Learning to cope with death

Press, 8 October 1988, Page 23

Learning to cope with death

Merely Mortal. By Sarah Boston and Rachael Trezise. Methuen, 1988. 214 pp. $17.99 (paperback). I Don’t Know What To Say. By Dr Robert Buchman. Macmillan, 1988. 168 pp. $19.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Ralf Unger.) Most people in our present stage of civilisation have great difficulty living a satisfying life. To an even greater extent we have complicated and refined the process of death and dying to such an extent that we now have to rediscover the naturalness of it, to accept it, and to learn consciously where it fits into the pattern of the generations. “The British,” one of the authors of the first book tells us, “of all classes are now born, but still they do not die. We need to bring the language of death back into our lives so that we may use it in the hour of our need.” To talk about it vaguely makes us feel we are courting misfortune, this being a belief based somewhere in a pagan superstition which various peoples, such as the Polynesians, overcome by ritual and ceremony. The very words

to describe death have been made into similes, such as “passed away” and “departed,” of a neutral hue. This only came about comparatively recently, in the mid-nineteenth century, when gravestones became inscribed with “at rest” and “fell asleep.” Sarah Boston has produced a television programme on death and dying in the United Kingdom. Its success was such that she decided to expand the interviews she had for the programme and to add various snippets of information, including the death of her own small Down’s Syndrome son. Her writing partner is active in the field of bereavement and adds a small section on practical aspects, such as the functions of coroners, which are principally applicable to the United Kingdom. Like the television programme that spawned it, the book “Merely Mortal” is full of little vignettes about good and bad deaths and the importance of “presiding over” one’s own death and therefore having some control over emotions, including those of loved

ones, and finding resolution and peace as the ultimate end. However, the colourful and sombre little threads are not drawn together to give a clear philosophy, as is typical of most television documentaries, which have limited time and aim for short-term impact. Dr Buchman writes on how to keep and support someone who is dying. He has himself faced what was thought to be a terminal illness. He has written a tidy little description of the stages of dying first coined by Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. These divided it into denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. He sensibly points out that human beings do not function according to sub-headings, but how much more important it is that instead of just recognising, say, anger in a patient, to try to understand it when it is aimed towards a close friend or a relative. He suggests the words one might find in response and uses the concepts of non-directive counselling, in the sense of creative listening. He gives a large number of examples of a typical statement by a dying person and the variety of responses one may then make to this and the consequences, always aimed towards showing empathy — that is feeling oneself into the patient’s thought patterns — and then allowing him or her to develop their own ideas.

With the fear of serious illness and death common in our society, and being afraid of being afraid or at least of showing this, a constructive visiting hour or a long period of care of the dying is fraught with a complex of emotions. Dr Buchman shows way of making this more harmonious.

With spiritual aspects quickly nodded to, the author on the whole has a reassuring and practical understanding which should leave noone struck dumb with awe, or fear, or embarrassment, or annoyance at their helplessness as a bystander in the inevitable progression to death.