2 days ago
Talking about death could completely change our relationship with it, and remove some of the fear
When Megan Maurice was diagnosed with breast cancer at 36, her daughter Pia was only seven.
And while Megan's prognosis was good, the thought of how she would broach the topic of death with her daughter was definitely something that weighed on her mind.
"If things took a turn for the worse, if it had spread further than we thought, how would I talk about that with her?" she tells ABC Radio National's Life Matters.
"It was something that I always knew I wanted to be really up front with.
"As soon as I got the diagnosis, I knew that I wanted to talk to her about it and let her know what was happening."
Megan felt firmly that she wouldn't cover anything up with metaphors or language like "passing away" or "passing on".
"I don't like to use that language that makes things less clear. If you're too vague, there's always the chance that they don't quite understand what's happened, and I wouldn't want her thinking that I'd died but I might come back," she says.
In the face of death, the choice to speak openly — with family or anyone else — is not always the first one people reach for.
How could we make it easier to have frank conversations about death?
And, in having them, what do we stand to gain?
Up until roughly the 1930s, conversations about death were part of the fabric of life, Melbourne GP and author Leah Kaminsky says.
More homes were intergenerational so more people were likely to have encountered someone sick or dying, and the ancient religious practice "momento mori" (literally, "remember you must die") encouraged reflection on death.
"[Then] death got outsourced, it went off-stage into the hospitals. You were dying, in the wings, often lonely deaths," says the author, whose latest book is called We're All Going To Die.
Death began moving away from an accepted part of life and became thought of by the medical profession as "the doctor's enemy".
"We [doctors] used to sit the vigil and hold a patient's hand, and [be with] the whole family," Leah says.
"Nowadays there's a militarisation even in the language of death: we battle cancer, we fight disease.
"So I think there's been this huge psychosocial shift that's made death something that's foreign to us. It's not part of the fabric of life. We don't see it, we don't experience it."
Chris Cheers, a Melbourne psychologist and author of The New Rule Book, says the more we avoid death, the more anxiety-provoking it becomes.
"Especially in a white Australian culture, I think we've created the ability to really avoid talking about death, avoid experiencing grief … and as soon as you avoid something, it means you can't process it [or] make sense of it," he says.
Life Matters listener Bobby says she grew up with an open acknowledgement of death as part of her Māori culture.
"Death was still accepted … It was just part of a natural process," she says.
She's concerned about people's connection to death being increasingly eroded, and she's cynical about industries that, she argues, capitalise on people's fear of death.
"It suits insurance companies and the billion-dollar funeral industry to take the ownership away from the families. To say, 'I'm here to undertake all of that for you, because it's too difficult. It's too hard'," she says.
"That is a huge frustration [of mine]. We need to come back to our life, our ownership, and not fall into the fear [and accept] somebody else saying this is too hard for you to handle."
Megan, who has written about her experience in her book Life Goes On, has always had a "little fear of death".
"It's never been something I've been very comfortable with. And then when you have a diagnosis like [cancer] and, suddenly, it's something you can't quite get away from," she says.
But having cancer changed her relationship with death.
"It did reframe it for me a little bit ... [I realised] that a fear of death was actually a really good thing, because it really showed how much I wanted to live," she says.
"It helped me to understand how I could balance that fear a little bit better, and let it take up less space in my life."
Chris says accepting you're going to die at some point means you're more likely to consider exactly what you want to do with your life — and get moving on it.
There's a technique he's borrowed from the school of existential psychiatry, which he uses a lot in his work, that rams this point home.
"You put your hand on your heart and you notice your heartbeat, and you consider that heartbeat, one day, will end," he says.
"So what are you going to do with each beat?"
Rituals are another way of becoming more familiar and comfortable with the idea of death, Leah says.
"There is a separation for a lot of people from religion and spirituality … and I think in some ways that means we've lost ways to understand [and] to talk about death [and] to grieve," she says.
"But just because you're not spiritual or religious, it doesn't mean you can't have ritual. It doesn't mean you can't create spaces, whether it's a death cafe, or just sitting down at the dinner table and saying, 'let's talk about death'."
Leah says another way to feel empowered about death is by making an advanced care directive.
That's a written document outlining what you would like to happen when you die or if you get sick. It includes how much resuscitation you'd like or what sort of treatments you want to receive.
The plan is "you calling the shots" about your treatment and death, she says. (Make sure you tell someone where the document is so it can be found at short notice.)
"Everyone has a different approach. But the most important thing is to find some outlet, somewhere you can discuss it, read about it, talk about it, think about it.
"Because too often, in my profession, sadly, we have people that think about it too late. And it turns into the messy thing that we actually do fear.
"Whereas if you've thought ahead, I think it's a far better experience, not just for you, but for your family and your loved ones."
