Month: April 2022

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Don’t leave your health decisions to chance

It’s easy to put off making important decisions in life, especially health care decisions. They can be uncomfortable and complex. Yet taking time to discuss and document your health care wishes can bring peace of mind and lead to better health outcomes in the future.

By William Creech

It’s easy to procrastinate

There are so many things to do every day, an almost-limitless amount of “low hanging fruit” items to cross off the list. It’s easy to put off thinking about your health care wishes.

There are many more enjoyable things to plan and ponder, while considering your health care wishes can feel like a chore. When given a choice between planning a vacation or outlining your end-of-life wishes, it’s easy to pick the more fun, less distressing task.

You also may procrastinate because you believe these decisions can wait for a more appropriate time in the future. Unfortunately, the right time and circumstances never seem to line up.

Documentation of your wishes

Thinking through and documenting your health care wishes tells your family and health care team what kind of care you want if you are too ill to express your wishes yourself. This could occur if you’re terminally ill, seriously injured, in a coma, in the late stages of dementia or near the end of life.

Some decisions that you should document include when you want to be resuscitated by CPR, when and for how long you want to be placed on a mechanical ventilator, or if you want to be fed through a feeding tube.

Record your wishes in a legal form called an advance directive. This document isn’t just for older adults. Anyone over 18, regardless of state of health, can complete an advance directive. It’s only activated if or when you are incapacitated and cannot make health care decisions.

One type of advance directive, a power of attorney for health care, is preferred because it makes your care wishes known and designates a person to make decisions for you if you cannot speak for yourself. This person is called a “health care agent.”

When selecting your health care agent, remember this story:

Two leaders pondered a difficult decision and were united in their approach. But soon, the second leader started to second guess the decision. The first leader said to the second, “Now is not the time to be a fence straddler.”

As you select your health care agent, pick a person you trust to follow your wishes and hold firm to the decisions.

You can update an advance health care directive or power of attorney for health care at any time, such as after a new diagnosis, a change in marital status or if your thoughts about end-of-life care evolve.

Get better outcomes

Procrastinating health care decision-making is a serious matter, so the sooner you begin, the better the potential outcome.

In some cases, life can be prolonged using advanced technology like ventilators, vasopressors and surgery. It’s great to be an educated health care consumer and understand the available treatment options, but it’s also important to remain objective, and listen to and heed the advice of your health care team.

If your health care team is unsure of your wishes, they may insist on prolonging care or performing invasive treatments on your behalf. These actions can have serious negative side effects and result in low quality of life.

Documenting your wishes early ensures that you will get the medical care you want and need while avoiding unwanted heroic measures that may be harmful. It also relieves unnecessary suffering, and eases your family and friends of decision-making burdens during moments of crisis or grief. What a gift this is for them.

Tips for difficult decisions

These conversations and decisions are not easy, but they are important.

Here’s my advice on tackling difficult decisions with your family and friends:

Don’t kick the can down the road.

Sometimes getting started is the hardest part. Years ago, I drove a vehicle with a manual three-speed transmission on the column. Unlike the automatic engines found in cars today, you could give this car a small push downhill to start the engine. In the same way, some people just need a little push to get started.

Perhaps you feel the day will never come that you face a serious injury or illness or that you will die in your sleep. But nearly every family is affected by a serious illness or injury at some point. If decisions are put off and not documented, a well-intentioned but uninformed family member could make decisions that don’t align with your wishes. I have found this to be the case on many occasions. A rolling snowball in the form of unmet health care decision-making can lead to a big mess that can become a proverbial avalanche if left unheeded.

Don’t decide to do nothing.

Inaction is still an action. If you refuse to make difficult decisions in health care, you are still deciding, but it’s much riskier. It’s like gambling on a roulette wheel. You don’t know where the ball is going to stop. Instead of taking action to improve your odds, you are just hoping for a good outcome.

You take control by expressing your wishes and choosing a responsible health care agent in an advance directive. These actions guide your roulette ball by adding flappers on the wheel that align with your desires. Doing so can make the difference between comfort or chaos for you, your health care team and your family.

Keep points simple yet specific.

As you complete your advance directive, you will be advised to consider all options. This can feel overwhelming. The key is to keep it simple because there is no way you can cover every possible scenario.

Too often, advance directives are too generic or too detailed. I recommend a happy medium where some key themes are outlined and cover a myriad of scenarios. Keep it simple when you can.

Let professionals guide you.

When you are ready, find a health care professional to guide you through completing an Advance Directive booklet. Social workers and chaplains in health care organizations, along with faith leaders, community service workers in local communities and volunteers, are trained to assist you. Your primary care provider also can assist. These professionals will help you work through the decisions, but they won’t tell you what to do.

Advanced planning and outlining your wishes before you need the care gives you the opportunity to communicate your wishes with your family. Talk with them about your advance directive and health care wishes, along with your rationale behind the decisions. Give a copy to your health care agent and health care team.

It’s prudent to be a well-informed patient as you outline your health care wishes. They are not only life decisions, but also they’re life-altering.

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A child’s view of death with dignity is the focus of Bill Richardson’s heartfelt book

“As it becomes more common it is going to be something kids are exposed to and that they think about and their parents will talk to them about it. … So that was all I was thinking about. What this might be like for a kid.” — Bill Richardson

By Dana Gee

In 2020, 7,595 cases of medical assistance in dying (MAID) were registered in Canada, up almost 35 per cent from the year before.

As medically assisted death becomes more common it only makes sense that more and more children are going to have to deal with it. That reality is at the heart of former broadcaster Bill Richardson’s new children’s book Last Week. Illustrated by Emilie Leduc, Last Week tells the story of a death with dignity through the eyes of a child.

In this case the child counts down, literally, the last seven days of their grandmother’s life.

“I lay awake. I did the math. In four hundred and thirty-two thousand seconds, this last week will be over,” says the child as they reflect at the end of the second day.

“As it becomes more common it is going to be something kids are exposed to and that they think about and their parents will talk to them about it,” said Richardson during a recent phone interview. “Their grandparents will talk to them or whoever the recipient of the medical assisted death will talk to them. So that was all I was thinking about. What this might be like for a kid.”

While he wasn’t trying to “be comprehensive,” Richardson does deliver a lovely and clear look at what mourning can look like when someone has chosen this route. The book’s afterword is by MAID pioneer Dr. Stefanie Green the co-founder and president of the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers.“My connection to this is really via my partner, whose name is Bill Pechet. Bill’s mother Judy, in 2016, chose a medically assisted death and she was an amazing person. She was very vibrant,” said Richardson. “She was 92 when she died, and she had great, great, great clarity of mind and her body was giving up and she made this informed decision.”Richardson noticed that friends and family came and stayed and hung out in the days prior to Judy’s death.

“It changes the way we mourn,” said Richardson. “I was deeply, deeply touched by watching Judy receive these people to the very end of her life. She had always been a warm hospitable gregarious, welcoming, social, intelligent, articulate person who really valued contact. Who adored her family and who loved conversation.“So, people sat around, and they talked, and they talked, and they talked, and they laughed, and they laughed, and they laughed and told stories and they eat, and they eat, and they eat. And then it was done. I just thought what a great thing.”This is what the child in Last Week witnesses and clocks. They realize their Flippa — nicknamed so because she walked to the beach for her daily swim in a wetsuit and flippers like a real-life West End neighbour of Richardson’s did — was loved and cherished. Stories were told, hands were squeezed, and hugs were delivered and most importantly there was laughter.

This book is Richardson’s eighth for kids. The former CBC Radio host started out writing for adults but soon found his way into a familiar zone.“I was writing for adult audiences then someone asked me if I wanted to write for children,” said Richardson. “My first job as a grown-up person was back in 1980 working as a children’s librarian. I spent about five or six years kind of immersed in that world. I knew the literature. I kept track of it a little bit after. I know more or less what is going on.”Richardson wrote this book in a single sitting, but he didn’t go in with the plan to use counting as story engine.

“I didn’t know what it was going to be until I came to the end. I wondered why the counting structure. Why has this child settled on this way to kind of frame what’s going on? And then I began to realize in numbers there is a kind of comfort that is something that is quantifiable. It is also relentless and unstoppable,” said Richardson.

While the death of a loved one anchors this story it isn’t depressing. Watching the child watch the things going on around their grandmother’s exit is a reminder of a full life, a life that was shared.

It certainly is a book about coming to terms with grief, but it is also very much a book about love.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Americans are bad at talking about death, and it’s hurting the environment

The path to more eco-friendly burials starts with uncomfortable conversations about death

By Rachel Ashcroft

How often do you think about your own death? The answer is probably along the lines of “rarely, if ever.” Death denial is commonplace in the United States; indeed, in Western countries, people tend not to die at all, but “pass on” or “slip away” instead. Our own death, in particular, is something we try to avoid thinking about until we really have no choice in the matter.

This is perfectly understandable behavior. Thinking about death can be scary for many reasons, from fears about dying in pain to contemplating what happens after death. Longer lifespans and medical advances have made it easier to delay thinking about mortality. But death denial has many disadvantages, too. Avoidance can actually increase — not lessen — anxiety. We also risk leaving behind grieving loved ones who aren’t clear on our final wishes. Death denial is not just bad for individuals, either: There’s plenty of evidence to show that it is harmful to the environment, too.

Traditional funeral options are less than eco-friendly. In the U.S., some estimates suggest that cremation emits approximately 360,000 metric tons of CO2 each year. According to the Green Burial Council, heating a furnace at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours produces roughly the same emissions as driving 500 miles in a car. Burials pose their own set of problems: Caskets and vaults use a large amount of natural resources. Casket wood alone requires the felling of 30 million board feet of wood in the U.S. each year, and thousands of tons of steel and concrete are used to construct vaults. Embalming fluid (which contains carcinogenic chemicals) can contaminate groundwater around cemeteries.

At a time when large corporations are regularly held to account for their green principles, the funeral industry is one of the few players to escape the scrutiny of its practices. A culture of death denial facilitates this situation. In a society where death is considered “morbid,” who wants to build their activism around something that most of us avoid discussing? Prominent figures like Greta Thunberg rarely venture into the murky world of deathcare. On Instagram, eco influencers are far more comfortable snapping pictures of avocado on toast than discussing the perils of embalming fluid.

Things weren’t always this way. In the early 1900s, Americans lived in close proximity to the dead and dying. Bedside vigils, in which the entire family gathered around a dying relative, were extremely common. Most people died in their home, leaving family members to prepare the body. Historians argue that this changed when end-of-life care moved to hospitals and funeral parlors began looking after dead bodies. Death became far less visible. When people today view an open casket, the corpse is altered so as to hide the physical effects of death. This evolution from death in close proximity to death being hidden and painted over has fueled a tendency toward death avoidance which, when compared to many other world cultures, is a complete anomaly.

Fortunately for our planet, change is on the horizon. Several environmentally-friendly deathcare options are springing up across the United States. From water burials to natural organic reduction or “human composting,” the green deathcare industry is taking root. But in order to fast forward the process of offering people legalized, eco-friendly deathcare choices, we have to talk more openly about death and dying to begin with.

In practical terms, avoiding death talk allows myths and assumptions about funeral care to flourish. Just over half of Americans choose cremation each year, partly due to a (false) perception that it’s good for the environment. Caitlin Doughty, a prominent mortician and “death positive” advocate, has also reported instances of bereaved families being informed that embalming is a legal requirement — it isn’t. No state requires embalming or even burial inside a vault. If you’ve lived your whole life trying to reduce your carbon footprint, understanding what is and isn’t legal can help make your death greener, too.

People often say they “want to be a tree” after they die. But when we don’t examine traditional deathcare closely enough, it’s easy to overlook the fact that ash from cremated remains doesn’t enrich soil, while traditional burial prevents bodies from mingling with the earth. Setting aside time to explore other funeral options reveals the different ways that our remains can help plants grow. “Green burial” generally describes an unembalmed body placed in a shroud or biodegradable coffin, which is lowered directly into the ground. This allows the body to decompose into the surrounding earth. No state laws forbid green burial, and a growing number of cemeteries are offering this service. Human composting uses a combination of microbes, oxygen, and organic matter to convert corpses directly into soil. It’s legal in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, and bills are being considered in several other states.

There are some disadvantages to green deathcare. At the moment, price can be an issue. For society’s poorest, direct cremation (no viewing or visitation) costs as little as $1,000. Human composting, on the other hand, is priced between $7,000 to $10,000. There may also be religious issues pertaining to human remains; Washington’s legalization of human composting was opposed by Catholic groups who argued that composting didn’t show enough respect for the deceased body.

However, green deathcare will only become more affordable and widespread (for those who want it) if we learn how to talk about death in the first place. Of course, it can initially be uncomfortable to think about ourselves turning into ash or soil. But having as much information as possible about a topic is always empowering — even when it comes to your own death.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Penance and plague

— How the Black Death changed one of Christianity’s most important rituals

Confession, circa 1460/1470. Artist unknown.

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The 14th century is known for catastrophe. By midcentury, the first wave of plague spread through a Europe already weakened by successive famines and the Hundred Years War between England and France. And crises just kept coming. After the first wave, which has come to be called the Black Death, the disease returned at least four more times before 1400. All the while, fresh conflicts kept erupting, fueled in part by the rising number of soldiers available for hire.

As a medieval historian, I study ways that community leaders used Catholic practices and institutions to respond to war and plague. But amid the uncertainty of the 14th century, some Catholic institutions stopped working the way they were supposed to, fueling frustration. In particular, the unrelenting crises prompted anxiety about the sacrament of penance, often referred to as “confession.”

This uncertainty helped spark critics like Martin Luther to ultimately break from the Catholic Church.

Saints and sacraments

During this era, European Christians experienced their faith predominantly through saints and sacraments.

In art, saints were depicted as standing near God’s throne or even speaking into his ear, illustrating their special relationships with him. Pious Christians considered saints active members of their communities who could help God hear their prayers for healing and protection. Throughout Europe, saints’ feast days were celebrated with processions, displays of candles, and even street theater.

Fourteenth-century Christians also experienced their faith through Catholicism’s most important rituals, the seven sacraments. Some occurred once in most people’s lives, including baptism, confirmation, marriage and extreme unction – a set of rituals for people who are near death.

A medieval manuscript with colorful illustrations depicts rites for people who are dying.
A 15th-century manuscript depicts deathbed scenes: doctor’s visit; confession; Communion; extreme unction; and burial. From the Bedford Hours of John, Duke of Bedford.

There were two sacraments, however, that Catholics could experience multiple times. The first was the Eucharist, also known as Holy Communion – the reenactment of Christ’s Last Supper with his apostles before his crucifixion. The second was penance.

Catholic doctrine taught that priests’ prayers over bread and wine turned those substances into the body and blood of Christ, and that this sacrament creates communion between God and believers. The Eucharist was the core of the Mass, a service which also included processions, singing, prayers and reading from the Scriptures.

Religious Christians also encountered the sacrament of penance throughout their lives. By the 14th century, penance was a private sacrament that each person was supposed to do at least once a year.

The ideal penance was hard work, however. People had to recall all the sins they had committed since the “age of reason,” which started when they were roughly 7 years old. They were supposed to feel sorry that they had offended God, and not just be afraid that they would go to hell for their sins. They had to speak their sins aloud to their parish priest, who had the authority to absolve them. Finally, they had to intend to never commit those sins again.

After confession, they performed the prayers, fasting or pilgrimage that the priest assigned them, which was called “satisfaction.” The whole process was meant to heal the soul as a kind of spiritual medicine.

Broken up by Black Death

Waves of plague and warfare, however, could disrupt every aspect of the ideal confession. Rapid illness could make it impossible to travel to one’s parish priest, remember one’s sins or speak them aloud. When parish priests died and were not immediately replaced, people had to seek out other confessors. Some people had to confess without anyone to absolve them.

A manuscript depicts people burying victims of the Black Death plague.
An illustration in the Annales of Gilles de Muisit, from the 14th century, depicts people burying victims of the Black Death.

Meanwhile, Europe’s frequent wars posed other spiritual dangers. Soldiers, for example, were hired to fight wherever war took them and were often paid with the spoils of war. They lived with the constant weight of the commandments not to kill or steal. They could never perform a complete confession, because they could never intend not to sin this way again.

These problems caused despair and anxiety. In response, people turned to doctors and saints for help and healing. For example, some Christians in Provence, in present-day France, turned to a local holy woman, Countess Delphine de Puimichel, to help them remember their sins, protect them from sudden death, and even leave warfare to become penitents. So many people described feeling consoled by her voice that a medical doctor who lived near the holy woman set up meetings so people could hear her speak.

But most people in Europe did not have a local saint like Delphine to turn to. They looked for other solutions to their uncertainties about the sacrament of penance.

Indulgences and Masses for the dead proved the most popular, but also problematic. Indulgences were papal documents that could forgive the sins of the holder. They were supposed to be given out only by the pope, and in very specific situations, such as completing certain pilgrimages, serving in a crusade, or doing particularly pious acts.

During the 15th century, however, demand for indulgences was high, and they became common. Some traveling confessors who had received religious authorities’ approval to hear confessions sold indulgences – some authentic, some fake – to anyone with money.

Catholics also believed that Masses conducted in their name could absolve their sins after their death. By the 14th century, most Christians understood the afterlife as a journey that started in a place called Purgatory, where residual sins would be burned away through suffering before souls entered heaven. In their wills, Christians left money for Masses for their souls, so that they could spend less time in Purgatory. There were so many requests that some churches performed multiple Masses per day, sometimes for many souls at a time, which became an unsustainable burden on the clergy.

An eagle's-eye photograph shows a graveyard being exhumed.
A Black Death burial trench under excavation between rows of individual graves and the later concrete foundations of the Royal Mint in East Smithfield, London.

The popularity of indulgences and Masses for the dead helps scholars today understand people’s challenges during the Black Death. But both practices were ripe for corruption, and frustration mounted as a sacrament meant to console and prepare the faithful for the afterlife left them anxious and uncertain.

Criticisms of indulgences and penance were a focus of reformer Martin Luther’s famous “95 Theses,” written in 1517. Though the young priest did not originally intend to separate from the Catholic Church, his critiques launched the Protestant Reformation.

But Luther’s challenges to the papacy were not ultimately about money, but theology. Despair over the idea of never being able to perform an ideal confession led him and others to redefine the sacrament. In Luther’s view, a penitent could do nothing to make satisfaction for sin, but had to rely on God’s grace alone.

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A New Take on Death and Dying

In “The Future of the Corpse,” co-editors Karla Rothstein and Christina Staudt review the spectrum of death and offer ideas for change.

Christina Staudt, left, and Karla Rothstein are co-editors of “The Future of the Corpse.”

By Eve Glasberg

Around the globe, roughly 165,000 people die every day. The Neanderthals were the first human species to bury their dead, entombing them with stone tools, animal bones, and other artifacts in shallow graves.

The Future of the Corpse: Changing Ecologies of Death and Disposition, edited by architect and GSAPP Professor Karla Rothstein, founder and director of the GSAPP DeathLAB, and Christina Staudt, co-chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Death, reviews the spectrum of death.

American society today is in a pivotal period for reimagining end-of-life care, funerary services, human disposition methods, memorializing, and mourning. The book’s editors and contributors outline the past, present, and future of death care rituals, pointing to promising new practices and projects that better integrate the dying and dead with the living, and create positive change that supports sustainable stewardship of the environment.

Rothstein and Staudt discuss the book with Columbia News, as well as what it was like to collaborate on the volume, and who they would invite to a joint party.

Q. What was the impetus behind this book?

Karla Rothstein: After discovering my graduate architectural design studio syllabi online a decade ago, Christina invited me to present to and then join the University Seminar on Death. In 2016 the seminar and GSAPP DeathLAB jointly organized a daylong colloquium—Designing for Life and Death—which brought academics and industry stakeholders together to probe New York City’s relationship with death, corpse disposition, and the potential for new forms and civic-sacred space. This book contains chapters by many of the colloquium’s interdisciplinary panelists, sharing their expertise on the complex and evolving aspects of dying, death, and remembrance.

Christina Staudt: The colloquium produced so many substantive and thoughtful ideas that we felt compelled to bring the content to a larger audience in a comprehensive volume on postmortem issues.

Q. What are some of the innovative projects and practices in the book that better integrate the dying and dead with the living, and create positive change supporting sustainable stewardship of the environment?

KR: Many cemeteries across the globe are facing dire limits on burial space. Cemeteries are cultural assets and provide crucial open space in dense cities, but the American expectation of a burial plot in perpetuity for each individual is at odds with the density and spatial limits of urbanity. The resource consumption of prevailing casketing and cremation practices are also considered wasteful by those prioritizing ecological impact.

Cemeteries can serve their current communities through new, sustainable forms of corpse disposition that engage the body biologically, and contribute to enduring civic-sacred spaces supporting grief and remembrance. We and others are developing mortuary options that are gentle on the earth while also remaining proximate to where we live.

CS: A growing rejection of embalmment and resource-intensive coffins among environmentally conscious families parallels a movement toward direct disposition—i.e., the body is moved from the deathbed directly to the burial site. More time is spent with the deceased at the site of death—where the family washes and cares for the body—rather than having the corpse whisked away to a funeral home. Individualized rituals and services that reflect the character of the deceased, often planned in advance with family and loved ones, occur by the deathbed and the place of final disposition. Advocates of green burial are leading the way.

Q. How has COVID accelerated and highlighted the need to address the changing death-care landscape?

KR: Never before in our lifetimes has death been so present. Society has a desperate need for spaces of healing—from the traumas of COVID, as well as other forms of grief and grievances, including confronting and repairing racial, environmental, and economic injustices. Civil and dignified contexts are crucial to societal care. A sense of community and ritual are important scaffolds around life’s transitions, and we need options and practices commensurate with current individual values and planetary priorities. Relative to just a decade ago, the public interest and willingness to engage in discussions of death and disposition are truly remarkable.

CS: The sheer volume of pandemic fatalities alone would have forced healthcare industries and the funerary complex (funeral directors, crematories, and cemeteries) to retool their practices, but the necessity to isolate because of COVID has been a stronger impetus to change. Telemedicine, deathbed goodbyes on Facebook, Zoom funeral planning, livestreaming and recording of funerary services, and online memorializing have all advanced exponentially, and are here to stay.

The social inequities of the pandemic, with much higher death rates for the poor and minorities, has added urgency to our need to address systemic change.

Q. What was it like to produce a book together?

KR: We both have high standards, and we’ve earned each other’s trust and respect. We have different styles: We’re both pragmatic idealists, but Christina is perhaps more straightforward, and I sometimes tend toward the poetic. We complement one another well.

CS: The collaborative process was pleasantly smooth. Karla and I hardly ever disagreed. Rather than feeling I was compromising my position in discussions about the book, I found that our dialogues gave me new insights and expanded perspectives.

Q. Have you read any books lately that you would recommend, and why?

CS: In Notes on Grief, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shares her experience after the death of her father during the pandemic. She allows her pain and reactions to emerge on the page with compelling power. Her suffering, questioning, search for meaning, and desire to honor her deceased father touch on themes common in bereavement—the bodily sensation of grief, the failure and support of rituals, the need for time and space alone and for community. Her dual project of memorializing and finding a way to live with grief is a gift to the reader.

KR: I would add Elizabeth Kolbert’s recently published Under a White Sky. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s a continuation of her excellent research and writing on the impacts we humans have wrought on the planet, and I reference her earlier The Sixth Extinction regularly. Taking responsibility for the consequences connected to our actions is a timeless ethical imperative.

Q. You’re both hosting a dinner party. Which three academics or scholars, dead or alive, would you invite, and why?

CS: With no restrictions to the invitation list, I will aim high: It would be a treat to reunite the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, so they can continue their charming lunch banter, recounted in their The Book of Joy— Lasting Happiness in a Changing World. As a foil to these two “mischievous” (as they describe themselves in the book), male faith leaders, I will invite a female atheist who can match their wit, perhaps the Barnard graduate Zora Neale Hurston, or maybe the early women’s rights leader, Ernestine Rose, said to possess “a rare sense of humor.”

We may end up touching on postmortem issues directly, but no matter where the talk leads, mortality remains foundational to human life and is never fully absent.

KR: My days are overflowing with teaching, research, and the building projects of my architecture practice, so I would be thrilled to participate in this exceptional evening!

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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‘I’m living for both of us’: a love letter to my deceased best friend

When actor and comedian Katy Wix’s best friend suddenly died, she was plunged into grief. But five years later she reveals how his death has changed her for the better

‘I know exactly what he would think about himself dying and me being left behind, with all my half of our private jokes’: Katy Wix.

By Katy Wix

At first, I didn’t understand what happened to my best friend. We spoke on a Tuesday and then he was dead on a Thursday.

When I first met him, I was standing under the stairs of the maths block with another girl. He walked past and I said, “We’re contacting the devil, wanna watch?” He put down his bag and nodded. The girl and I took each other’s hands, closed our eyes and began slowly counting backwards from 30. When we got to 11, a teacher with bulging eyes said, “What’s going on here, then?” We quickly dropped our hands and I looked at my shoes and said, “We were contacting the devil, sir.” The teacher paused and said, “Well… don’t.” I was 13, he was 14.

As we said our goodbyes on FaceTime that Tuesday, we talked about how excited we were to watch the final series of Peep Show. There was always talk of future plans. He said he might train as a tattoo artist or look into becoming a Buddhist. I felt as though it was OK to stop worrying about him, for that day anyway.

His death changed me for the worse and the better. In the first few days and weeks, I had to learn how to survive. I now had this word “grieving” that people would understand and respect. I used it in emails and to leave conversations. When you are a functioning depressive, you are able to get by, but only just. And there is always this worry that maybe people won’t believe that you are struggling and need help, because your life isn’t falling apart. All that changed after his death. Now, I wasn’t able to function and I had to defer to the pain. I was forced to tell the truth about not being OK, in a newly vulnerable way. Before he died, I used to be embarrassed about my depression, and tried to keep it hidden.

I even kept it hidden from him. When I first moved to London, he stayed in Cardiff, but we would spend hours on the phone most evenings. My flatmate said she always knew when I was talking to him because of the laughter coming from my room. Escapism was a big part of our friendship.

He came to visit me and hated the tube and only wanted to go to Camden. We sat in the corner of a red pub that only played Oasis. Occasionally, between the giggling, a look passed between us and we would see in each other’s eyes that maybe we weren’t happy, but weren’t going to talk about it. Now, I wish we had. The only thing he said, as we spilled out on to the street, was that he found adult life “boring and uncreative”.

Most people I know struggle to take their own pain seriously, let alone talk about it. But loss is dangerous and some people don’t survive it. Now I was being honest about how I felt, I began looking after myself in a new way. I asked a friend to get me some cream for the mysterious rash that appeared all over my body, 24 hours after his death. I designated a horrible peach towel in the bathroom as the one I would silently cry into. It was softer and kinder on my eyes than tissues. I began to floss. I ate meals. I took my medication. I listened to an audiobook of The Tibetan Book of the Dead on full volume, even when I knew the neighbours had people over. I downloaded a meditation app and then deleted it to have more memory to play Cake Shop 2. I got a 2m-long phone cable so I could comfortably play it in bed without stretching.

I paused my never-ending projects of self-improvement (get Michelle Obama arms, read Middlemarch, give up Diet Coke). I couldn’t improve in any way or be productive. I could just survive. When getting out of bed was difficult, I broke things down into threes, to make them manageable: 1) push duvet off; 2) put feet on floor; 3) stand. This was the most I had ever done for my emotional wellbeing and I have my friend to thank for that. When you are the one hurting yourself, you are never safe. It was nice to start to feel safe in my own company again.

Whatever I did, I still needed him. And in those moments I had to turn to the living. I started to wonder if I had been cured of my lifelong shyness. Openly weeping in front of strangers was such a break from social norms that it was liberating. The shock was so great for so long, that it filled me right to the top, leaving less room for self- consciousness. I cried on trains, and didn’t try to hide it by wiping away the tears, so they pooled in my neck, making my scarf wet.

One day a friend, who was fresh in her grief, asked me what to do. I forgot that no one teaches us how to grieve, and that there are things I desperately wish people had told me. My friend was shocked to hear that anger is allowed, loneliness is extremely common, and the pain won’t stay at the same intensity. I wish someone had told me to not be frightened of the future, because I didn’t know that it wouldn’t stay as bad as it was on day one. I hadn’t realised that my experience could help others. This was my induction into a sort of club, each member of which has lost someone. I started to make connections and have conversations I never would have before.

Later that day, in Sainsbury’s, a woman with red eyes stretched her whole arm towards the back of a shelf to find the milk with the longest sell-by-date. As shoppers pushed squeaking trolleys past me, squinting in the artificial light, I wondered how anyone gets out of bed in the morning. My friend’s pain began to make sense.

When I went back to work to film a TV show, I was quiet and looked at my shoes a lot. At lunchtime, a slightly sexy older actor made intense eye contact with me, put his hand to his pec, and said, “First loss?” I was annoyed at how wise and fatherly he was being. For the rest of the day, he stared at me across the room with a look of concern and erotic sadness, like I was big, sexy grief baby that needed rescuing. I imagined a whole future with him in a handbuilt farmhouse, where he would write me a bad play about being sad and I would mend his plaid shirts with twine. When the job ended, I showed him a bit of my bra strap and pretended it was an accident. There was so much sympathy around for me now, and sometimes I wanted to indulge.

Eighteen months later, I was eating lasagne in front of Below Deck when I had the thought that I’ve accidentally become more set as a person. In grief, there isn’t time to want to be like someone else. Trauma means reacting in the moment, as you are. You have to be horribly yourself. Like in a novel where character is revealed through actions, crisis showed me who I was. I don’t always have to like what it shows me. I wear the clothes now that my mother would have hated, things that are too short or tight. I’ve dyed my hair dark, which she said was ageing, and I’ve grown it long, which she said made my neck look short. I’m much angrier now. It’s good as a woman to feel anger, because my mother pretended she didn’t have any and my father had too much.

Once you’ve been through loss, you know its landscape. All loss will remind you of the first loss, like it’s one big river of yearning. And I have become less shocked by it. At first you think you are nowhere, but if you’re lucky, you might feel as though you have travelled somewhere. It’s a very particular type of wisdom, a profound, mystical feeling of having seen the wild edges of being human. I’ve returned from a quest, changed, and have information to tell the other villagers.

Five years on, I understand more about what happened to my friend. I understand he was trying to protect himself from pain. I didn’t understand it when I was younger. It’s difficult when you are young and you come face-to-face with addiction. We all drank a lot, so it was difficult to detect. It was a slow build, like one long note, getting louder and louder. As teenagers, we’d spend afternoons sitting in his purple bedsit in Cardiff, sipping cheap rum and Coke, breathing in sharply as it stung the roof of our mouths and then we’d laugh and try to act sober on the phone if a parent called. Later, his drinking got worse, but I was too embarrassed to mention it. I saw it as a phase. I was waiting for the plot twist, where he suddenly reveals he had a plan all along, that the drinking was a way into something else, and a new, reformed person would emerge on the other side of the destruction. But it was just more of the same. And then it got worse.

Now, I get to write about him, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I wouldn’t have been able to write about going to my first concert with him, rolling down big hills in West Wales with him, taking hallucinogens and thinking we were made of milk, or how he was funnier than most professional comedians I know. Before, I was too shy to write, definitely too shy to write autobiographically, and now I can’t stop. I get to write about him even though there is a voice in my head, even now, telling me that it’s not good enough. It’s true: no writing will be good enough to represent him. And I’d trade all the words for him.

Ultimately, it has strengthened my love for him. He hasn’t taken the friendship with him. I still care about him and I know exactly what he would think about himself dying and me being left behind, with all my half of our private jokes. I’ve absorbed his traits. I eat the foods he liked and use words he liked and say our jokes to myself. And I’ve come up with some new ones for us, too. I’m living for both of us. I have replaced this person with love. And I get to write this love letter to him.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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There’s a New Reality Series About … Death?

“The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning” is a forthcoming reality series set to air on NBC’s Peacock

Are you ready for death? Allow this new reality show to prepare you for the end.

By Kayla Kibbe

When reality TV first came out, it was about celebrities with sex tapes and rich wine moms yelling at each other. These days, reality TV shows are about things like organizing your home and — checks notes — preparing for death.

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning is a new reality series set to premiere on NBC’s Peacock streaming service, The Hollywood Reporter announced Thursday. According to THR, the unscripted series is basically going to be the Marie Kondo of death, and each episode will feature a “Swedish Death Cleaner” who will help people prepare for their inevitable demise. Per Peacock, the Death Cleaner will help people who “are at a major crossroads [to] organize and demystify [their] homes, lives, and relationships,” thereby “allowing us to prepare for death while we enjoy life.”

“In this series, viewers will be taken on an honest and emotional journey as they watch everyday people conquer their worst fears and discover who they really are on the inside,” said Rod Aissa, executive vice president of unscripted content for NBCUniversal Television and Streaming. “We hope our compassionate and dynamic series sparks conversation within each household and breaks the stigma around mortality and the tough reality of letting things go.”

In case this doesn’t sound weird enough, the series — which is based on the 2018 best-selling book of the same name by Margareta Magnusson — is also produced and narrated by Amy Poehler for some reason. “We are so excited to work on such a life-affirming project with the genius creators at Scout,” said Poehler, referring to the production company behind the series. “Swedish Death Cleaning reminds us to focus on what is truly important, and we couldn’t find a better team to take this journey with than Peacock and the incredible Scout Team.”

But while a reality series about death may not have been on your streaming content bingo card, death is kind of in right now. In 2020, Vox dubbed Millennials the “death positive generation” due to their interest in planning their own funerals, preparing for death and otherwise facing the inevitability of their own mortality. And as THR noted, death planning has also been having a bit of a moment on TV lately, appearing on shows like This Is Us and Human Resources.

Death is clearly in for 2022, and given the current state of the world, it’s not hard to see why. While a reality show about death prep may not be as fun as watching wine-drunk housewives scream at each other, it’s certainly relevant programming for our current era of late-stage human existence. There’s really never been a better time to embrace your mortality.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!