Death is inevitable but we still seem flummoxed by it happening. We have all kinds of End of Life policies and procedures which do everything possible to make life difficult for those left behind.
Our language is around loss and unexpected, and grief and being bereft.
Why do we make Death so hard to process in our community and what can we do to normalise it across society?
That it’s something that happens to all of us does not make it any easier to process. You still lose someone you love, sometimes very abruptly and while they could’ve easily lived years longer without an issue. You will never be able to speak to them, to see them in front of you, to hear their thoughts, to make new memories Witt them. Sometimes it also makes you lose a support network, a pivotal person that made your life better.
It may be normal, but he mental impact will in many cases be huge.
I guess it is an exception.
Lots of days I do living. Only one I die.
As a rule, we don’t handle the unexpected well. When my grandfather died from lung cancer, it was a long, protracted ordeal involving hospice care. Everyone was prepared, nobody was surprised.
When my dad died from a massive heart attack in the middle of nowhere in Nevada, a month after retiring, it was a shock, nobody saw it coming. He didn’t make it long enough for the life flight helicopter to get there. Reportedly his last words were “Oh no.”
It’s one thing to plan for a death, it’s another to be slapped in the head with one.
I’ve never died, I posit that I am the very first immortal human, there is no evidence to the contrary.
I actually saw a post to our town’s community page last night that the big local funeral home holds a once a month meeting in different topics to help people discuss these matters.
The coming event is a tour of the crematory where you can see the equipment, what can be done with the cremains, and a Q and A to determine if that is something you’d want for yourself.
A previous one was green burials, which I’m really bummed that I missed!
One person commented it was morbid, but the two from the funeral home said the last crematory tour had around 100 show up.
If you search “death conversations” or “death cafe” near you, you may be able to find something similar.
The funeral home that handled my relative’s death runs regular grief counseling sessions. They mailed me reminders about them near holidays. I didn’t go, but I appreciate the service.
That sounds like it could help people out. I imagine sometimes you might not know you need to talk to someone unless somebody brings to the idea.
That reminds me that I remember different companies that do gifts (I think I got emails from ProFlowers, for instance) that they send emails a month or so out from holidays like Mother’s/Father’s Day to click anything on the email so you don’t get those promos.
I wish everyone could do the same. The dang veterinarian that we used years ago kept sending me annual checkups for years after they had to put a few of my pets down. That always really bummed me out, and that’s not a person…
We also got the Nestle baby formula sample thing in the mail after my ex’s miscarriage. That one was not very appreciated either.
I feel I got on a tangent, but once I started replying I got reminded of less sensitive companies…
it’s never happened to me my whole life
Because we’re delusional.
My father survived his cancer years ago, and since last year my sister was diagnosed with it, and it’s looking incurable as of now. As I mourn for them in silence I get peerpressured by the aunt Karen of the family to give more attention. But my father was much different, like vibing on the good memories and being content with how his children became adult. My sister is having emotional difficulties though, and my mother is better at this than me… But when it’s my turn I’d like to stick to my father’s philosophy, even thoughh it hurts, remember how good life is.
Rather myopic to assume that everyone has the same experience. I’m about to go to a family member’s service, literally today, and that is not the case at all.
an exception to what?
I write software for a living, an exception in software means something unexpected, out of the ordinary, it’s treated as a “special case”.
In a lifetime, death is not unexpected, it’s expected, even guaranteed. The only variable is time, but that’s true for many aspects of life.
Take for instance moving house, it’s got a high likelihood of happening during a lifetime, multiple times. There’s processes to update your address, tell your bank, the utility company, insurance, etc. There’s address change services, some even run by government that all but automate this.
Why is it that such a thing doesn’t exist for death?
The absurd amount of effort that family members after a death need to get through to deal with things like this is insane.
Death is not unexpected on whether it will happen, but when. Everyone dies, but you might be going to work one day and you die because of a moron burning a red light, or you might ne the healthiest person and get an incurable cancer, or people die from random hearth attack.
Humans are afraid of death. Thus we don’t like to talk about it. Thus being more afraid of it. Thus treating it as an exception.
That’s why I love Caitlin Doughty’s YouTube channel
Can you provide examples?
From what I’ve seen in Canada, death is handled like a standard event:
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Most businesses, banks, and government services have fast and convenient closing out paths when someone dies. In most cases a single phonecall/visit is enough to close an account and get the appropriate statements.
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Lawyers follow an established path when handling wills. Unless there’s contention, it’s pretty easy to “finish” the will.
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Funeral homes do an excellent job at handling the deceased’s body, providing grief counseling, running the funeral, and ensuring the cemetery accepts the remains. So long as it’s preplanned, the family and friends just need to show up.
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Government policy around executing a will is generally easy to understand and work with.
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Banks will act as executors. I’m not sure if they do a good job, but it’s relatively inexpensive.
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Health care providers do not try to prolong life for the elderly. From what I’ve seen, they are quick to prescribe end of life care.
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Palliative care is handled by empathic and helpful professionals. There could be improvements in grief counseling.
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My social group was empathic and caring. Family helped as much as possible, as did friends. I doubt this is true for everyone.
What else are you referring to, OP?
If your partner dies before you do, consider what happens to your joint mortgage, your internet, email and phone accounts, your car repayments, if it’s coming out of a joint account that’s suddenly frozen because one account holder has died.
What happens if your partner sets up your home network and TV subscriptions and their email account is locked because you’re not the account holder.
For example, Netflix doesn’t have “multiple account holders” as an option, it belongs to one person, the one who pays the bill. Neither does Google, Facebook, Disney, Amazon, Apple, or anyone else.
This is repeated across every single aspect of modern life. Your robot vacuum cleaner is linked to a single person, as are your IoT lightbulbs. It’s absurd.
The list goes on, public transport payment system, car ownership, home ownership.
I know people who have had to borrow money from family and friends, just to eat food because the bank needed a death certificate after their partner died, but the process took weeks, some even months.
One person was an executor of their recently deceased parent who was required to produce the non-existent death certificate for the other parent who had died 40 years earlier. Took more than a year.
Dying during a holiday is a special form of torture for the family.
None of that is easy, convenient or handled.
Why not?
This may depend on jurisdiction. Joint accounts were not frozen in my case. A death certificate was only required to remove the deceased party from the accounts.
What happens if your partner sets up your home network and TV subscriptions and their email account is locked because you’re not the account holder.
In my case I was able to present the death certificate to the providers and the accounts were quickly closed, with the appropriate billing and hardware returns. It was no more inconvenient than a normal return.
I was fortunate. The deceased planned ahead and did all of the things I haven’t done: arranging a funeral and burial, keeping their will up to date, writing down their usernames/passwords, and making the appropriate joint bank accounts.
This is repeated across every single aspect of modern life. Your robot vacuum cleaner is linked to a single person, as are your IoT lightbulbs. It’s absurd.
My experience was with established services in mature sectors: they have procedures for dealing with deceased customers’ accounts. It was relatively convenient, even at a really shitty time.
None of that is easy, convenient or handled.
Why not?
Newer services don’t have that institutional experience. They haven’t existed long enough. But they’re starting to: Facebook has the concept of deceased users. As time goes on, more “new” services will as well.
FYI, in at least parts of Canada, a vehicle can be jointly owned by spouses.
As are mortgages, car loans, and insurance.
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It’s easy to talk about the end of life for other things. It’s harder to discuss the fact that we will end eventually.
There’s also laziness. Until recently I didn’t care about a will because I didn’t have dependents or assets.
My older relatives have taken the appropriate steps: created wills, had discussions with their families about what is to be done after their deaths, paid for funerals, and arranged interment.
Because many people see themselves as being the most important person, and can’t deal with not existing anymore.
Religious societies treat sex as taboo.
Secular societies treat death as taboo.
To be fair, most Western religious traditions also treat death as taboo — they just aren’t as explicit about it as they are with sex.
