It’s a sad fact these days that most people in the West learn about death second-hand – usually from reading novels or watching films. But, no matter how evocatively death is portrayed on film or in fiction, it is completely different to experience the real thing.
Until the mid 20th century, most people died at home, with their family and community around them. Death was an accepted part of everyday life, and old age was relatively rare.
Since then, our Western relationship with death has changed greatly. We live much longer, and most of us will die in a hospital or in a hospice or residential care rather than at home with our family. This means that remarkably few of us have been present at the moment of someone’s death. As a result, there is fear and sometimes even horror just at the thought of seeing a dead body.
Many of us therefore, not only view death and dying with dread, but are unprepared to deal with the issues that confront us when someone we love starts to die. We don’t know what to expect or how to react, or how to provide the support our dying relative or friend really needs.
This is especially true when people die in institutions. It’s easy to become enmeshed in medical and clinical processes and practices, where emphasis is placed on life-extending treatment and on our own desire from our relative or friend to recover, that than what the dying person really needs.
Article by Sue Brayne
Author of Living Fully, Dying Consciously
