.
However, quality is subjective and we must be very careful to not make judgements on what brings quality into somebody else's life.
So how do we know then when someone is dying?
If they haven't been given a life expectancy timeline by someone in the medical field due to disease or illness, but that person has lived a life and has arrived at a point in life where no medical intervention will improve ones vitality. How can we help prepare them and ourselves for the eventual inevitable?
Dying may take years. But from the day we are born, we are already on the trajectory to death. It is a given that non of us will get out alive. So why is it that we have such a hard time talking about it?
I believe we are giving ourselves a huge disservice by not sharing our thoughts and fears about our demise.
I wish I could have talked freely to my neighbour about their own thoughts, but to even broach the subject might have come across as not believing in their strength and tenacity to keep on living despite their pain, would they have thought I was giving up on them?
The irony of all of this though, is that maybe they did want to talk? - Or maybe they didn't. But by simply lacking the courage on either side to even begin a conversation, one will never know now.
And by not talking about how we want our ending to look, we can rarely help each other out to allow that to take place. So instead, our ending might look like a roomful of paramedics and strangers, preventing the ones we really care about from entering the scene because dying can be deemed as ugly and traumatic for the untrained layman.
I do not deny that dying in some if not many circumstances can be ugly and messy.
I was fortunate to be with my Gran when she died. Her death was in an A&E department. They gave us the courtesy to close the curtains off for a bit of privacy, but it doesn't shut off the noise and bustle of others patients getting revived and carted off to wherever they needed to be. We were surrounded by messiness and trauma, but in those hours, all that mattered was holding the space to allow my gran to die. They took me aside to explain what was happening, but I already knew. They asked if I wanted her revived. I told them no, but of course, this was not my decision to make, so I called my mother but again I already knew the answer, and so eventually after some hours, I cannot recall, my Gran left this world as I held her hand and stroked her hair letting her know it was going to be ok. A short while afterwards, my parents arrived.
My grans death was the first one I had experienced. Since then, it has been my pets and a friends mother, but with every death, there is a sacredness to the process leading up to it and even afterwards.
It is a time for deep connection. Time stands still and if one can remain present, there is an energy to it that in itself is more than life itself.
If only we could all find the courage to know that our time is limited and to start talking about how and more importantly where we want to spend our last years, months, weeks, days and hours, maybe we can all give ourselves the sacred dying experience we all deserve.
I will be 48 years old this year. I hope that I have many years left in me, but nothing is a given, I have had to say goodbye to friends even younger than me already this year.
I may be unlucky to be struck down by a bus or a disease. But I have shared my thoughts and fears with my husband. I have written out a death plan which hope will at least give some indication on how I wish to live out my remaining time. I wish also to fill out a RESPECT form which can be filled out with your GP or health provider.
And while we are at it, it is really important to think about applying for your power of attorney, if you haven't already, both for financial and health & wellbeing. Tomorrow may never come for some of us. Lets help empower our loved ones to do the right thing by us. We deserve it and so do they.
For anyone curious to know more, I found this campaign useful for lots of information.
