Let’s talk about death

Did I really do this? Did I shoot myself in the foot by openly starting a debate on a taboo? Why is death still a taboo in this time and age though?

This reflection on death was triggered by my witnessing from afar the death of several aged people who were in denial of the gravity of their illness and who acted like fools and nearly destroyed, because of that, the lives of their loved ones by acting totally foolishly. I know I only had one side of the story as it was relayed by people I know but I couldn’t help thinking that if these people were less afraid of death or of talking about death, then perhaps all that pain and suffering would have been spared for everyone involved. To me, it seemed like these dying people were fighting like cats against the inevitable and although it is good to have a will to live, in certain circumstances the fighting actually makes things a lot worse because of the fear that is involved.

From very young, I have always been fascinated by death, to the point that my parents thought I was weird and even wanted to take me to a psychologist. I think I was only in my twenties when I started reading books by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross on death and the dying. Again, my parents watched me doing this with disgust. Death was never discussed at home. But to me, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was raising such important issues and doing sacred work and yet she has been dead for six years now, and I don’t feel things have progressed immensely.

Nobody knows for sure what happens when we die, yet there has been an incredible amount of testimonies about Near Death Experiences that most people would be well advised to read. I know it’s not conclusive and scientists have debunked the whole experience has hallucinatory but to me they make so much sense that I wish more people would read them. Just to know that when you are in the process of dying, you leave your body, you feel no pain and you meet with loved ones on the other side is so comforting that personally that would be enough for me to feel a lot more relaxed about dying.

Perhaps because I have always been so interested to research this topic that no one wants to talk about, especially when their lives are touched by life threatening illnesses that oblige them to face the fact that we are all going to die one day and at that particular time in their lives, death has come to look them in the face. And it’s true, the only thing we can be sure on this earth is that one day, we are going to die. So why do we avoid the subject at all cost?

This interest of mine has lead me to investigate reincarnation. And again, there is so much to read about the concept. First of all, there is Ian Stevenson’s book Twenty cases suggestive of reincarnation, where the author investigates cases of young children who have retained the memory of their past lives to such a detail that he was able to track down the family of their past incarnation and make contact and confirm stories.  If this was not enough, there are now countless of books written by hypnotherapists who stumbled upon “past lives” that their clients shared whilst in trance. My favourite ones are “Many lives many masters” by Brian Wess. This book actually made me so interested in hypnotherapy that I eventually trained as one. My other favourites are books by Michael Newton in particular “Journey of Souls”. All these book contain fascinating stories about memories unveiled about past lives but also about the process of dying and life between lives. Even if when reading you still think that this is a nice theory reading such books can give such insights and inspiration that I really recommend their reading.

And then, to take my interest further, I trained with the Penny Brohn Cancer Care to help people who live with cancer and one of the sessions we had was with the St Peter’s hospice and that was truly educational. The impulse to do this was the diagnosis of a brain tumour detected on my father. That was in 2007. His tumour is not an aggressive cancerous type but the brain being the contained space that it is, it is neverless a huge thread and it impacts his lifestyle more than we would like it to do. And recently, after a six months respite, we learnt that his tumour was gaining space again and of courses, for me, it raised the subject of his mortality. Not to mention that two of my favourite aunts have died in the past year and one of my favourite uncles. Plus my cat has been diagnosed with a tumour on his heart with not much time to live.

It’s sure, knowing about life before life or life after death and knowing that they survive helps. And to me, this is more than a hypothesis because when my grand mother died in 2001, she came to me in a dream and said goodbye.  And a few months later, I witnessed my then three year old daughter talk discuss with a white blob in her bedroom in the middle of the night, only to learn a few days later that her great grand mother had died at that precise moment.

I am sharing all these stories because I believe we live in a time and age where death should not be taboo anymore. And that if it wasn’t such a taboo, then we could live better lives and approach our mortality in a much more “relaxed” or at least peaceful manner although the timing of it always comes much too early to our liking and I understand that.

Interestingly this topic of death has surfaced as I am now expecting another child and I cannot help thinking that life and death are as intimately linked as the sun and the shadow that it creates.

So can you talk about death?

A lovely day to you all

Anges de Lumiere