Is a digital goodbye good enough?

Antonia Rolls A Good Death exhibition

My friend Nanette was talking to me about a friend who’s dying. She posed a couple of interesting questions I thought it worth sharing with you (with her permission of course).

“Our friend is in a hospice, heavily drugged so not fully with it. As often happens he has gone downhill very rapidly (he has cancer).

“His wife thought that he only had hours left to live and let his close circle of friends know. She invited us to send a text that she’d read out to him if we wanted to pass on a message.

“Since it sounded like his end was imminent I quickly pulled together some things that I had been reflecting on for a while and sent them over.

“My partner is godfather to their children and he didn’t want to say his farewells in a text. He was able to go into the hospice for a face to face farewell.

“It made me wonder, when push comes to shove, is any message better than none? 

“When I think about my friend, I think ‘pavlova’. He makes the best pavlova in the world. I’ll miss it. No other pavlova will match his. Any time in the future when I do have pavlova, I’ll think of him.

“So bizarrely, my text said: “NO ONE makes pavlova like you.  Absolutely top!” (OK I did say a few other heartfelt things too.)

“I wondered… can a farewell come across as trivial? And aside from the person dying, who else might find a farewell message meaningful -close family and friends.”

Having just witnessed the power of a condolence book being created by workmates for a lost soul, I can definitely bear witness to the importance of sharing.

So, inspired by this, we’re working on it. Up ahead, with other changes we’re making, we’ll make it possible to share more on through a Final Fling account… sharing ideas, inspiration, messages.

If you have ideas for Fling let us know. Contact us any time. Or fill in our short survey if you use Final Fling already.

For one amazing approach to saying Goodbye, see Jane and Jimmy’s site to son Josh: Beyond Goodbye.

Creativity in life and death

Greer Pester’s shrine workshop for Final Fling’s Day of the Dead

Now that the dust has settled on our Day of the Dead Festival, I thought I’d just share the comments from one of the participants.

A reminder of the importance of creativity in our lives.

Participant, Marie, was sharing this with Greer Pester, the artist funded by Creative Scotland to study ritual in north and south America who ran our shrine-making workshop.

Marie said:  “Thank you for such a wonderful workshop. We had such fun and talked about it all the way home and even started planning on how to create an outdoor shrine for our Grandmother in the graveyard next year. On Sunday I took my shrines round to show my Mother and neices who are aged 11 and 7.  I told them all about your experiences, the party like atmosphere, the celebration, the death plates and we had a really lovely discussion about remembering people and celebrating their lives. Needless to say they want to come to next years workshop too!

“Having not made anything for a very long time, I felt it took me a little while to get going – to loosen up and just let myself have fun with the materials and the process.  It has made me very aware of how important play and creation is and the fact that I don’t have enough of it in my life.

To be honest I was a little apprehensive having never taken a workshop like that before but I enjoyed the experience so much, that I would actively look for more things to do. You were very encouraging and welcoming. So long story short, Thank you for a lovely day and I hope you do another one next year.”

Lovely. Cheers!

A Little Nostalgia for Freedom

A Little Nostalgia for Freedom: Living Life to the full by Steve Bonham

I was at the Wigtown Book Festival recently with two of my sisters. We sought out Steve Bonham, attracted by the evocative title of his book.

Who doesn’t fancy the open road, the wide blue horizon, getting away, living freely and fully?

We were treated to an hour of story telling via the gift of song, guitar, fedora and tuba.

I invited Steve to share his thinking with Final Fling, since we’re all about Living Life to the Full.

 

 

“The philosopher Bertrand Russell it is said, wanted to die unfulfilled.  I am certain that he didn’t mean that he wanted to die frustrated. Why should he? He had achieved much as one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century and as an active influential campaigner for human rights.

I think this was about how he wanted to spend his time whilst he was alive not a final judgment on his life’s worth –  a determination to end his days stubbornly restless and curious.

Our innate restlessness is something that has intrigued me all my life. In my recent book I observed: “Listen to the conversation of others..… over pints of beer and glasses of wine, late night excursions and the passing dialogue of strangers; a litany of intentions and hopes that have slipped like sand through the fingers of life. It is a nostalgia for lives not lived, adventures not taken and possibilities surrendered.”

But what I found in the journey that was the writing of the book, is that a fulfilled life, an audacious life even, is not just about choosing only the exciting and dangerous road. We are paradoxical creatures, attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. Our ancestors left us psychologically both Neolithic farmers and Paleolithic hunter-gatherers – drawn both to the farm and open road. The ties of family, community and obligation need to be balanced with the need for change, exploration and adventure.

The trouble is that as we get older there is an awful lot of social pressure to bury our restlessness, to just follow the settled part of our character.  Our choice is to allow a little bit of that restlessness back into our lives on a day-to-day basis. Russell’s invitation is to do this as long as we possibly can.

My best friend will be getting this one for Christmas. If you have a friend you wish freedom on, check it out: A Little Nostalgia For Freedom by Steve Bonham available on Amazon and at www.stevebonham.net.

Inspired, go top up your Final Fling Bucketlist.

Looking death in the face

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Antonia Rolls: A Good Death exhibition

If we knew what death looked like, would we be less afraid? I think so. It’s the bogey-man hiddenness of it that keeps it under the bed scary. 

Artist Antonia Rolls is doing an amazing job picturing death and sharing her paintings in A Graceful Death touring exhibition. We’re delighted to hear from Antonia in this week’s guest blog.

“A Graceful Death (AGD) is an exhibition of portraits of and words from people facing death.  It began in 2007 as I painted the last days and day of my partner as he slowly faded away and died.  After the first exhibition in 2009, I began to paint other dying people in order to tell their stories and to share their image.  I tour the country talking, exhibiting, and working with the dying as an artist.

“I want to introduce you to one of the paintings.

Antonia Rolls: A Good Death – Caroline Soar

“Caroline was my friend. She worked for the NHS, she lectured and talked on ethics, and was a huge personality and gave me advice on the exhibition.  One day, Caroline called to say that she had terminal lung cancer.  She wanted to be painted for AGD and in the hospice where I volunteer, asked to speak to me alone.

“Look”, she said as I arrived, “I understand space and time.” She talked excitedly about how everything made sense to her, and even drew me diagrams.  I did not understand a word.

“I kissed her and left as other visitors came, intending to return to interview her the next day.  Caroline died that night. This painting is huge.  It is my tribute to a wonderful lady.”

See other creative perspectives in Final Fling’s Art on Life and Death.

See Antonia’s A Graceful Death website.

 

Housewarm your burial plot

Monday hearts for Madalene

I’ve been e-chatting with Page Hodel in California this week. She has the beautiful tribute website Monday Hearts for Madalene.

She shared a story about a great idea for engaging with mortality and embracing departures.

On a trip to San Miguel de Allende for Dios des los Muertas (Day o the Deid to us in Scotland), she met 4 women expats. Over dinner one of them revealed that she’d already bought her plot for her own burial.

Page told me: “Well over several short glasses of tequila she shares that she invited her best girlfriends to go with her to her cemetery plot BEFORE SHE DIED and to have a picnic; and kind of “housewarming” for the plot before she was in it.

“I just LOVED the idea of that. So spirited and fun – in the spirit of what Final Fling is doing to help people to “own” their final arrangements.”

She’s right. We do love it. We’ve added it to our info on funerals and celebrations.

If you know anyone who plans to ‘own’ their own funeral, send-off, celebration, mourning, wake, tell us about it. Add to our ‘creating a ceremony‘ forum or contact us.

See Hearts for Madalene on Fling’s Scrapbook. See the ’email’ at the foot of Page’s homepage and she’ll add you to the 2,500 strong mailing list and send you a heart each Monday to spread the love. 

The beauty of a good death

Joshua Bright photograph of John Hawkins (and helper)

“We could use news of a good death,” writes Joshua Bright, photographer. “Not a tragic death or a famous death, just a good one, the kind that might happen to any of us if we are lucky.”

That’s the intro to a series of stunning black and white portraits of John Hawkins, on the final leg of his journey, published in the New York Times.

They are sensitive photographs and they are honest.

They capture the sometimes undramatic quality of a death. The bizarrely quiet, here-today-gone-tomorrow, slipping away of the vitality, energy, pumping and pulsing that marks us out as alive.

I’ve been luck enough to experience a couple of quiet, ordinary deaths. The kind that leave you whole – actually wholer. (I know, Final Flingy made-up-word thing.)

I think it might allay a lot of fears if more people were exposed to death and dying in the course of life. Especially the sort of quiet, dignified death that allows us to accept it that bit easier. That’s the sort of living and dying well that organisations like Good Life Good Death Good Grief campaign for.

And of course, it would be even better if we had more say in our choice of when and how to go, which is why I’m standing for election to Dignity in Dying. Voting open till 7th May. Please vote (even if it’s not for me).