The end?…
A selection of resources that readers may find useful
Seventy per cent of us say we want to die at home, yet currently sixty per cent of the 500,000 people who die each year die in hospital. The government has placed end of life care at the centre of its five-year strategy for the NHS. The strategy commits to giving patients approaching the end of their life the right to choose where they wish to spend their final days. Early research to inform the strategy showed that we often do not talk about our wishes, with, for example, eight per cent of sixty-five to seventy-four year olds saying they had not talked about death because they were too young to discuss dying.
The real tragedy is not how or when we die but if we do not live the life we are given to our full potential. Jenifer Faulkner, 1982, in Quaker faith & practice 21.57
Bereavement services offer advice, support and guidance for people who have experienced a loss. Cruse Bereavement Care has a superb website for general information (www.crusebereavementcare.org.uk) and signposts on to other organisations with a particular perspective, such as The Way Foundation’s support for people widowed young (www.wayfoundation.org.uk) or Winston’s Wish for people coming to terms with childhood bereavement (www.winstonswish.org.uk).
For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
William Penn, 1693.
If you are a white American, your life expectancy is seventy-eight, but for African Americans it is seventy-one. Average life expectancy in Japan is eighty-one, in Swaziland thirty-nine and a half. In Glasgow, localised disparity is among the highest in the world, with life expectancy for males in the heavily deprived Carlton area being fifty-eight years – twenty-four years less than in the affluent area of Lenzie, only eight kilometres away.
Sometimes because I’m sad I do bad things. I can’t tell you what they are. They are too bad. And it’s not fair on the cat.
Michael Rosen’s Sad Book (a children’s book inspired by his own son’s death).
According to NHS research, up to ninety per cent of the UK population support organ donation but only twenty-four per cent have joined the organ donation register. Many people say it is simply something they have not got round to doing.
The government consulted on, and eventually rejected, an opt-out method, whereby organs could be taken from an adult unless they had registered their objection. Instead they put renewed vigour into increasing the number of willing donors, to prevent another year where 1,000 people die through want of a transplant. See www.organdonation.nhs.uk for further details or to register.
Some person much wiser than me once said that if you never discovered something you would die for, then you haven’t lived. Well, you are both proof that I have lived. I will love you always. Mummy.
Jade Goody, who died of cervical cancer in March 2009 aged twenty-seven, speaking to her two young sons, Bobby, five and Freddie, four.
For signposting to some theoretical texts and concepts about bereavement and for an unflinching personal account of grief, explore Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. She manages to bring to life one definition of loss offered by Philippe Aries: ‘A single person is missing for you and the whole world is empty’.
I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had been habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down.
CS Lewis, writing about the death of his wife in his book, The Grief Observed.
There are numerous websites that offer ideas, advice and reflections, such as www.muchloved.com, an online memorial website, where tributes, photos and life stories can be uploaded. Or www.ifishoulddie.co.uk, set up by Kate Burchill, who felt that, in the aftermath of her own father’s death, that there was a need for a general information site that was not linked to a one religion, philosophy or perspective.
He is fading. I want to pull him back. Force him to stay. I want to scream don’t leave me you bastard, but I pretend and smile and smile and smile.
Sheila Hancock,
The Two of Us (about the death of her husband, John Thaw).
Suicide is the act of willingly taking your own life. According to The Samaritans, though we may look for a ‘cause’ when someone kills themselves, they have found that eighty-six per cent of their callers had a number of problems and worries. They say: ‘Talking openly about how you really feel can be like opening a door. Talking puts you back in control and reveals the choices you have.’ The Samaritans can be contacted, day or night, on 08457 90 90 90 or jo@samaritans.org
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept”
Philip Larkin, Aubade, 1977.
There are numerous books and websites to consult about planning a funeral. One is the Dead Good Funeral Book (ISBN: 0 9527159 0 2, www.welfare-state.org) which is produced by John Fox and Sue Gill, founders of the inspirational celebratory arts company, Welfare State International. Practical, resourceful, imaginative. Another equally useful book is the Natural Death Handbook published by the Natural Death Centre (www.naturaldeath.org.uk).
I told you I was ill.
Spike Milligan’s epitaph.
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