Great Dane joins the family

Birgitte Due Jensen Koch, Danish Institute for Existence

It’s a changing world out there. Resources for end of life planning are expanding every week. Here at Final Fling, we keep track of interesting developments across the globe and this week we’ve been in touch with, Birgitte Koch, Founder of The Existence Institute in Denmark to find out what they’re up to.

The Institut for Eksistens is interested in making the journey towards end of life as good as it can be for individuals, their families and the health care workers supporting them:

“Our mission is to eliminate taboos about death in Denmark through training, lectures and research,” said Birgitte. “The Institute focuses on each individual’s relationship with death – including physical, mental and metaphysical aspects – but also on living life to the fullest until death occurs. We are particularly interested in life just before death.

Birgitte reports that 2014 got off to a good start in Denmark: “Over 300 Danish children die of incurable illness each year so we’re delighted to see government has approved the setting up of Denmark’s first ever hospice for children. 

“With political approval in place and financial discussions underway, it does seem likely that Denmark will have its first children’s hospice before too long.

“The new hospice will be built as an extension of the oldest hospice in Denmark, Skt. Lukas Hospice, located slightly north of Copenhagen. Once finished, the new hospice will have space available for five children and their families.”

No doubt our new friends in Denmark will watch and learn from the experience of other nations and CHAS – Scotland’s model children’s hospice – is certainly a good starting point.

The Institut for Eksistens is the latest addition to the Final Fling community. If you want to join the movement, contact us.

 

 

 

All Hail Hayley

Hayley comes a cropper

There isn’t another story this week.

Is there?

Hayley took control.

You’ve got to hand it to Corrie. They took on the unexplored T of LGBT… usually only presented in a Priscilla Queen of the Desert kind of way.

And now Corrie fave Hayley Cropper brought us the Right to Die issue.

I hope a touch of soap helps broaden the debate as Lord Falconer’s Bill edges its way up the agenda.

So that makes two big YES votes this year for me. (It doesn’t mean I don’t love you all, my English friends.)

And I’m not the only one feeling positive. 90.9% of the people who voted on our Assisted Dying poll said a definite yes to having the right to die. Not a single one opted for ‘probably yes’. 9 out of 10 went for a definite yes. And only 1 in 10 thought ‘probably not’. Not a single ‘definitely not’.

That’s promising.

Keep voting as the year goes on.

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.

End of life therapy: the course

This week’s guest blog is from Nick Owen.

I’ve spent more than thirty years as a psychotherapist working with people in Health and Social Services to private practice, and training psychotherapists and counsellors. I’ve written a course in “End of Life Therapy” and Barbara’s invited me to tell you something about it.

The course is relevant to nurses and doctors and social care practitioners as well as therapists. It explores the physical, social, emotional and spiritual dimensions of dying. Building on the well established concepts of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross it moves into an exploration of the ideas of Stanislav Grof, who has done pioneering work relating to different methods of counselling as they affect people who are dying.

The course invites a student to consider expanding the concept of counselling to embrace working with partners, family and community members, who all have a part to play in this process of living and dying.

Doing psychological therapy with people who are dying is often difficult and demanding.

A therapist may need to try to work with a client in a strongly altered state or in various levels of coma. Pioneering work by Arnold Mindell has shown us that it is possible and even desirable to attempt to do such work. One of the lessons focuses on this process of dancing on the edge of eternity.

People who have already done a first training in counselling and/or psychotherapy will find it both interesting and challenging, since it asks all sorts of fundamental questions and attempts to address a number of practical problems which stretch the normal boundaries of professional practice. It explores those big existential questions of the nature of reality, life and death. It aims to prepare counsellors and a wide range of professional care givers for the task of responding therapeutically, sensitively and creatively to end of life issues in their work. It provides helpful theoretical frameworks for thinking, feeling and understanding psychological processes specific to the end of life.

Find out more about this and other end of life support and training on Final Fling.

Real death movement grows

Tradition meets cutting edge

I’ve recently been contacted by a young man – only 24 – who is desperate to get into the funeral industry. At every turn he’s been told: “you need experience”. I thought those days of closed shops were gone.

And so when I sent a plea round all the great people I’ve met through the Good Funeral Awards, I was able to send him back a link to training that Jane Morrell and Simon Smith of Green Fuse offer.

Green Fuse have trained around 50 funeral arrangers and nearly 200 funeral celebrants and help people find jobs. Theirs is the only full funeral director training available for people who don’t already have a job in the sector.

Award winning funeral directors and trainers they have more than a decade’s experience to bring to bear. Their company Green Fuse has a vision to modernise funeral arranging to provide services that better fit the changing world we live in. A world where only 6% attend church regularly. A world where 1 in 3 of us live on our own. A world where pensioners include Helen Mirren and Mick Jagger and our dying may have danced naked at Woodstock.

Their groundbreaking training, Modern Funeral Directing, has helped people to set up new funeral directing companies of their own, not only in the UK but also in Australia, NZ and the US.

“The Green Fuse course was exceptionally rewarding and responsive to our needs,” said Hitesh Solanki. “It has helped me grow and develop as a funeral director. I am now the proud owner and director of Shanti Asian Funeral Services in North Harrow.”

“So far around a dozen new funeral businesses have developed with the help of our training,” Simon told me. “It’s very exciting. We’re helping create a new wave in the funeral sector. Funeral directors need to be able to listen closely and work creatively with families to create an individual funeral every time. That’s what our training covers.”

It’s not about creating Woodstock-themed funerals. It’s just about rites of passage that have meaning instead of the current conveyor belt approach.

We were so inspired, we’ll be on their next Caring for the Body course. Look out for more to find out how it went.

FIND OUT MORE about the training Jane and Simon run throughout the year.

Say their name

Jimmy & Jane with Pam St Clement at the 2013 Good Funeral Awards

This week we’re big-upping the work of Good Funeral Award Winners, Jimmy Edmonds and Jane Harris, who won the 2013 award for Best Internet Bereavement Resource.

Jane and Jimmy produced the film Say Their Name on the invitation of The Compassionate Friends in the UK.

It’s a film that celebrates life and love – and explores coping with loss and grief.

“It was after the funeral that it really kicked in for me,” says Jane, talking about the loss of her son Josh. She and others share their experience of coping with the death of a child; the trauma, the disbelief, the confusion, the heavy drag.

Here’s what others say:

“Wow that is brilliant. It’s so hard to get messages across to families that I work with sometimes because they are experiencing the beginning of this agonising process.  I hope that I can use this short film in my work. That footage has really helped me especially today since yesterdays funeral of a 15 year old girl so tragically taken is fresh in my thoughts.” Claire

“One of the most moving pieces of film that I’ve seen and utterly deserving of multiple awards in testimony to the powerful truths spoken by the parents we saw.” Fran Hall, Chair of the Natural Death Centre

“Really beautiful work – to showcase such articulate storytelling and promote remembrance.”   Kathryn Edwards

“I was with each parent and sibling, deeply listening to them name and remember their loved one. It’s a good thing, this.” Kate

In the film, contributors talk openly about loss, share their pain, support each other. And encourage us to say their name. So let’s.

Jonny Jessica Oliver Mason Arvind Billie Alice Tamzin Adam Nikki Robin and Joshua

Good Funeral Awards 2013 – the winners and the runners up | The Good Funeral Guide