Explainer
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Death & life
4 min read

What they don’t tell you about when someone you love dies

Sharing her experience of her husband’s death, Yvonne Tulloch charts grief’s journey and shares signposts to help. Part of the How to Die Well series.

Yvonne Tulloch is Founder and CEO of AtaLoss, helping bereaved people find support and wellbeing. 

A group of grieving friends with their hands on each others backs.
The Good Funeral Guide on Unsplash.

Turn on the news and death is all around us. Yet somehow, we think it will never happen to us.  In one sense that’s good. We have a child-like innocence that protects us from the harsh realities of life.   

A few years ago, as a church minister, I thought I knew about death.  I’d been trained to take funerals and had supported families when a loved one had died.  But it wasn’t until I was bereaved myself - when my husband died suddenly of a heart attack - that I realised how little even I knew.  

Although busy, life had been good until then.  My husband had a successful job, my own work was going well and our three children were flying the nest and finding their feet in university.  Little did I know that in one, short phone call from a colleague, our lives would change forever.   

Simon had been found dead in his hotel in Spain, and I was faced with telling each of the children and his mother, the worst news anyone could convey.  Concerned about social media the news was embargoed until all family members knew, then I had to go to Spain to find, as well as identify the body, and bring him home.  I had to work out our finances – no one knew what we had to live off – close accounts and put things in my name.  I discovered our house wasn’t insured, nor our car for me to drive, that bank accounts were frozen, and that no organisation is geared up to help.  Everyone insists on speaking to the account holder or seeing the actual death certificate before being willing to oblige.  I had a funeral and thanksgiving to organise – two big occasions in just 3 weeks - and a mountain of admin to deal with, which would be difficult at any time.  

Grief is a journey of adjustment of who we are to a new existence – one that takes a long time and never comes at a convenient time.

We’ve been a death-denying culture, I now realise, for many years. With death invariably happening in hospices or hospitals, we’ve pushed death away and pretended it doesn’t happen.  Consequently, we’ve lost knowledge of bereavement and the art of support.  We’ve tended only to think about preparing for funerals and then counselling if the person isn’t doing well.  But what about all the other help that’s needed?  Understanding and support is necessary in all manner of ways.  Bereavement is one of the most stressful times of life, affecting everyone sooner or later and every part of their life.  Grief is a journey of adjustment of who we are to a new existence – one that takes a long time and never comes at a convenient time.    

At first most of us are shocked or emotionally numb; we run on adrenaline and we’re in survival mode.  At the funeral others can think we’re doing well, and we can too.  But it’s after, when the real sadness tends to hit, when the future must be faced and by then support has dropped away.   

Many of us experience a roller coaster of changing reactions and responses which we don’t recognise as us or don’t associate with grief.  

There are the physical reactions, for instance. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I was cold and I shook for months, I had a heavy ‘weight’ in my gut and was taken to hospital three times with suspected heart problems - our bodies are always in tune with our emotions.   

And there are the psychological reactions.  We can experience anxiety, anger and guilt; we can’t concentrate or remember, or function to do the most basic of tasks.  I kept thinking I was seeing Simon and had a psychosis which made me feel separated from the world.  We can think we’re going mad.  

Grief is a natural response to loss which we need to work through for our future wellbeing.

For me help came from two initiatives I was fortunate to find: Care for the Family’s Widowed Young Support and The Bereavement Journey course run by a church in London.  In each of these I discovered others who had been bereaved, who understood what I was going through and who helped me to navigate the alien territory I found myself in.  They also helped me to understand my spiritual responses which had been the biggest surprise.  I had never doubted my Christian faith but with bereavement, that too was challenged, and God, who had always felt present, suddenly disappeared.  I realize now that this is natural.  Grieving is a process of deconstruction and reconstruction of meaning, and therefore some of whatever meaning we had before the person died, will deconstruct as we grieve. 

Roll on a few years and I’m on the other side, running a charity helping people to understand that in our death-denying society bereavement impacts greatly, and that grief is a natural response to loss which we need to work through for our future wellbeing.  Support is needed in various ways which we direct to through our signposting website ataloss.org.  And I’m helping people myself through The Bereavement Journey course to find healing and hope, offering also spiritual support for the faith questioning I find most people have.  Unfortunately, though, because we’ve neglected death, many haven’t been supported through a bereavement in the past and are carrying loss which is unresolved.   

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Assisted dying
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4 min read

Assisted Dying logic makes perfect sense but imposes a dreadful dilemma

The case for assisted dying appeals to choice and autonomy, yet not all choices are good. It means vast numbers of people will face a terrible choice as their life nears its end.

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A black and white picture shows a woman head and shoulders, she is looking up and to the side in an unsure way.
Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash.

Two broad cultural trends have led us to our current debate over assisted suicide. 

One is the way consumer choice has come to be seen as the engine of successful economies. Emerging from Adam Smith’s theories of rational choice based on self-interest, given a boost by Reaganomics and Thatcherite thinking in the 1990s, the provision of a range of choice to the consumer is usually argued, with some logic, as key to the growth of western economies and the expansion of freedom.  

The other is the notion of individual autonomy. Articulated especially in the past by figures such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, the idea that individuals should be free to choose to dispose of their property, their time and their talents as they choose, as long as they don’t harm anyone else, has become standard moral fare in the modern world.  

Put these two together, and the logic of assisted dying makes perfect sense. What can be wrong with offering someone a choice? Why should the state restrict individual freedom to end your life in the way you might decide to do so? 

Yet expanding choice is not always good. Forcing an employee to choose between betraying a colleague or losing their job is not a fair choice. There are some choices that are unfair to impose upon people.  

Assisted dying will lead us to this kind of choice. Imagine a woman in her eighties, living in a home which is her main financial asset, and which she hopes to leave to her children when she dies. She contracts Parkinson’s or dementia, which will not kill her for some time, but will severely limit her ability to live independently (and remember about of third of the UK population will need some kind of longer-term care assistance as we get older). At present, her only options are to be cared for by her children, or to sell her house to pay for professional care.  

With the assisted suicide bill, a third option comes into play – to end it all early and save the family the hassle - and the money. If the bill passes, numerous elderly people will be faced with an awful dilemma. Do I stay alive, watch the kids’ inheritance disappear in care costs, or land myself on them for years, restricting their freedom by needing to care for me? Or do I call up the man with the tablets to finish it soon? Do I have a moral duty to end it all? At present, that is not a choice any old person has to make. If the bill passes, it will be one faced by numerous elderly, or disabled people across the country. 

Even though the idea may have Christian roots, you don’t have to be religious to believe the vulnerable need to be protected.

Of course, supporters of the bill will say that the proposed plan only covers those who will die within six months, suffering from an “inevitably progressive condition which cannot be reversed by treatment.” Yet do we really think it will stay this way? Evidence from most other countries that have taken this route suggests that once the train leaves the station, the journey doesn’t end at the first stop - it usually carries on to the next. And the next. So, in Canada, a bill that initially allowed for something similar was changed within five years to simply requiring the patient to state they lived with an intolerable condition. From this year, there is a proposal on the table that says a doctor’s note saying you have a mental illness is enough. In the same time frame, 1,000 deaths by assisted dying in the first year has become 10,000 within five years, accounting for around 1 in 20 of all deaths in Canada right now. Some MPs in the UK are already arguing for a bill based on ‘unbearable suffering’ as the criterion. Once the train starts, there is no stopping it. The logic of individual choice and personal autonomy leads inexorably in that direction.  

Of course, some people face severe pain and distress as they die, and everything within us cries out to relieve their suffering. Yet the question is what kind of society do we want to become? One where we deem some lives worth living and others not? Where we make numerous elderly people feel a burden to their families and feel a responsibility to die? In Oregon, where Assisted Dying is legal, almost half of those who opted for assisted dying cited fear of being a burden as a factor in their decision. Or would we prefer one where the common good is ultimately more important than individual choice, and where to protect the vulnerable, we find other ways to manage end of life pain, putting resources into developing palliative care and supporting families with dependent members – none of which will happen if the option of assisted dying is available.  

Even though the idea may have Christian roots, you don’t have to be religious to believe the vulnerable need to be protected. Changing the law might seem a small step. After all, doctors routinely administer higher doses of morphine which alleviate pain and allow a natural death to take its course. Yet that is a humane and compassionate step to take. To confront numerous people, elderly, disabled and sick with a dreadful dilemma is one we should not impose upon them.