Adapted from an article entitled 'Natural death and green burial - their special relevance to old people and their organisations'.
As the years go by, older people have most to do with death. Even if their own health is excellent they find themselves attending funerals with increasing frequency or visiting family or friends in hospital, etc. Yet too often funerals seem unsatisfactory rituals and we don't know what to say to loved ones when we or they are dying.
For the spiritual or psychological well-being of older people it matters that they feel they can talk about death and dying as natural occurrences; that they can make personal sense of the loss of loved ones, including the loss of the world which our own approaching death signifies. On our ability to make personal and public sense of death hangs our personal confidence and social status as we grow older - are we elders of the tribe who show the way with our heads held high, or merely embarrassing nuisances half-surviving in an ever deeper dungeon of private unresolved anxiety?
Frank, open discussion to prepare 'living wills' and advance arrangement of funerals and burial directives can help family members begin the bereavement process. Likewise expressive, affectionate, meaningful ways of saying goodbye play a vital role in helping us work through the process of grieving and are thus important from the point of view of good public (mental) health. Yet neither will happen so long as it is considered 'morbid' to talk about death and dying.
Fear of death affects all ages of people but the young and young-middle-aged act out their fear by shunning and discriminating against those older than themselves - who carry in their elderly bodies the unwelcome whisper: All things pass, you too will die. If fear of death is the underlying taproot of ageism, then those who suffer most from ageism have a special incentive to address this taboo in new creative ways, possibly analogous to the consciousness-raising circles and 'speak-outs' pioneered by feminism, gay liberation and black consciousness movements.
One issue which troubles many old people is: What sort of a world are we leaving to our children and grandchildren? Yet current burial arrangements are highly unsustainable. Of all the dioxins released into the atmosphere by combustion a staggering 12 per cent come from crematoria (according to a DTI/EU Guide to Household Waste Management) not to mention the pollution resulting from having to drive to them for cremation services. Conventional cemeteries may be nearer home, but involve regular mowings for decades, if not centuries, while conventional coffins are full of dodgy glues, formaldehyde, chrome handles, etc. Woodland burials using ecological coffins or shrouds should not be seen as second-rate affairs akin to paupers' graves, but rather as positive affirmations about biodiversity and the world we want our loved ones to inherit.
Another worry for many is cost, especially when there will always be some who equate a simple cost-effective arrangement with shameful skimping. Most funeral directors are doubtless compassionate people but it would be expecting a lot from the trade as a whole for them to lead the way in disaggregating 'all in' prices which include:
Old people have a direct stake in seeing an end to the dominant social norms which equate 'good send-offs' with expensive outlays. There is nothing shameful or second-rate about a d-i-y funeral followed by a 'green burial' in a simple coffin or shroud. In this, as in other matters, old people can lead the way and with an obvious role for their organisations as consumer shop-stewards.
As well as working for reforms from the local funeral trade (including the Co-op and florists), there is a need to encourage fresh thinking from:
Draft petition for a public inquiry in order to secure effective freedom of choice for those facing death or arranging for funerals and burials in Scotland.
To the Scottish Parliament:
... The Petitioners request that the Scottish Parliament undertake such inquiries as will establish whether there exists (as the Petitioners believe) cause for legitimate and widespread public disquiet concerning the costs surrounding death and the range of practical options readily available to most of the people of Scotland when dying or bereaved; which inquiries should specifically investigate
with respect to the funeral trade:
with respect to those engaged in burial and cremation:
with respect to the legal profession:
and with respect to those engaged in the provision of medical care:
Death comes to us all! A platitude one might say. And yet how profound are the implications of this our common existential predicament. To begin with it destroys any notions that some people are experts on death helping others who are the ones who are going to die. We are going to die too!, and really realising this can help us to treasure every moment of life and appreciate as never before its beauty and mystery.
Moreover, realising that we are all in the same boat can help us to look on the lives of others and our own with renewed sympathy, tenderness and solidarity. In the light of our common mortality, all the distinctions we tend to make between men and women, incomers or locals, educated or so-called 'uneducated', etc, don't they all begin to look increasingly invidious, or at least of secondary importance, compared with what unites us as human beings?
Not for nothing has death been called 'the great leveller'. All our preciously crafted personal identities, all our over-concentrations upon being unique individuals with such-and-such special theories about what happens on or after death - doesn't death itself teach us to hold these preoccupations with our and others' identities much more lightly than when we are still attempting, Canute-like, to defend against the inevitable? We too are common - common as dirt, common as worms. What first appears as an affront to our pride can increasingly be experienced as an advance gift from 'Sister Death', the blessed relief of being free to drop all pretensions that prevent us from settling for reality, life-and-death, the only world we've got.
Life's too short! - another common catchphrase. Taking death seriously can be a spur to reviewing our priorities and values: less second-rate telly for starters? So much of our economic and entertainment systems seem to depend on getting more and more of us to be dissatisfied with what we have, and endlessly lusting after newer this or faster that. How much of this restlessness is fuelled by a doomed pretence that death isn't going to come to us personally, setting at naught our dreams of worldly success and affluence and status?
A society where the old Latin exhortation, memento mori 'remember you are going to die' - was observed, would surely look very different. Rather than putting off making plans for our death until, in many cases too late, people would plan ahead with their families and friends. Frank discussion and clear advance arrangements would make for better funerals. The role of funeral directors might contract greatly, or change at any rate, but improved mourning would give a great stimulus to public mental health.
As death lost its sting as a 'morbid' and tabooed unmentionable, younger and middle-aged people would no longer experience a subtle fear of and contempt for the elderly and infirm. Ageism would die out and 'the elders of the tribe' would be honoured for their experience of life rather than shunned or ridiculed for reminding their juniors that they too will grow old and die.
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