Die-alogue Cafe

Good grief.  More than simply an expression of surprise, these words can signify a deeper appreciation of the hurt that the earth endures at the hands of the human species.  And so beyond expressing words of sorrow, what can we do to right the wrongs that we have perpetuated in the name of human advancement, for in the name of our rise to dominance many other species have had to pay a hefty price – to the point of extinction in some cases – and living on the brink of mortality in many cases.

If being in nature makes us happy, then it stands to reason that when nature is hurt we can feel distressed and experience grief. Claire Dunn in Nature’s Wall of Grief (Huffington Post, 18/10/2015 | Updated 15/07/2016) writes about the work of: “Master tracker and bird language guru Jon Young, speaks of hitting a ‘wall of grief’ almost as a rite-of-passage when in the process of reconnecting to nature. Instead of pushing it away, Young encourages (us) to welcome grief as an ‘ally’ that will help ‘awaken our unique gifts’.”

“For thousands of years, ancient wisdom traditions have developed practices to tend to the grief and fear that can hold us back from healing ourselves, our relationships with other people and our children, and our relationship with nature.”

“Through these practices, grief becomes an ally.”

“We only grieve what we love, and love is what guides us to acts of greatest service. I now understand the grief to be the earth’s reminder, a seed in my pocket, a lover’s memento left deliberately in order to keep the thread alive, to not let me forget, to keep me on the trail and sniffing, ” writes Claire Dunn.

We will conclude this post with the words of Joanna Macy: “Our experience of pain for the world springs from our interconnectedness with all beings, from which also arises our powers to act on their behalf.”   Says Claire: “In her simply named ‘Work that Reconnects,’ grief is the glue to heal the illusion of separation between us and the rest of the web of life.”

To read the full story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/claire-wren-dunn/natures-wall-of-grief/

This month marks an expanded focus for Die-alogue Cafe.

In addition to the regular posts on the dying and death and funerals theme, there will be new perspectives that touch on our relationships with the past, under the general description of recalling the contribution of ancestors; our relationships with our bodies and our third skin (biotechture); and our relationships with other species that we share the earth with. On this last point we will discuss our unique propensity for driving out other species – the desire to dominate at the expense of others.

The way we have distanced ourselves from times past and our destructive behaviour that is hellbent on reshaping nature in our own image, is leaving us bereft of the qualities needed to live well such that we might die well – or as Stephen Jenkinson would put it: Die Wise.

We trust that this expanded worldview will help us better appreciate the unique position we are in. It must not be seen as entitlement. We need to fully embrace the fact that we belong to the earth, the earth does not belong to us.  Over the coming months our posts will reflect these sentiments.  Die-alogue Cafe meetings will include these items in the agenda.  Taking a more holistic approach, being more inclusive, will help us see the big picture and hopefully temper ideas for navel gazing and silo building.

In spite of all the choices on offer to the modern day citizen, there remain those who feel it is their job to steer customers away from the full range of choices available – placing their own agendas above those of the people who come to them for assistance.

Writing on the editorial page (5) of the 9^th edition 2017, of More to death, Rosie Inman-Cook, (Natural Death Centre official magazine – UK) reports on feedback received from readers and callers to the NDC helpline.   We suspect that incidents similar to these are taking place in Australia.  Even if they are not, we offer this post as a cautionary note, so that readers will be aware of what can go on when we are not informed of the facts.  It is for this reason that we reprint the extract below:

‘The ignorance of gatekeepers continues to be a frustration. Recent examples:

• Hospital bereavement support staff denying a family contact with a mortuary regarding a DIY collection, insisting that by law they had to have an undertaker;
• The manager of an area’s district nurses believing that the dead had to be embalmed, teaching all the nurses under, for years, that this is fact;
• A funeral firm in London telling a relative that direct cremation is not available in the UK yet. Even thought the lady knew it was and asked for the service by name.

We still have a lot of educating to do!

Lastly. Will some of you lovely celebrants please stop criticising the rise of direct funerals. It may be the case that a ceremony with the deceased present is psychologically important for some, but for 50% of callers to our helpline, wanting direct funeral information, they couldn’t give a fig about having a ceremony and quite often there is no one to attend anyway.

You can still get the job of putting together and facilitating a memorial service for those with a family so please don’t impose your “we know best” attitude.  That is what the funeral directors have done for years!!’

To read the full editorial and other stories in the magazine, log onto: https://issuu.com/moretodeath/docs/more_to_death_edition_9

How to get a conversation about death and dying started and convincing family and friends that it is a subject that needs to be talked about well before there is any emergency or ‘necessity’ can seem like hard work.  We are constantly on the look out for creative ways to connect with people.  This story from Christine Colby: You’re Going to Die, Here’s How to Deal with It (Lifehacker 2.01.2017) covers a lot of ground and does it in a very down to earth way that we reckon, comes at the subject from a range of angles that may well resonate with people – even those who might at first seem reluctant to get on board.

So here are some of the angles that Christine presents: How and where to start talking about death; Contemplating decomposition makes you less afraid of your own death; Getting your paperwork in order is comforting for everyone; Downsize, donate, and declutter, so nobody else has to; Don’t wait to achieve goals and resolve conflicts and Allow the dying to accept and discuss their situation.

The story includes a great YouTube clip by Caitlin Doughty from Order of the Good Death and Ask the Mortician.  Read the full story and enjoy the pictures at: http://lifehacker.com/youre-going-to-die-heres-how-to-deal-with-it-1791498957

John Pavlovitz writes on a wide range of subjects and attracts a lot of attention within his community.  This one caught our eye: The Grieving Need You Most After The Funeral (Stuff That Needs To Be Said, January 5, 2017). “The early days of grief are a hazy, dizzying, moment by moment response to a trauma that your mind simply can’t wrap itself around. You are what I like to call a Grief Zombie, outwardly moving but barely there.”

There is heaps of support until the day of the funeral, and then everything begins to subside. Right about the time you need people the most, most people aren’t there. “Most people understand grief as an event, not as the permanent alteration to your life that it is, and so they stay up until the funeral and imagine that when the service ends, that somehow you too can move ahead, that there is some finishing to your mourning.”

But, says John: “if there’s anything I would tell you, as someone who has walked through the Grief Valley, it is that the time your presence is most needed and most powerful, is in the days and weeks and months after the funeral, when most people have withdrawn.” Read the full story at: http://johnpavlovitz.com/2017/01/05/the-grieving-need-you-most-after-the-funeral/

Just like humans, animals of all species die every day of the week.  Without so much as a whimper their deaths go largely unnoticed and for the most part without us pausing to think how we might learn a lesson or two along the way.  Tim Dick, in: A life lesson in the death of a much loved family cat (SMH, January 2, 2017)  reminds us that when it comes to family pets – in this case Rocko – or for that matter other animals for whom we have some responsibility, there is choice about how they die.

“As he lay dying on the vet table, our sadness came tinged with relief that the law is gentle enough to allow vets to put down pets when their time has come. His suffering was exceptionally short, his end far more peaceful than we force some people to endure.”

For the full story go to: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/a-life-lesson-in-the-death-of-a-muchloved-cat-20161230-gtjwwk.html

Much of what we do is mixed up with what everyone else does.  We get caught up in the mainstream and go-with-the-flow.  As if the mainstream is the ‘right’ way of getting to where we are presumably going.  At Die-alogue Cafe we like to dig a bit deeper into the thinking that leads us to act in particular ways.

On what basis do we assume that this go-with-the-flow path is the right one?  And that it will lead to happy and healthy outcomes?

Just as there are many end-of-year parties, there will be many end-of-life deaths that wait for no one and respect no cultural traditions.

It will therefore be something other than the merry Christmas that is projected by all the razzamatazz of the commercial world.

We offer this extract from the Wesley Mission website …

    While tinsel drapes across the city and ‘Frosty the Snowman’ blares in shopping centres, many people find it difficult to feel joy around Christmas. The whole world seems to expect that people will be happy and that families will want to be together at this time of year.  But for many people, this is simply not the reality. There are many of us who have experienced huge grief or feel the ‘chill’ of broken relationships and damaged dreams. Others of us are without family or friends or home or community, and the loss of this is especially felt at Christmas time.  It is simply very difficult for a lot of people to be merry at Christmas.

Wesley Mission’s Blue Christmas service, also called a ‘Service of Solace,’ is an intentional time set apart from the rush and bustle of commercial and community expectations. It is a time in which those of us who struggle at this time of year are invited to know and name the dread, darkness and despair of human living; and perhaps find God ‘born again’ into our lives and travelling with us – especially during these times. In this service, people are invited to lament, and Bible stories are used that show lamenting, mourning and grieving as appropriate and faithful responses to what happens in life.

At this time of the year all kinds of assumptions about how we should or should not indulge ourselves are bandied about. Christmas is no simple celebration.  But then it never has been.  If you would like to dig a little deeper into the ‘how we got to where we are’ with the whole Christmas thing, then have a squiz at a couple of these explanations for why we do what we do at this time, year in and year out, as if it has always been thus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas

http://www.livescience.com/25779-christmas-traditions-history-paganism.html

http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/why-is-christmas-celebrated-on-december-25

http://www.historyextra.com/article/bbc-history-magazine/festive-qi-facts-christmas-history

http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm

At this Summer solstice time (southern hemisphere) we wish you well and trust that you are able to connect with family and friends and mother earth, in a spirit of thankfulness and appreciation. That the fruits of the earth and the gifts of community life will sustain us for yet another day.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/what-is-the-summer-solstice-welcome-to-december-21-the-longest-day-of-the-year-20161219-gtekjg.html

They used to be all the go.  Everyone did it – conduct their own funerals.  Not so today, but there is change on the way, as Heather Wiseman explains in this Q&A piece posted on the Palliative Care Australia website (Preparing a loved-one’s body for a family-led funeral, 2 November 2016).

Heather talks with Natural Death Advocacy Network, co-founder Libby Moloney, who offers practical insight into what is involved in preparing a loved one’s body for burial and what options there are when it comes to engaging the services of a funeral director.

 Ms Maloney says the Natural Death Advocacy Network (NDAN) among other things, “advocates for the establishment of natural cemeteries, working alongside cemetery trusts and petitioning for stand-alone natural burial grounds. We also support people who want to bury their loved ones naturally and do the whole thing themselves. That support includes advocacy work. Sometimes cemeteries say they won’t take a booking for a family-led funeral without a funeral director being involved.  When that happens, we ring the cemetery and explain how it can be done.”

“It helps to remind (cemetery) trustees how much things have changed within the past century,” says Ms Maloney. “Many trustees are in their eighties, so I say ‘Tell me the story about when your grandmother died and how she was buried.’ They’ll talk about how their grandmother was cared for at home and how the men went out the back and made a coffin and then took the coffin to the graveyard. Back then it was all done by the family. We’ve lost that over time. Back then rituals were known and someone down the road knew how to lay out the body. There was comfort in knowing what was going to happen. People had experienced it first-hand before and maybe better understood that it was a natural part of life.”

“These days, it can be difficult for families if they want to do some, or all of it, themselves. But legally, they have the right to handle all aspects of the body’s preparation for burial, cremation, and the funeral, if that is what they want.  I know families who have provided all of the care and done the shrouding themselves and just brought in a funeral director to transport the body from their home to the crematorium. Lots of funeral directors will do a tailored piece of help like that. They are also starting to accept that a family, rather than a funeral director, might make a booking for a burial or cremation.”

• At home what might people do to keep a deceased loved one’s eyes or mouth closed?
• Is it important to wash the body and how do you do that?
• What legal requirements do you need to consider when someone dies at home?
• Can you keep a loved one’s body at home rather than sending them to a morgue?
• How do you go about getting a coffin? Do you need a coffin if the body is to be buried or cremated in a shroud?  Where can I get more information?

Visit the Natural Death Advocacy Network website, email us (contact@ndan.com.au) or like our Facebook page.  To read the full interview of 11 questions and answers, go to: http://palliativecare.org.au/palliative-matters/how-to-prepare-a-loved-ones-body-for-burial-and-have-a-family-led-funeral/

“Almost everyone who isn’t really unlucky gets to 80,” says Charlie Corke, an intensive care specialist at Barwon Health’s University Hospital Geelong, Victoria. Indeed, two-thirds of Australians will die after age 75, of chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease, dementia and lung cancer.

Writing in The Monthly (We need to talk about dying, October 28, 2016) Kate Stanton reports that “A new initiative teaches doctors how to help patients plan for their deaths before it’s too late.”

She says: ‘After discovering that many doctors had not spoken about dying to their terminally ill patients in the intensive care unit (ICU), Barwon Health decided the doctors needed some practice, and designed a two-day training course called iValidate, which gives doctors the chance to work on their skills with actors.’

Deakin University lecturer Sharyn Milnes, who co-ordinates ethics and communications training for medical students, says lack of understanding is a “big problem”:

A lot of people don’t even know they’re dying. They come into hospital and have this one little problem fixed, sent to rehab or sent to a nursing home and nobody’s even said to them, “The most you’ve got to live is 12 months.”

Many practitioners believe that earlier discussion of palliative care or other underused resources, such as advanced care planning, only benefits patients. With more knowledge, they can make choices about how they want to spend the rest of their life, says Stanton.

“But advanced care directives – special plans that detail a patient’s medical wishes in the event of an emergency – are relatively rare. Less than 1% of Australians over 70 have one.”

“Deakin University is a rarity in requiring medical students to complete simulation programs that take students through potential conversations with dying patients and their families — a sort of “choose your own adventure” for end-of-life choices.”

There is some good news according to Stanton: “A number of organisations have developed resources to get people started. Death Over Dinner helps individuals plan dinner parties where death is discussed. The Groundswell Project organises Dying to Know Day each August 8. Palliative Care Australia has a Dying to Talk discussion starter pack.”

Add to that list the Die-alogue Cafe method and we have all the ingredients necessary to get stuck into how we would like to live until we die and then how we would like our loved ones to deal with our deaths. Let’s get out of the closet, throw some light on the subject.  As Marjorie Jenkins would say: embrace life with grace and gusto.  Take a browse over her website: http://www.yodo.org/

To read Kate Stanton’s full story go to: https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/kate-stanton/2016/28/2016/1477612744/we-need-talk-about-dying

Dr Bruce (BJ) Miller is on a mission.  That mission is to change the way we do end-of-life care. Dr Miller is a palliative care physician at Zen Hospice Project who thinks deeply about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his patients.

To get there he suggests we need to take on board the fact that: “Hospitals are no place to live and die, that’s not what they were designed for.”  To explain he says: “There is a distinction between a disease-centred and a patient-centred model of care, and here is where caring can become both creative and less expensive.”

‘Silver tsunami’ of deaths about to hit nation by Damien Murphy (SMH Oct8-9, 2016) reports on a keynote address at a University of Sydney lecture: Dying Re-imagined: designing a better way to die.  Dr Miller has observed that modern societies started to fear death in a way foreign to previous generations. “Society used to be more agrarian and never far away from the cycles of life …. you couldn’t seduce yourself that you were somehow not part of nature … (and so now) the sheer volume of Baby Boomers has reawakened the idea that nature wins.”

Kate White, professor of palliative care nursing, University of Sydney, has proposed that we teach students about death at school. Sex education is a part of the curriculum so why not death education. “Imagine having a unit at high school where students were taught how to support someone at home, or support a family.”  To read the full story, go to: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/silver-tsunami-incoming-australians-facing-death-with-little-support-says-palliative-doctor-20161007-grx9k9.html ; and to watch Bruce Miller talk about What really matters at the end of life, that has had over 4 million views, log onto this TEDtalk at: https://www.ted.com/talks/bj_miller_what_really_matters_at_the_end_of_life?language=en#t-119970 ; Then for good measure: How to prepare for a good death – The single most important thing you can do is to name your proxy. Read the Q&A here: http://ideas.ted.com/how-to-prepare-for-a-good-death/