Assisted dying

Paul Henderson has been involved in the production of a new book on Quakers and assisted dying. He writes about some of the key issues and the need to talk about them.

by Paul Henderson 22nd April 2016

In his poem ‘Aubade’, Philip Larkin writes of ‘the dread of dying, and being dead’. The poem’s tone is bleak. Religion is dismissed as a trick ‘to pretend we never die.’ What the poem does do, however, is address head-on the subject of death and dying. This is something that many of us find very difficult to talk about openly and without feeling uncomfortable. It is not that the topic is taboo, more that it sits uneasily with everyday conversation.