Anna Lyons - We all know how this ends: Lessons about life and living from working with death and dying

GREEN TREE

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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This electronic edition published in 2021 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published in Great Britain 2021

This edition published 2021

Copyright Anna Lyons and Louise Winter, 2021

Anna Lyons and Louise Winter have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them. For legal purposes the constitute an extension of this copyright page

: Five Things Ive Observed at Deathbeds by Dr Kathryn Mannix Kathryn Mannix 2020. No changes may be made to the text of the Contribution without the prior approval of the Author

: Death Makes a Crown of Love by Greg Gilbert is from Love Makes a Mess of Dying (Smith|Doorstop, 2019)

: Alexa, What is There to Know about Love? by Brian Bilston Brian Bilston

: Recension Day by Duncan Forbes Duncan Forbes

: The Colour of Grief, originally published in Jonathan Steffen, The Colour of Love, Acumen Publications 2011, ISBN: 9781873161326

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Contents

In this book, the word death appears 568 times.
The word life appears 641 times.
So although this is a book about death,
its actually a book about life.

[A + L]

One day youll eat your very last meal. Youll speak your final words. Youll take your very last breath.

Your heart will stop beating. Your blood will no longer flow.

You will die. You will be dead.

Death is our future, the only future of which we can be truly certain. Its inescapable and unavoidable. Everyone who is born has to die. Life is terminal. There is no cure. Neither life nor death is black and white. We dont come with an expiry date. We might die tomorrow, we might die next week, or we might die in 50 years time.

Worldwide, 151,600 people die each and every day. Thats one hundred and fifty one thousand and six hundred people. In the time it takes to watch an episode of This Is Us on Amazon Prime, 6316 people have died. If you think about how many other lives each life, and therefore each death, affects, that means countless more have been bereaved and are grieving. Some 105 people have died in the minute its taken to read these statistics. Thats almost two people every second.

Around 600,000 people die in the UK every year. At least one child in every school classroom is bereaved and growing up without a parent. Almost 40 per cent of us will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in our lifetime. Almost 3 million people are currently living with cancer in the UK and, according to Macmillan Cancer Support, this figure will rise to 4 million by 2030. Around 40 per cent of all people over the age of 65 are living with life-limiting long-standing illness. These are stark, sobering statistics and yet we still dont openly talk about death or teach our children how to live with the inevitability of it.

Were Anna Lyons, an end-of-life doula, and Louise Winter, a progressive funeral director, and together were the team behind Life. Death. Whatever. We joined forces several years ago to find a way to get everyone talking about death, dying, life, living, illness, funerals and grief. Our mission at Life. Death. Whatever. is to help you to have a more empowered approach to whatever youre going through.

As an end-of-life doula, Anna supports people who are living with serious illness, their family and friends, and people living with grief. Her aim is to help people live as good a life as possible until the very end. People who are dying are living right up until their very last breath and she believes its essential to support people to experience a life they can enjoy for as long as possible.

As a progressive funeral director, Louise has an unconventional approach to her work. Her mission is to encourage everyone to really think about funerals and why we have them. She believes that a good funeral can be transformational in helping us to acknowledge and accept that someone has died.

Anna might be there when your sister finds out that her cancer has a devastating prognosis and support her as she decides how she wants to live with her illness. Louise might be the person you call when your sister has died. She will help you to find a way to say goodbye, in a way that works for you.

Our experiences have shown us that death is a normal part of life and dying is part of living. Acknowledging and accepting that one day we will die is fundamental to living a full life. Its as simple and as complicated as that.

We dont believe death is a taboo, as the media would have us believe. But we do believe that as a society and as a culture, we shy away from it because we dont know what else to do.

However, we cant ignore death and dying. Its not going to go away. Our only hope is to change the way we see it and find a new way of approaching it thats helpful and relevant to the times in which we live.

This book isnt a lament on the loss of life, because we believe that death and dying dont have to be gloomy or taboo subjects. Talking about death and dying can be life-affirming and life-enhancing. Thats why we created Life. Death. Whatever. It began life as a groundbreaking festival about death, in partnership with the National Trusts Sutton House, a Tudor house with an eclectic history in Hackney, East London in October 2016. We hosted an art exhibition as well as a line-up of events, installations and workshops, encouraging creative reflection on life, death and everything in between.

We positioned birth, life and death together under one roof and challenged visitors to the house to consider all three as one. We cant have life without birth, and we cant have life without death. These three, intrinsically linked by the mere nature of existence, were spread out across the uneven walls and floors of the Tudor house, encouraging visitors to see the whole rather than just two-thirds. We dared them to imagine that life is finite and encouraged them to consider that ignoring this truth will not make it shrink quietly back into the shadows. We stimulated, provoked, amused, inspired, disgusted and entertained all who came by.