We need to talk about death and we need to do it NOW

We need to talk about death and we need to do it NOW.

 Lessons from my mother dying

As some of you will know, my Mother died just before New Year. We are not good at talking about death, we avoid it. We say someone has, ‘passed away’, ‘gone to the other side’ or, if we want to laugh it off, ‘they’ve croaked’. We don’t talk about death because it feels like we may ‘catch’ it if we do or that we’re tempting fate and most of us don’t like to talk about our own mortality.

The problem with this is that if we don’t talk about it, we set ourselves up for a lifetime of repressed grief and stress. This in turn causes so many other health issues, both mental and physical. Think of the energy of trying to hold a gate shut against an angry bull. That’s what we do when we refuse to face our feelings.

Of my clients who had a parent die while they were young, they were either encouraged, or even just felt, that they couldn’t talk about that parent again. With those clients any work we do goes immediately back to the parent’s death, they may have come about a difficult boss, but the parent’s death will underlie everything. We play out our trauma at work, home and in the way we parent our own children, it’s present in the way we are and communicate. Adults, whose parents died when their relationship was less than smooth, are equally affected. It leaves a gaping chasm within them that they are forever trying to avoid and while they are doing that, they aren’t really living the rest of their life.

Men and women seem to grieve differently too. Women tend to talk about their feelings and spend time thinking about the person who died. Men like action and plans and want to look to moving forwards. This can create rifts in siblings, in couples where they may have lost a child or just generally leave conversations unsaid.

My mother and I had a difficult relationship, she was not a good mother. She is the main reason I ended up working as therapist. By sorting through and clearing my childhood baggage, I was able to lay to rest the anger, frustration, hurt and damage done by the fact my mother, couldn’t mother. So that when she died, I felt nothing but love and affection for her.   

My Mother had Dementia and almost over- night in mid-December, she lost the ability to hold her head up and speak and was hardly present. I went to see her immediately. The only sound she made was a distressed noise, she did not open her eyes or even seem aware of my presence. There was no times for formal goodbyes and exchanges of words.

LOVE

What was important to me was that I knew that my mother loved me, even if she hadn’t been able to show it well.  And I knew, that she knew I loved her. Without these things, my grief and pain would have been so very much worse.

We avoid talking about death, especially as our relatives grow older and yet it’s precisely this that we need to do and we need to do it NOW. We are on the upward curve of a pandemic. At the time of writing 40,000 people have died. 40,000.  That’s 1/3 of the entire population of Cambridge where I live. These people are portrayed by the media as ‘just’ the over 70’s. These are our parents and our grandparents, our Aunts and Uncles, our brothers and sisters and friends. I can tell you, losing a parent, whatever your relationship, is a shock. You feel like you have no ceiling above you, you bump up to become next in line, however old you are. At 46, I suddenly am next in line. I am the matriarch of my children’s family.  My Mother and I never had a typical daughter mother relationship, I rarely called her Mother or Mum after the age of about 11 and yet after her death, I call her my Mum. I miss my Mum deeply, like a small child who just wants to cuddle up to a parent.

What has made it so much easier is that I not only had I always said I love you before the Dementia, but that every time I had seen her, I said, I love you and often, even in the depths of a conversation that made no sense, she would stop and look at me and say, I love you too. I love you is powerfully healing.  

In that my first visit my Mother was clearly distressed or asleep. So unable to talk to her. I sat on the floor next to her bed and I sang. At points I would climb on to the bed and curl around her, still taking some comfort from the feel and familiarity of her body.

My mother had written and sung songs on the guitar when I was a child and knowing the power of song, I sang her own songs to her. The only hint of recognition was if I went wrong where she would occasionally raise an eyebrow! I sang her ‘White Christmas’, which she loved, I sang a lullaby she had written for us when we were little, which I have sung to my own children to pass it down. I sang, and sang, and sang and cried. I stroked her hand, I told her that I loved her, that my siblings loved her. Once, when I said, I love you, her eyes flicked open and for a second it seemed that she saw and heard me and then she was gone again.  

The second visit was 2 days before Christmas, my mother had stopped drinking, a fatal sign. I knew it was unlikely I would ever see her again. I remember sitting paralysed in the car before my visit wondering how I would leave. I went in, I sat and I sang once more. I told her that she was safe, that all was well and if she wanted to go, we were all okay with that. None of us wanted her to be in the condition she was in at that point. I stroked her hair. I sat with a late- night carer and we talked about her child and I gave her parenting advice, she gave me a hot chocolate. Sharing the caring. Late that night, I left my mother, she hadn’t stirred or been awake at all and I knew it was the last time I would see her. She died on the 29th of December.

NOW

As I write, 50,000 people across the globe have died ( I had to update that as I wrote it). That’s a lot of parents, grandparents, sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, children…

We need to talk about death because as a human community we are experiencing loss in a way we haven’t before. It has united every country. We are currently on lock down across the globe, trying to prevent death, everyday we are read out numbers of those who have died. This is important because the goal posts have not only been changed, they have been ripped out. Our rituals and familiarities with death have been removed. We can’t even be with our relatives if they are hospitalised, we can’t slowly decide on funeral details, or even whether love ones are buried or cremated. In some instances, this is done fast and within just a couple of days of death. Patients are having to say goodbye over facetime and phone calls if they get a chance to do that.

As humans we have always been present for death, it’s a ritual that we can no longer afford and yet the amazing medical staff are doing their best to be stand in relatives, to reassure, to hold hands and maybe sometimes, to sing…

Doctors and nurses are facing deaths every day, in some cases, deaths that could be prevented…

We are and will be a world in mourning. A close friend told me she had had 4 funerals over zoom this week….

TALK

What will make this easier for us all is if we have prepared as much as we can. As I said, we don’t talk about dying. I nearly died when I was 17 after the birth of my 1st child so I’ve always been aware of my mortality. I’ve had other health scares since. I have always told my children, my friends and family that I love them.

We can continue to bury our heads in the sand and pretend we aren’t at risk of losing someone we love and I truly hope you do not, but some of us will. As I write this, I read that a 13 year old boy and a 6 month old baby have died.

What will help you though this time of grief and mourning is to know that the person you may lose, knows how you feel about them. Yes, it can be an awkward conversation and yes, it can be emotional and yes, it can leave you feeling wrung out, but it can also leave you feeling, deeply, deeply loved. It can resolve old hurts; it can heal broken relationships.

I’m not asking you to plaster over things that have upset you. I’m asking you to have the conversations that you need to have so that should the ‘worst’ happen (another euphemism), should someone you love, die, you are left with as few unresolved feelings as possible. That also means that if there are family or friends you aren’t speaking to that you double check, should they die, you are okay with having had no contact. That is also ok, you do not have to make friends because people are dying, you have to be okay with your decisions.

My learning from my mother dying was that I intended to talk to all my friends and family and write or ring to tell them just how much I loved them, no matter how old they were. In January I had a fun night out with one of my best and closest friends, she’s a very healthy mid 30’s and as we were larking about, I held her hand and said, ‘you do know that I love you very much, I value our friendship very deeply and you mean an awful lot to me’. She returned the sentiment. I have since spoken to other friends. Some I’ve been very deep and meaningful with, some I have simply said via text, ‘you know if anything happens that I love you right’? Or even more simply. ‘I love you matey.’

I want to know that if anything happens to me or to anyone I know and love, that they know I care for them. It is the only thing that for me will ease the pain.

For my younger children I just drop ‘I love you’ into the conversation more than normal. I find ways to tell them the things I love about them in droplet form, we’re together a lot these days so there’s plenty of time!

PLAN

Plan the practical stuff. You will sleep better at night!

I have my will written, letters to all my family written, a power of attorney in place and life insurance. I want to make the process as easy as possible for my children, whenever I die. I even have funeral arrangements and wishes (which were a godsend when my mother died for four children who knew her in a different way). My funeral song – Witchdoctor, Right Clothing – favourite clothes, Wake – a ceilidh. These things just make it so much easier on your family if you die. However, leave them space to honour you in their own way too.

I read a lovely but heart-breaking article by a son whose parents had been whisked to hospital in Italy, he couldn’t go in with them and they died just a day apart. He had no time to say goodbye, no time to plan, he couldn’t even have a funeral. These things are happening and may happen here. Plan as much as you can so that should this happen, you know how you will honour the dead somehow. You need to find a way of having a ritual of sorts immediately AND plan how you will celebrate their life when you can. Maybe your family get together on a video platform and each say something, there are ways to be together. Plan these things so they are not another blow at a time when you are already feeling like your world has altered axis.

I never expected my mother’s death to affect me in the way it did. I had actually assumed I would be fairly unaffected. She’d been ill for many years, we had a frustrating relationship and I hadn’t at the time, seen her for a few months. Yet the night she died, I cried for hours and hours and kept saying, ‘I want my mum’.

ACCEPT

It affected my confidence about everything. I ate everything I could for about a month afterwards. I was unfocused and disorientated with my first clients when I was back to work, luckily my clients understood and accepted my week of confusion. They surrounded me with care and affection. We are human whatever our roles, share your vulnerabilities. People I didn’t know well texted me to ask if I was okay, some just said nothing, do not say nothing, even if you just say, ‘I’m sorry I have no idea what to say’ say something. A friend took out my son to play, another brought me flowers, others just texted me every 2-3 days. People who had lost parents said things like, ‘buckle up,’ meaning, this is just the beginning, it helped. I felt surrounded by friends and love and it helped, when all I felt was bereft and motherless.

In the middle of all this, I allowed myself to just be. To be sad, to cry, to eat, to walk, to think to watch mindless tv and to remember. My mother was not perfect at all, not even a good mother, but I loved her and I’m really glad that I know that she knew that.

ACT

Who do you love? Do they know? Because now is the time to get over your fears, to discuss plans, to say all the things you want to say because you just never know how quickly that opportunity maybe taken away from you. The current crisis has forced us to look at this honestly. People are dying in droves, every day and humans cope better, survive better and heal better when we love better.

So,

LOVE NOW

TALK AND PLAN

ACCEPT AND ACT