Berenice looked horrified. In the group I was running,
she was coming to terms with the idea that she really needed to speak to her
parents about the fact they were coming towards the end of their lives. She had
no idea whether they even had a will, let alone anything else.

“I can’t say anything to them! It’ll seem like I want them to die!,” she wailed, her face screwed up as she agonised about the situation.

In the group that day, we talked more about this challenge,
and Berenice left feeling scared but clearer about what to do about the
situation. She returned the following week, glowing.

“I did it! I did it!” she exploded as she walked into
the room. “And guess what? They were relieved! In fact, they had been wondering
how to mention this to me! We all laughed when we discovered that, sighed with
relief, and then were able to get on with discussing some of the
practicalities.”

Revealing
the Elephant in the Room

This scenario is not unusual, once someone has taken
the plunge and opened up the conversation. But over the years, the medical
establishment and the funeral industry have taken over what was once a very
tender, intimate, and family-based procedure, as bodies were laid out in the
front room and relatives and friends came to pay their respects.

Not that this is necessarily ‘bad’ at all – but it has
rendered us, the general public, as amateurs in the death arena. We are
ignorant. Most of us have never seen a dead body, not even when we reach middle
age.

However, we are forced to face up to it as our grandparents and parents reach a time when it is obvious they are coming towards the end. Or we have a brush with death ourselves, in the form of a friend’s terminal diagnosis, Covid/flu infection, or perhaps a sudden accident in the family.

And yet this is normal – life cannot occur without death and vice versa. So how do we bring death out of the closet and into
our lives, without the terror? We need to start talking about it again.

Here
are some pointers to starting a conversation, and maintaining it, in a world
that is afraid of the one thing that statistics say will happen to 100% of us.

Getting Ready

What do you need to reflect on before you can even
consider having a conversation? Just take a few moments to think about someone
with whom you would like to speak on the subject of end of life. There may be
more than one person, just choose one for now.

Put yourself in their shoes so you can be as sensitive
as possible. Then think about what you consider important about dying, death,
and grief and what you might want to share.

It will be different for different people. For instance,
you or a loved one may be terminally ill; you might just feel strongly about
preparing in advance, or be a proponent of assisted dying.

You might have recently lost someone very close to you,
or you might work in a related field. You might just be the kind of person who
knows that what we fear, but then face up to, can bring a kind of liberation
that is not only unexpected, but also very freeing.

Location

Once you’ve identified a person, the next thing is to
consider when and where would be a good time to talk with them.

Sometimes when you’re walking alongside one another it’s
easier to talk about this kind of thing than it is in a face-to-face situation,
so choosing your moment on a walk might work for you. If you are sitting around
a table, it could be over a cup of tea.

One of my Before I Go course participants invited all
her adult children over for Sunday lunch one day with the express purpose of
talking about this. They had a family business together, so it was doubly
important for them.

Remember that often doing something else, i.e., walking, eating, creating something together, can make it much easier to talk about a challenging matter.

While normally eye contact is a beneficial thing in any
conversation, in this one, it can be more easily done when your eyes only meet
occasionally, and on purpose.

Start the Conversation

How do you start such a conversation? There are lots of ways, but it’s all about context. If a relative or neighbor has recently died, that can provide an opener. If you went to a funeral, or are going to a funeral, that can also provide a starting point.

Even a celebrity dying can make a conversation about death feel appropriate. For instance, when a famous person dies suddenly, as was the case with Ivana Trump, for instance, it is quite acceptable to say, “That makes me think about what I would do in that situation,” and then you lead on from there.

If someone dies without having left a will, it would be entirely normal to ask someone else if they had a will, and if not, why not, or how they had gone about it.

Conversations don’t have to be just with family members;
you can speak with friends, work colleagues, church companions, group members
or anyone at all. Remember you never know how people are going to react until
you open the door on the subject.

Keep an open heart even if the initial response is not
what you would prefer. And once you’ve started, remember to listen!

Think of someone with whom you would like to have this
kind of conversation. What might you say to them and when could you do that?
What’s stopping you? Please share in the comments below.