Simon Blake

Very soon after I found out Mum was dying a colleague and friend wrote me a letter about their own experience of a parent dying and what they had learned from their experience. I was grateful when I got that letter through the post. So much wisdom. And I read it often. When children are born we know what to do. When people die we know we have to register the death and have a funeral. As a society we know a bit about grief and bereavement even though we can get much better at talking about it and supporting people through it.  We talk less about the process of dying. There is still, it seems, a worry that if we talk about what is happening we make it happen, which is poppycock of course. If we talk about death and dying we pass on the knowledge, we learn from the person dying and we can gain great comfort which will help us through the grieving process.  I have learned that having conversations about dying do not necessarily get easier, but the more we do it the easier it becom...

It is over three months since Mum's diagnosis of late stage cancer. Three months since our lives changed and we started adapting to a new version of reality.  The words have perhaps not quite yet sunk in, but whether they have sunk in or not, the truth is there in our day to day lives. Mum is dying and the best clinical prediction at the time of diagnosis is that she had 'months rather than years' to live. Three of those months gone already.  As Doctor Kathryn Mannix says in this brilliant short video  https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/dying-is-not-as-bad-as-you-think/p062m0xt    'we have stopped talking about dying and that is in fact a problem'.  That is why I am writing this blog. W e have to talk about death and dying so we can take better care of the dying person, help them prepare for their death and ensure their wishes are heard and taken care of; so we can take better care of each other through the process of a loved one dying and prepare ourselves...