Dying Matters Week

It's Dying Matters Week and so our lovely community members Ria and Graham have shared their experiences of loss.

This year the focus is encouraging conversations about death, dying and grief in the workplace. Dying Matters Week encourages all communities to get talking in whatever way, shape or form works for them.

Ria lost her mum to breast cancer when she was 16. Ria helps support us with all things marketing and she has started the conversation about this years Dying Matters Week in the work place. She was at school when her mum passed away and she remembers feeling like people did not know what to do with her. People who were familiar to her did not know what to say and equally she did not know where to go to access the help and support that she needed.

‘I think this is actually a very similar experience for adults in the work place. A lot of managers don’t feel comfortable talking to their teams about the topics of death and grief.’

Stigma around grieving, and a lack of understanding about what it means to be ill and what happens when you’re dying, mean that too many of us are struggling to cope when faced with life’s inevitable challenges. The workplace is no exception and so these conversations are important to facilitate supporting people who are ill, caring for those around them, or who have lost someone close to them. We shouldn’t have to hide our experiences and instead create an open and compassionate society where we are comfortable facing the realities of dying, death and grief.

This is why Dying Matters Week is so important in spreading awareness and providing people with the resources they need.

Our very special volunteer Graham also shared his thoughts and reflections about loss. Graham sadly lost both his wife and daughter to breast cancer. Here’s what he shared:

‘Grief is an individual reaction to the death/loss of a loved one. This means it is a personal thing and likely to manifest itself differently to different individuals. Consequently, individuals will find different ways of coping with it. And for some people that may mean not coping with it.

For me it is a matter of coping or managing because grief for me is always there, never ending just requiring management. The physical loss of a loved-one does not wipe out their presence in spirit and it is “normal” in my experience still to want to communicate with that spirit. You don’t stop loving the person simply because they are not physically there. The spirit exists even though the body no longer does. This means thinking about and talking to a departed loved-one are positive tactics in the strategy of coping with loss.

An extended dying process rather than a sudden death, in a car crash for instance, afford a measure of luxury in helping to cope with the trauma of loss when it finally happens. Some, perhaps all, of the practical decisions can be made in advance. This was the case when my wife and, three years later, when my daughter was dying the grips of cancer in both, although unconnected cases.

And then there is the question of guilt I cannot help the fact that my wife and daughter are no longer alive and that I am – so how should I react to that? Well, again I can only say “personally” and this depends on the individual beliefs which remain personal.

Speaking practically, I have personally adopted a deliberate strategy of believing in the fundamental kindness of human nature, even though we all know this is not exclusively so. Thus, contact with others is vital and to be practised even when one might prefer not to do so.

Strangely I found the Covid epidemic both a help and a hindrance, a help in the sense that it wasn’t difficult to accept the loneliness of isolation because everyone was having to isolate (well, with a few exceptions) and so I did not feel lonely knowing others were enduring the same experience. However, enforced isolation was a hindrance which technology for all its wonders was not able to overcome completely. And I imagine working at home for some people must have been, perhaps still is, a nightmare.

So what is my conclusion:

Be respectful of your departed loved-ones memory and be truthful in responding to the question you pose of their spirit. Accept that you are part of the living human race and that you have a part to play in it.’

Resources

We hope that these experiences and resources offer some support, although we understand that everyone’s experience of loss and grief are different.

Thank you so much to our lovely Little Lifts Community members Ria and Graham, for sharing their experiences.