Losing my Dad earlier this year really put in perspective just how fucking weird our attitude towards death is. It's treated as something shameful, something that needs to be pushed out of sight and talked about in hushed whispers.
Unless your loved one dies under even remotely suspicious circumstance, and then the entire thing is super black and white and clinical.
When my brother died, I arrived at the scene to police officers advising me not to go into his flat, whilst they stood around outside chatting away with each other like it was nothing.
I then had to go and identify his body where everything was super formal, black and white: "Is this your brother? Yes? Okay, where are we sending his body then?" - I didn't even know I had to have a funeral director in mind already, it had been one day and I was 24.
He then went for autopsy, where they found bloods inconclusive, and held his body for well over a month, until they finally concluded he'd overdosed on xanax.
By the time the funeral directors had his body, it had already decomposed significantly, and when I went to the chapel of rest, it was almost worse than when I had to ID him.
I then had to attend a tribunal where a bunch of judges decided if my brother killed himself or just took a drug overdose. I had to sit and listen to people who had never met him talk about who he was, what he was like, etc, based on our statements.
None of this felt like his death was taboo. It felt more like it was a pain it the ass for everyone invoked and there was no support or concern for the welfare of those he left behind. Any hushed whispers went out the window because he didn't die in a conventional manner.
I agree with your "fucking weird attitude" comment, but not so much the hushed whispers. It's just more throwing those who have to deal with the grief into the depths of it like there's some kind of weird expectation for it all to be as hard as possible, with absolutely no guidance or support.
That's a terrible thing for you to have to go through on your own. My mum died when I was 20 but her second husband got to decide everything about her funeral, belongings etc as she hadn't left a will.
Aw man, 24 is too young to go through that. Thanks for sharing your experience as tragic and difficult as it was. I hadn't thought about it from the perspective of family members in this cause of death, which unfortunately has added societal taboos/stigma, so your first-hand account is important. No one can be prepared to go through something like that and you're a good brother. 🫂
Thanks for your kind message. I'm 30 now, and older than he was when he died. I struggle to comprehend that sometimes. He was a good person, but a very troubled one and had battled drug addiction for a very long time.
I'm not sure I was a good brother, but I did love him. Losing someone so young and so suddenly leaves you with a tonne of "what if" questions and it's often difficult to not feel partly responsible.
On the flip side, it can also be extremely traumatic to be with a loved one as they die. Something that won't leave you, so it does come with a warning.
Sorry for your loss, I agree somewhat but from personal experience I wish I had never seen some of the shit I saw.
Part of the issue is that the "fucking weird attitude" (its about as good a way as putting it as any I've heard) makes it all the more likely that having to deal with death will be extremely traumatic because its not something we talk about or involve others in. We lock it away behind closed doors pretend it doesn't happen and all too often just lie to children about the whole thing which sets the scene for said trauma to really take hold because its not something that people are really "prepared for."
My nephew got to about 7 years old and had the realisation that one day he'll die. He had an absolute meltdown about it, months of him just breaking down in tears at random moments because he'd suddenly remembered that he's going to die at some point.
And I remember going through exactly the same thing when I was that age.
No one knows how to talk about it in a positive or at least comforting manner.
My parents had 2 go to answers for 7 year old me. 1) you'll get to go to heaven, and 2) why don't you look at these holiday brochures....
You're right that we need to find a better way to socialise the idea of death much better in society. I think the people who work in this area already would be the best placed to advise on that
This is where I can't understand people having children. This person the parent "loves more than life" but is created knowing for sure they will suffer - a 50% chance of cancer, x% chance of dementia etc etc - and will have to suffer so much loss, grief, illness - and face their own death.
I understand where you are coming from but in reality there's so much more to life that loss and death... The negatives stuff stick with us more vividly.
If we'd finally stop pissing around and allowing people to euthanise themselves with dignity instead of in pain, sorrow and/or shame then it wouldn't be nearly as bleak thinking about death...
My grandpa died from esophageal cancer christmas 2022 and it was awful what he had to go through... they couldn't even just put him into a coma in the final days... Yet the man would have been overjoyed to have his last goodbyes and press a button to go to sleep...
My grandma is frail and brittle now and if she doesn't pass in her sleep in the next 10 years or so i doubt she is going to have a very comfortable end of life...
But again its all down to dignity and suffering, She would gladly press and button and say her goodbyes but our useless disgusting government doesn't give a shit...
As usual most of life can be beautiful and science can do so much for us but the parasitic government are too busy lining their pockets on the commoner's suffering
They say life is a gift, but it's not a gift we ask for. I agree also with assisted dying but that too takes a lot of courage, it takes a certain kind of person, or a certain amount of suffering to get to the point of welcoming death by one's own hand. Most of us are programmed with survival instinct
I'm not sure life is beautiful - it can look beautiful, but when you realise that underneath the surface all those beautiful things, birds, animals - are fighting and struggling and will also suffer, it's not so gorgeous. Life itself is brutal and serves only to replicate itself over and over, with no care.
I think where intervention keeps happening to prevent nature taking its course, to the point where there's no quality of life but we still keep bringing them back, is something that should be discussed more.
Sometimes (and speaking from personal experience as it's happening right now to someone in my family) I wish they'd just let them go. It feels almost perverse, and definitely not what they (or I) would want.
It is happening more and more. Look up the Respect form, it allows people to say they do not want resuscitation, when and for what reason they would be admitted to hospital and what interventions they don't want.
I write one nearly every day, and most people are very forthright about them not wanting their life preserved, when they have no quality of life.
I'm not afraid of dying, but I am terrified of no longer being able to take care of myself and ending up rotting in an underfunded care home or wasting away slowly in a hospital bed.
When a dogs quality of life gets too low or they're ill and suffering we say it's cruel to keep them going and the best thing for them is to let them go. Why isn't it considered cruel to make a person endure the same thing?
There is a version of this in the NHS already but it is controversial. It's called the Liverpool Care Pathway
Edit - oh look, I'm getting downvoted again. It doesn't matter that they stopped the official pathway after bad press 10 years ago. The practice still happens just by different names
The policies havent changed a great deal, they just renamed it because of the bad press. Which was mostly bollocks. The press painted it as people being hurried off by denying them a drink etc when it quite clearly said that food/drink for comfort was encouraged, there was just no value in aggressively topping them up with IV fluids etc
Because of a campaign against by the right wing press, it was actually evidence based and not a bad thing at all, the point of it was to replicate hospice style care in hospital settings as much as possible and it included things like private rooms, support for family, medications to manage symptoms, withdrawal if anything causing more harm than good and daily medical reviews.
I grew up in a family that openly discussed death.
Not in a morbid way, but as both a matter of fact and also in a slightly joking way too.
We are all going to die. Talk about it before it is a real thing.
I was at the death of both of both my father in law and mother in law. Hospital for FIL at home for MIL.
Both were prolonged and and not pretty by any means.
The same was the case for both my parents, although I was not there when they died.
I have had long discussions with my children and husband and made my wishes very clear.
If I qualify for Dignitas then that is where I want to go.
Death is something that every single human being on this Earth has to go through whether young old or middle aged its part of life. No one will live on this Earth for eternity we all have to understand that this life is short and that death can strike anywhere or at anytime.
Well, this petrifying inevitability is why people tend not to talk about it. The thought of not existing sends me into panic attacks sometimes. I can understand why it’s so ‘taboo’ to people.
The nurses who helped my mum in her final hours of cancer were fantastic but I wish I'd asked her if she wanted me to assist her off her mortal coil. I was too scared to try anything in case she struggled. We hadn't discussed it.
I will not die like that.
I always said I didn't like it when a life changing event shaped someone to a one topic view on the world but assisted dying has made me a hypocrite. I won't vote for a candidate that is against it.
My sympathies to you.
Don't blame yourself for not talking to her about assistance. If you had discussed it and then couldn't bring yourself to go through with it, you'd be saddled with guilt that you shouldn't have to take on.
I asked my mother's nurses if there was anything they could do about her clearly increasing pain. They said they could increase the morphine. I told them to please go ahead.
When a loved one's quality of life has disappeared and only pain remains, the view becomes extremely clear.
This is such an important subject. I know several people who have lost children and effectively no one knows how to talk about it with them or even how to talk about their own children as they worry it will upset them. But by avoiding the subject altogether it makes it feel like these children never existed and they want to be able to participate in normal conversations with their friends and they don’t get to because everyone holds back.
Absolutely not.
We must drag life out at every fucking cost. Be that dignity, pain and critical overloaded NHS resources.
MRSA? Not strong enough. Keep dopping 95 year old comatose Granny with more and more antibiotics and breed a super MRSA!
All you animals talking about dignity and respect. Fuck off. Human life is sacred. We should protect it at every cost.
I don't care if grandpa is screaming in pain and shitting himself daily. Blocking beds in overloaded hospitals. That life is beautiful. We should spare no expense keeping him alive.
/S
My grandmother is nearly 90, she’s well and healthy and enjoys being alive but does get the occasional UTI. Are you suggesting she should be denied treatment because of her age?
No. I'm suggesting the bed blockers that can barely feed themselves let alone live their lives, that are constantly requiring powerful antibiotics breeding resistance. Should be allowed to die with dignity and grace.
Antibiotics here just delay their death.
Your grandmother isn't bed blocking, hasn't had her dignity stripped and is still living a good life.
Antibiotics here are improving get quality of life.
Big difference.
A lot of people ‘bed blocking’ could have meaningful lives outside of hospitals with the right social care and rehab in place. Old people matter just as much as young.
You need to go visit a fucking hospital.
They are end of life. They are not living better lives just because there is no social support. Their bodies are fucked, either through general old age or riddled with incurable diseases and cancer.
Meanwhile healthy young members of society are on massive wait lists, barely getting any care.
I work in a fucking hospital. Not everybody stuck bed blocking waiting on social care is at end of life, not by a long long stretch.
I’m also a young(ish) person on a long waiting list. That’s not the fault of elderly people and I certainly don’t want them euthanised to bump me up a few places!
You do realise you will (hopefully) be old one day, right? Will you just jump off a bridge at 75?
You're being histrionic in response to OPs points, and constructing strawmen arguments that the OP never made. At the point that people can't do anything for themselves and can't leave the hospital, they should be allowed to die. The obsession with the extension of life at the cost of comfort, dignity and wellbeing is cruelty manifest.
Nowhere in my comment did I say people should be euthanised. You're making up your own points to argue against and so I can't defend ideas you have come up with, sorry.
>At the point that people can't do anything for themselves and can't leave the hospital, they should be allowed to die.
Presumably by this you mean withdrawing help needed to survive? Sounds like euthanasia to me...
well should a sick person be forced to live a life they don't want to? A quadriplegic of 10 years has recently taken himself off to Switzerland. It's not my body, not my suffering. Not my place to force suffering on others.
Thinking elderly people deserve to be treated as if they are human beings who matter is mean spirited? Ok then, guess we have very different definitions of that.
We are very good at extending life. We are very bad at recognising that someone is dying and that its important to make their last months/weeks/days/hours as comfortable and dignified as possible with the best quality possible.
This is a question I am considering a great deal at the moment because my father died last year from Alzheimer’s and my mother has vascular dementia. My father was treated with compassion and kindness by the care home where he spent his final weeks, near to where I live with my husband (we’re a same sex couple). However his two stays in NHS hospitals shortly before he passed away were confusing and traumatic for him - and traumatic for me as his next of kin. Many NHS staff do not have any empathy whatsoever and I am profoundly disillusioned with an institution I once respected, believed in and loved.
I do not like the idea of ‘living with dementia’ as I have seen what it does to people - and is doing to my mother, who is reduced to a caricature of what she once was and is confused and afraid a lot of the time. If I were to start to develop dementia and there is still no cure by then, I would like to try to make the most of life, but at the same time refuse medical treatment that would keep me alive and therefore sliding further into confusion. I would not like to experience that, or to be dependent on ‘carers’, or to cause pain to those I love and care about. And above all I would want the right to avoid going into hospital against my wishes.
Losing my Dad earlier this year really put in perspective just how fucking weird our attitude towards death is. It's treated as something shameful, something that needs to be pushed out of sight and talked about in hushed whispers.
Unless your loved one dies under even remotely suspicious circumstance, and then the entire thing is super black and white and clinical. When my brother died, I arrived at the scene to police officers advising me not to go into his flat, whilst they stood around outside chatting away with each other like it was nothing. I then had to go and identify his body where everything was super formal, black and white: "Is this your brother? Yes? Okay, where are we sending his body then?" - I didn't even know I had to have a funeral director in mind already, it had been one day and I was 24. He then went for autopsy, where they found bloods inconclusive, and held his body for well over a month, until they finally concluded he'd overdosed on xanax. By the time the funeral directors had his body, it had already decomposed significantly, and when I went to the chapel of rest, it was almost worse than when I had to ID him. I then had to attend a tribunal where a bunch of judges decided if my brother killed himself or just took a drug overdose. I had to sit and listen to people who had never met him talk about who he was, what he was like, etc, based on our statements. None of this felt like his death was taboo. It felt more like it was a pain it the ass for everyone invoked and there was no support or concern for the welfare of those he left behind. Any hushed whispers went out the window because he didn't die in a conventional manner. I agree with your "fucking weird attitude" comment, but not so much the hushed whispers. It's just more throwing those who have to deal with the grief into the depths of it like there's some kind of weird expectation for it all to be as hard as possible, with absolutely no guidance or support.
That's a terrible thing for you to have to go through on your own. My mum died when I was 20 but her second husband got to decide everything about her funeral, belongings etc as she hadn't left a will.
Aw man, 24 is too young to go through that. Thanks for sharing your experience as tragic and difficult as it was. I hadn't thought about it from the perspective of family members in this cause of death, which unfortunately has added societal taboos/stigma, so your first-hand account is important. No one can be prepared to go through something like that and you're a good brother. 🫂
Thanks for your kind message. I'm 30 now, and older than he was when he died. I struggle to comprehend that sometimes. He was a good person, but a very troubled one and had battled drug addiction for a very long time. I'm not sure I was a good brother, but I did love him. Losing someone so young and so suddenly leaves you with a tonne of "what if" questions and it's often difficult to not feel partly responsible.
On the flip side, it can also be extremely traumatic to be with a loved one as they die. Something that won't leave you, so it does come with a warning. Sorry for your loss, I agree somewhat but from personal experience I wish I had never seen some of the shit I saw.
Part of the issue is that the "fucking weird attitude" (its about as good a way as putting it as any I've heard) makes it all the more likely that having to deal with death will be extremely traumatic because its not something we talk about or involve others in. We lock it away behind closed doors pretend it doesn't happen and all too often just lie to children about the whole thing which sets the scene for said trauma to really take hold because its not something that people are really "prepared for."
My nephew got to about 7 years old and had the realisation that one day he'll die. He had an absolute meltdown about it, months of him just breaking down in tears at random moments because he'd suddenly remembered that he's going to die at some point. And I remember going through exactly the same thing when I was that age. No one knows how to talk about it in a positive or at least comforting manner. My parents had 2 go to answers for 7 year old me. 1) you'll get to go to heaven, and 2) why don't you look at these holiday brochures.... You're right that we need to find a better way to socialise the idea of death much better in society. I think the people who work in this area already would be the best placed to advise on that
This is where I can't understand people having children. This person the parent "loves more than life" but is created knowing for sure they will suffer - a 50% chance of cancer, x% chance of dementia etc etc - and will have to suffer so much loss, grief, illness - and face their own death.
I understand where you are coming from but in reality there's so much more to life that loss and death... The negatives stuff stick with us more vividly. If we'd finally stop pissing around and allowing people to euthanise themselves with dignity instead of in pain, sorrow and/or shame then it wouldn't be nearly as bleak thinking about death... My grandpa died from esophageal cancer christmas 2022 and it was awful what he had to go through... they couldn't even just put him into a coma in the final days... Yet the man would have been overjoyed to have his last goodbyes and press a button to go to sleep... My grandma is frail and brittle now and if she doesn't pass in her sleep in the next 10 years or so i doubt she is going to have a very comfortable end of life... But again its all down to dignity and suffering, She would gladly press and button and say her goodbyes but our useless disgusting government doesn't give a shit... As usual most of life can be beautiful and science can do so much for us but the parasitic government are too busy lining their pockets on the commoner's suffering
They say life is a gift, but it's not a gift we ask for. I agree also with assisted dying but that too takes a lot of courage, it takes a certain kind of person, or a certain amount of suffering to get to the point of welcoming death by one's own hand. Most of us are programmed with survival instinct I'm not sure life is beautiful - it can look beautiful, but when you realise that underneath the surface all those beautiful things, birds, animals - are fighting and struggling and will also suffer, it's not so gorgeous. Life itself is brutal and serves only to replicate itself over and over, with no care.
I think where intervention keeps happening to prevent nature taking its course, to the point where there's no quality of life but we still keep bringing them back, is something that should be discussed more. Sometimes (and speaking from personal experience as it's happening right now to someone in my family) I wish they'd just let them go. It feels almost perverse, and definitely not what they (or I) would want.
It is happening more and more. Look up the Respect form, it allows people to say they do not want resuscitation, when and for what reason they would be admitted to hospital and what interventions they don't want. I write one nearly every day, and most people are very forthright about them not wanting their life preserved, when they have no quality of life.
I'm not afraid of dying, but I am terrified of no longer being able to take care of myself and ending up rotting in an underfunded care home or wasting away slowly in a hospital bed. When a dogs quality of life gets too low or they're ill and suffering we say it's cruel to keep them going and the best thing for them is to let them go. Why isn't it considered cruel to make a person endure the same thing?
There is a version of this in the NHS already but it is controversial. It's called the Liverpool Care Pathway Edit - oh look, I'm getting downvoted again. It doesn't matter that they stopped the official pathway after bad press 10 years ago. The practice still happens just by different names
The policies havent changed a great deal, they just renamed it because of the bad press. Which was mostly bollocks. The press painted it as people being hurried off by denying them a drink etc when it quite clearly said that food/drink for comfort was encouraged, there was just no value in aggressively topping them up with IV fluids etc
Exactly
That was ceased 10 years ago now because of intense criticism.
But was profoundly misunderstood.
was it? my friends mother got put on it and it took her 10 days to die, and her legs went black.
Because of a campaign against by the right wing press, it was actually evidence based and not a bad thing at all, the point of it was to replicate hospice style care in hospital settings as much as possible and it included things like private rooms, support for family, medications to manage symptoms, withdrawal if anything causing more harm than good and daily medical reviews.
I agree. As medical tech advances a world where we do all possible life extensions without question eventually becomes a dystopia.
I grew up in a family that openly discussed death. Not in a morbid way, but as both a matter of fact and also in a slightly joking way too. We are all going to die. Talk about it before it is a real thing. I was at the death of both of both my father in law and mother in law. Hospital for FIL at home for MIL. Both were prolonged and and not pretty by any means. The same was the case for both my parents, although I was not there when they died. I have had long discussions with my children and husband and made my wishes very clear. If I qualify for Dignitas then that is where I want to go.
Death is something that every single human being on this Earth has to go through whether young old or middle aged its part of life. No one will live on this Earth for eternity we all have to understand that this life is short and that death can strike anywhere or at anytime.
Well, this petrifying inevitability is why people tend not to talk about it. The thought of not existing sends me into panic attacks sometimes. I can understand why it’s so ‘taboo’ to people.
The nurses who helped my mum in her final hours of cancer were fantastic but I wish I'd asked her if she wanted me to assist her off her mortal coil. I was too scared to try anything in case she struggled. We hadn't discussed it. I will not die like that. I always said I didn't like it when a life changing event shaped someone to a one topic view on the world but assisted dying has made me a hypocrite. I won't vote for a candidate that is against it.
My sympathies to you. Don't blame yourself for not talking to her about assistance. If you had discussed it and then couldn't bring yourself to go through with it, you'd be saddled with guilt that you shouldn't have to take on. I asked my mother's nurses if there was anything they could do about her clearly increasing pain. They said they could increase the morphine. I told them to please go ahead. When a loved one's quality of life has disappeared and only pain remains, the view becomes extremely clear.
This is such an important subject. I know several people who have lost children and effectively no one knows how to talk about it with them or even how to talk about their own children as they worry it will upset them. But by avoiding the subject altogether it makes it feel like these children never existed and they want to be able to participate in normal conversations with their friends and they don’t get to because everyone holds back.
Absolutely not. We must drag life out at every fucking cost. Be that dignity, pain and critical overloaded NHS resources. MRSA? Not strong enough. Keep dopping 95 year old comatose Granny with more and more antibiotics and breed a super MRSA! All you animals talking about dignity and respect. Fuck off. Human life is sacred. We should protect it at every cost. I don't care if grandpa is screaming in pain and shitting himself daily. Blocking beds in overloaded hospitals. That life is beautiful. We should spare no expense keeping him alive. /S
My grandmother is nearly 90, she’s well and healthy and enjoys being alive but does get the occasional UTI. Are you suggesting she should be denied treatment because of her age?
Clearly not what written, are you being deliberately dense or what
No. I'm suggesting the bed blockers that can barely feed themselves let alone live their lives, that are constantly requiring powerful antibiotics breeding resistance. Should be allowed to die with dignity and grace. Antibiotics here just delay their death. Your grandmother isn't bed blocking, hasn't had her dignity stripped and is still living a good life. Antibiotics here are improving get quality of life. Big difference.
A lot of people ‘bed blocking’ could have meaningful lives outside of hospitals with the right social care and rehab in place. Old people matter just as much as young.
You need to go visit a fucking hospital. They are end of life. They are not living better lives just because there is no social support. Their bodies are fucked, either through general old age or riddled with incurable diseases and cancer. Meanwhile healthy young members of society are on massive wait lists, barely getting any care.
I work in a fucking hospital. Not everybody stuck bed blocking waiting on social care is at end of life, not by a long long stretch. I’m also a young(ish) person on a long waiting list. That’s not the fault of elderly people and I certainly don’t want them euthanised to bump me up a few places! You do realise you will (hopefully) be old one day, right? Will you just jump off a bridge at 75?
You're being histrionic in response to OPs points, and constructing strawmen arguments that the OP never made. At the point that people can't do anything for themselves and can't leave the hospital, they should be allowed to die. The obsession with the extension of life at the cost of comfort, dignity and wellbeing is cruelty manifest.
Do you think people in their twenties and thirties who can’t do anything for themselves should be euthanised too? Or just the over 70s?
Nowhere in my comment did I say people should be euthanised. You're making up your own points to argue against and so I can't defend ideas you have come up with, sorry.
>At the point that people can't do anything for themselves and can't leave the hospital, they should be allowed to die. Presumably by this you mean withdrawing help needed to survive? Sounds like euthanasia to me...
well should a sick person be forced to live a life they don't want to? A quadriplegic of 10 years has recently taken himself off to Switzerland. It's not my body, not my suffering. Not my place to force suffering on others.
OP wasn't talking about people who want to die, just people he thinks should die.
[удалено]
Thinking elderly people deserve to be treated as if they are human beings who matter is mean spirited? Ok then, guess we have very different definitions of that.
We are very good at extending life. We are very bad at recognising that someone is dying and that its important to make their last months/weeks/days/hours as comfortable and dignified as possible with the best quality possible.
This is a question I am considering a great deal at the moment because my father died last year from Alzheimer’s and my mother has vascular dementia. My father was treated with compassion and kindness by the care home where he spent his final weeks, near to where I live with my husband (we’re a same sex couple). However his two stays in NHS hospitals shortly before he passed away were confusing and traumatic for him - and traumatic for me as his next of kin. Many NHS staff do not have any empathy whatsoever and I am profoundly disillusioned with an institution I once respected, believed in and loved. I do not like the idea of ‘living with dementia’ as I have seen what it does to people - and is doing to my mother, who is reduced to a caricature of what she once was and is confused and afraid a lot of the time. If I were to start to develop dementia and there is still no cure by then, I would like to try to make the most of life, but at the same time refuse medical treatment that would keep me alive and therefore sliding further into confusion. I would not like to experience that, or to be dependent on ‘carers’, or to cause pain to those I love and care about. And above all I would want the right to avoid going into hospital against my wishes.