Difficult conversations

Interviewing various people who work within the field of bereavement support has illuminated a few things regarding language and death.

We have a tendency to couch death in metaphor and euphemism. In England anyway, we are unable to be direct about death. The pressures of decorum certainly come into effect here: someone has passed away, gone to the other side, popped one’s clogs, croaked, kicked the bucket, slipped away, breathed last, gone west…

[Death is not the only thing we cannot talk about, sex too. Although the Victorian hangover is less potent with this topic these days by comparison]

Where a sexual euphemism might encourage the brain to fill in the gaps where language cannot, those used for death largely act as a barrier - making it even more difficult to understand death. The difficult truth is that our mortality is something we must confront.We do not have answers. It is unlikely that anyone will ever get all the answers they want, either.

But we must have these difficult conversations about death at an earlier age - countless of my interviewees have told me the same thing. There is little to no education for children about death. Obviously it is a sensitive and tricky issue to navigate, but done correctly could move us along in our ability to talk about death.

For those of us who are no longer children, we must do so much better. Grief, much like death, is complex and messy. Guidance for therapeutic practitioners is insistent that the uniqueness of anyone’s grief is recognised. There is no handbook.

Unfortunately, we might not feel like we know much about it before we lose someone. There are some random phrases [seven steps, anyone?] or literary and cultural references that we might be aware of prior to experiencing grief, but they are few and tend to be prescriptive. This leaves mourners with a small lexicon of emotional responses.

Talking about death does not kill us. It does not even need to put a dark cloud over the day. It can be healthy, productive and enlightening. Or it can be tearful and sad. In either case it is necessary. An acknowledgement of death and grief, for our own sanity, ought to move into an everyday context. Some cultures are more able to do so but in the UK, we have lost this language.

We will need to do better at having these difficult conversations.

[So far for my final project, I have been interviewing various bereavement support workers, those who work in the industry or those who lost parents during the formative years of 16-25. I chose the latter not only because it speaks to my own experience of grief but also because I believe that experiencing a big loss during these years is a huge wake up call to how incapable our society is at confronting this issue.

I will be turning the audio into an immersive spatial audio piece that I will jazz up and exhibit as well as keeping it as a podcast - headphone piece. I’ve been doing lots of reading about death in the digital age too as well as looking to my old pal, the literary canon, for its length writings on the matter. i.e. at least 60% of all poetry.

I see the interviews as qualitative, ethnographic research and will be putting my findings towards a speculative final output. This, right now, looks like it will be in AR or as a mobile piece that uses the breath.

I am facing the challenge also of finding something that might tackle this issue without being prescriptive - as so much other there is - or without being only true of my experience of mourning. The internet and so many digital technologies are so deeply unethical, exploitative and isolating: how do I go about creating around such a sensitive area and avoid the pitfalls of its contemporary death products? ]