'I learned that what the bereaved need most is someone to talk with.' Photo: by Leonardo Yip on Unsplash.
Good grief: Mary Brown contemplates dying, and living
‘Many seemed to be living more fully as a result of their brushes with death.’
I suspect that now, in the time of Covid, more people than ever are contemplating death. But are we able to live more fully? I live alone, so the importance of people in my life has become ever more obvious: whole people, with bodies we can hug. When those living alone were told we could form ‘bubbles’, and I got to hug a daughter, I realised that I had not touched another human-being for months – and, as if for the first time, how important physical human contact is. Mental health problems have rocketed during the pandemic, which doubtless relate to this lack of human contact.
During the first lockdown there was an outpouring of loving-kindness: neighbours rallied round to support the vulnerable. Perhaps some of this was a general craving for togetherness. Even the government promised as much money as was needed. Individuals and businesses stepped in when government generosity seemed to be waning, which suggests that the spirit of compassion is still alive, despite stories of those angrily flouting the rules.
While the pandemic rages, Zoom helps us to live more fully. But Friends are more than their faces, and love is more than pictures on flickering screens: we communicate with our whole bodies. Holding hands in a circle at the end of Meeting for Worship is, to me, an important part of worship.
In all this I am reminded that, some years ago, the NHS saved my life, and I spent some time contemplating my death. When I was well again I talked with a wide variety of people who, for very different reasons, had also contemplated death, and, unlike most people, were happy to talk about it.
Though they did not use these words, many seemed to be living more fully as a result of their brushes with death. Some changed their jobs, others became involved in voluntary work. In both cases this often led individuals to become more involved in society. I learned that what the bereaved need most is someone to talk with: ‘someone to grief with’, as one person said. I heard of people crossing the road to avoid meeting the bereaved, because they ‘did not know what to say’. While the pandemic has made the sharing of grief much harder, I was told by someone whose son had killed himself that what she wanted most was for people to ask her: ‘How are you?’ This is something easily, perhaps more easily, done by phone.
People of various faiths told me of their beliefs about death; I was left with a sense of mystery, of a ‘cloud of unknowing’.
Above all, these conversations convinced me that death is something we all need to talk about, particularly now, if we are to live more fully.
Wanting to encourage others to contemplate death, I subsequently used these conversations to write a book called The Undiscovered Country: Conversations about death and dying. While Covid questions are not part of the book, I feel that at this time of pandemic, when contemplating death has been thrust upon us, these conversations may have important things to say to us.
