Category Archives: discussion
At the end of my life….what would love do now?
I attended the 2021 soul midwifery conference and this awesome poem was read out and I totally loved it, as others did and felt it encapsulated the role of soul midwifes and others whom support people at the end of life and wanted to share this here:
At the end of my life….what would love do now?
Love would be still and open; listening closely to what I might be telling you by voice or body, Not fixing, not directing; not diminishing my pain and fear.
Love will be tender and kind, reassuring me that you are here beside me, and with me,
Not scared or telling me it will all be okay or to keep my chin up,
But companionable, constant and present in the face of our not knowing.
Love will attend to my comfort and my surroundings
Adjusting the covers, the warmth and light, with gentle touch and sounds.
Love will touch me, wiping my brow, holding my hand and stroking my arm, Looking into my eyes without backing away in the face of my impending death.
Love will help others to be here too.
To help those I love to be near me by whatever means we can use.
Love will dance or hum to the tunes of our lives and help us to share this precious time. Love will give me chance to say goodbye to those I love,
and for them to say it to me if they choose.
To share stories and memories of our times together, good and bad.
Love will not shy away from the things that need to be felt, and said and heard.
To show how much you mean to me, and, perhaps, of I to you.
Love will surround me until, and even beyond, the point where I leave you, parted, perhaps, forever.
Love will let me go with dignity and in peace as we say our goodbyes and I take my leave. To let me know that while I may be missed… my loved ones will be okay.
Love will honour and celebrate our times together through stories and memories,
When the right time comes for people to gather again.
Or before, because there is no need to wait.
Love will go on living and laughing and celebrating the precious days ahead, Knowing that I lived well and died well, surrounded by love.
Reflection: What are your choices and wishes for the end of your life? What matters to you and to your loved ones?
Julie Barnes, 9 April 2020, julie.barnes@yahoo.co.uk Inspired by Felicity Warner, Soul Midwife Training, www.soulmidwives.co.uk Illustration by Julian Burton julian.burton@delta7.com Video recording with Corinna Powlesland at https://soulmidwivesshop.org/
Earth Earth Awakening – Death Awareness Space
I was delighted to be invited to complete the Death Awareness team held by Celia Libera and Mike Grenville at the Green Earth Awakening (GEA) festival which is an Autumn event, from Wednesday 12th to Sunday 16th September 2018, this event is affiliated with the Buddhafield Festival. A description of the GEA is as follows: ‘The Green Earth awakening is an intimate, late summer gathering to explore engaged Buddhism, community living, land skills and creative responses to forging social resilience. To bring together Buddhists, activists and anyone drawn to exploring the skills required to reach our collective potential. An Off-grid, drug and alcohol-free, temporary community where creativity can weave and connections can deepen. Expect the opportunity to network and collaborate through discourse, movement, music, play and fireside story and song.’
Tipi
‘The Buddhafield theme for 2018 is Dance of Life and Death, (which followed through to the GEA): Death can bring deep sorrow and grief. As the Buddha showed, all human lives are touched by loss. The paradox of the dance of life is that it is also the dance of death. Life is so precious because we have such limited time on this earth. How do we honour our grief and sorrow, whilst allowing it to permeate our lives in a positive way, encouraging us to transform ourselves? Buddhafield and GEA celebrated relationships, coming into a community, turning towards death and celebrating the joy of life, together, supported by our beautiful earth’.
I arrived Thursday evening arriving just in time to co-hold the Death cafe with Celia in our beautiful tipi tent, this was a full tent and one of the main themes that arose was suicide, and someone dealing with a terminal prognosis. It was powerful to share, and bear witness to peoples experiences and thoughts.
Friday morning Celia and I held a session Exploring Mortality and making plans to make choices around our death. And in the late morning, I offered a Gentle touch session, which became a lovely pampering session with emphasis on touch and consent as a giver and receiver and being clear about our own boundaries.
In the afternoon, I attended a grief tending ritual which was beautifully held by Sophy and her team, this was my second experience of this, my first one being at Buddahfield this year. These teachings come from Sobonfu Somé, who has brought to the West teachings from the ancient wisdom, ritual and practices of her Dagara ancestors. Largely offering community grief, so often we grieve alone or not at all, however, when we grieve together, not only does it help the individual to heal, it also helps strengthen the entire community fabric. Which I what I felt again. This yet again was a powerful ritual of feeling supported and supporting people in our temporary village namely this festival. I recommend attending such a ritual if you get the opportunity The song that was sung by us during this ritual and the same as the previous grief tending has now stayed with me.
Saturday morning Mike offered a workshop called when someone dies – exploring practical and spiritual options at and after death and Celia led 5 discussions to have with the dying who are living.
In the afternoon we all offered Blessing the body – ritual of washing, blessing and anointing as we say goodbye to our loved one. Celia made a splendid corpse model as we offer a demonstration. Late evening we held a companion voices session- whereby we learnt a simple song (lullabies in essence)and each takes it, in turn, to lie down and be sung too. It feels like a beautiful healing sound/voice bath.
Sunday we completed with Dying to talk session and a Sound Bath, the sound Bath was popular and unfortunately, we had to turn people away as the tipi was full. I totally enjoyed the festival, a small 500 people capacity and out in nature, the weather was good for this time of year. We offered varied workshops around death and dying and it was lovely to be offering this space at this festival and working alongside an awesome team.
Taking Death Café to Colourfest 2018
Death Café has been presented and offered at different festivals before. This was Colourfest’s first Death Café and my first time to run one at a festival, so I was so delighted to be hosting this one. This festival is described as “A dynamic, beautiful & constantly evolving gem of a gathering celebrating life through connection, ceremony, yoga, dance, music, art, theatre & playfulness.”
I was scheduled for Friday and Saturday. On Friday twenty people or so arrived; the indoor venue room that we were scheduled to use was not appropriate to use and I was asked to move to the tiny bar which was in fact too small. Unfortunately, a couple of people left and or didn’t stay as they popped in, whilst the others were ok to continue in the compact space.
I began with a minutes silence to remember those who have been before and then followed with an introduction of myself and how death cafes began, the purpose of them and then an encouragement to discuss any aspect around death and dying. I suggested that the conversations could be held in small clusters of about 3 to 4 small groups.
I provided a selection of herbal teas as I thought this would be the most simplistic method along with some biscuits.
In essence, there was a mix age range and I think the majority of people had never been to a Death Café before, however, it was well received and the conversations were flowing freely. Some had experienced a close family member or friend dying and were recounting their experiences of that time and others had no first-hand experience, however, it seemed that all wanted the opportunity to be in a discussion group around death.
A question was posed re mediumship versus the soul being reincarnated and how can the two approaches to the spirit or soul be both? Another spoke about their experience attending a funeral in Thailand for a local person and the cultural difference, in which gambling at funerals seemed to be a cultural given and part of the ritual and in addition lighting of string fire rope which travelled the site and finished at setting the cremator/body alight!
Near the end of our session, a woman said that she was inspired to start a Death Café in her own area, which is very positive indeed.
In the lounge area close to the bar and dining room I had put information leaflets from Dying Matters & Marie Curie and had a blackboard up with part of a comment: ‘Before I die I want to …. ‘ with available chalk to use. On my return, the blackboard already had a few statements written on. The following day the blackboard was full of interesting comments, however, it also had graffiti of a penis on it, which I felt a little disappointed by.
For the death Café itself, I managed to secure the dining room which was far more spacious and I felt drawn to stay in one large group, as the numbers were small, however more people drifted in and the number exceeded over 23 / 25, despite this we remained in the large group as people already had begun to introduce themselves.
Saturdays Café was also lovely. I believe nearly all except one had never attended a death Café before. Those who attended were pleased this was taking place or intrigued to be discussing death and also there were a significant number of people who were in grief, in particular, one with a recent and unexpected sudden death and another with a longer term grief. Hence there seemed to be quite a bit of sadness in the group generally along with intrigue and interest. We also touch on euthanasia and the seemingly insufficient end of life training that Doctors receive. For both sessions, I ended with my usual minute silence to complete.
In conclusion, the cafes were a good call to be on the festival programme and I hope there will be future opportunities. Colourfest is a delightful festival with a beautiful energy. Death is part of our life cycle, therefore to include Death cafes alongside inspirational, healing workshops and the general festive spirit is a welcomed aspect to be in the mix.
Making a Will
In November I had re-written my Will, which, on this occasion, was professionally written by a solicitor. Previously I have done DIY Wills bought from the Post Office or a High Street shop. l update my Will roughly every five years or so and as I was aware of the Will Aid Scheme, I thought that I would do this update as a comparison. Will Aid is a scheme that is available every November, where one can get a Will written for a donation of around £95.00. Will Aid is a partnership between the legal profession and nine UK’s charities. Every November, participating solicitors waive their fee for writing a basic Will. Instead, they invite clients to make a voluntary donation to Will Aid – They suggest £95 for a single basic Will and £150 for a pair of basic ‘mirror’ Wills.
My new Will details/wishes were more or less taken from the previous Will that I had written, as I brought it in to discuss. The only significant change to note was writing the addresses of those that I want to benefit from my will. This was advised to be written in the Will, rather than on a separate piece of paper, and it proved helpful as I became aware that I didn’t have all the addresses.
In conclusion, if you have a fairly simple Will, which I did, then DIY Wills is no different and just as legal. In England and Wales, the legal requirement is that the will is signed and witnessed by two people present. In Scotland, it only needs to be witnessed and signed by one other person.
If you are over 55 years old you can get a Will done for free. Under the scheme called Free Wills Month. The Scheme takes place every March and October and is backed by Charities, however, be prepared for your solicitor to ask if you would like to leave a donation to a chosen cause when you die, although you are under no obligation to do so. The towns and cities taking part in Free Wills Month vary each time the campaign runs. Visit the ‘Free Will Month‘ website during March or October and enter your postcode. You’ll be given a list of participating solicitors close to you, which you can choose from to arrange an appointment.
However, it’s simple to write a will, particularly when using guidelines from DIY Wills or from the opportunities of a solicitor as noted above. Its worth noting that all Wills become invalid if you get married and it’s wise to update your Will regularly. The most important message that I can offer is DO WRITE A WILL, this allows your wishes to be granted as you would want and your funeral wishes too. We often change our minds or viewpoints so rewrite your Will or funeral plan regularly to reflect this.
Death: Is it your right to choose?
I was deeply affected by a recent visit to an exhibition centred around a re-creation of a room at the Dignitas flat near Zurich, Switzerland. This powerful and emotive installation is part of an exploration on the theme of assisted dying ‘Death: is it your right to choose?’ from 23rd January until March 2016 at the Bristol Museum. I went to view this exhibition prior to attending the talk and panel debate on Assisted Dying that same evening.
This exhibition complements Death: the Human Experience exhibition which I previously attended and wrote about.
As it stands, the current law on assisted dying in the UK is that to assist someone to take their own life remains illegal.
So what is Dignitas? It is a not-for-profit organisation founded on the principle ‘To live with dignity – to die with dignity.’ They believe that everyone has the right to make their own decisions about how they want to die. One of the things they do is offer people the opportunity to end their own life. And people, if they are well and able enough, will travel from abroad to check in and receive the ‘medication’ to end their life on the premises. There were testimonies from individuals who had travelled from the UK and other countries to Zurich.
For me, the most moving part of this installation was hearing audios of the last hour and indeed, last few moments, of the individual, their relatives, and staff at Dignitas. There were written scripts available in the installation too. I recommend visiting the exhibition for an insight into the current debate and to ask yourself whether the UK should be considering the alternative in the light of Dignitas’s 30 years’ experience of meeting end of life needs.
The Assisted Dying Panel debate was later that evening at the museum. The debate or discussion was:
Should people have the right to decide how and when they die?
A panel of experts discussed the ethics and legalities of assisted dying and the speakers included:
- Richard Huxtable. Chair. (Professor of Medical Law and Ethics, University of Bristol)
- Lesley Close (accompanied brother John to Dignitas in 2003)
- Silvan Luley (Dignitas)
- Katherine Sleeman (Clinical Lecturer in Palliative care, Kings College, London)
- Havi Carel (Professor of Philosophy, University of Bristol)
- John Troyer (Director Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath)
The debate was heavily oversubscribed, indicating the passion and determination felt by many, on all sides of the debate, for a review of the law. Initially the number attending was set for 80, however the numbers allowed kept getting extended as people were queuing up to get in, the final figure was in the region of 320, and I just about managed to get back in myself.
The discussion started with the Chair giving a definition, and the issues:
‘Assisted dying is the intention of ending of a life of suffering on request with the help of an assistant’.
So the crux of the debate/ discussion was of assisted dying (AD) and does the United Kingdom keep Assisted dying as
A) Keep unlawful
B) Make lawful
C) Keep unlawful but apply law compassionately