Translator: Ivana Krivokuća Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Yes!
Isn't this wonderful?
Yes!
Have you ever felt more alive
than you do right here, right now?
It's exhilarating, isn't it?
(A cheer from the audience)
Yes! Yes!
He's alive, and I should know.
I spend all my time with the dead.
I'm a biocultural archaeologist and a deathwalker.
My work enables me to simultaneously meet people who lived and died in the past,
and to walk alongside those who are dying in the present.
I feel so honored to meet all of them,
and to share in the great secrets, the mysteries and lessons of their lives.
In a modern world that is obsessed
with highlighting and exploiting the differences between people,
my quiet companions here have shown me
just how much we're all the same -
across time, geographical space, and across cultures.
When I ask them to teach me the great secrets of their lives,
the lesson they offered in response was death.
The one thing we all share, every human that has ever lived,
regardless of age, sex, ancestry, face,
sexuality or socioeconomic status.
The one unshakeable factor that connects us all
is that every single one of us
inevitably will die.
This undeniable fact leaves me dazed and confused.
We push ourselves to explore the deepest oceans, highest mountains,
densest jungles, and darkest corners of the universe.
But why is it that we in modern Western culture
push death away and refuse to engage with it
or even talk about it, in some sort of deluded, futile standoff?
In our silence and willful ignorance,
we've become death denying.
If we think that death denying
can make us death defying,
then we are in for some serious disappointment.
Our silence is harming us socially, physically and emotionally,
and to no avail.
Silence doesn't change anything.
Silence is not the opposite of truth.
We're silent because we're frightened.
We're frightened because in the deaths of others,
we see the inevitable deaths
of our loved ones and of ourselves.
In our silence and fear,
we've forgotten how to die,
how to care for our dead and our dying,
and how to grieve well.
But it wasn't always like this.
My own research reveals
how countless populations from across the ancient world
approached this same biological imperative of death
using culture and tradition as mediation
that helped them navigate the same chaos
that is death's physical separation
to transition through the tsunami that is grief,
and eventually to reemerge with reconfigured bonds
that enable them to enjoy continuing relationships with their dead.
Due to lower life expectancy rates in the ancient world,
death came much more frequently, and especially to the very young.
Death was a natural, integrated everyday part of life.
As they had done in life, people knew how to wash, clean, dress,
prepare their dead for their final journey.
By participating in rituals and rites of passage
that made sense to them and their worldviews,
they knew how to take care of their own.
And by participating in these processes,
the living knew where they were at at every step of the journey,
and what roles they had to play
to take care of themselves and each other too.
So after millennia of these practices, how did we end up where we are today?
Death denying.
In the 20th century, death was taken out of the home,
out of the hands of the family and community,
and transplanted into hospitals,
into professions such as funeral directors
and institutions such as nursing homes.
In a very short time - and this is within our living memory -
death became clinicized,
something that needed to be sanitized,
distanced from us, contained.
In the modern era, we have charged these professions with the weighty tasks
of solving premature death, eliminating difficult death,
and generally domesticating death overall.
We've also told ourselves that professional intervention
can protect us from death's emotional messiness,
its pain and discomfort too.
But what are we actually asking these professions,
these institutions, to do for us here?
To cure death?
Is that what we really want?
And now it seems we don't know what we want,
which inevitably leads to anxiety.
We have surrendered our autonomy,
our active participation in end-of-life decisions,
to the professions of medicine, law, priestcraft and funeral directors.
We have become dependent on them
to decide what makes a good death for us and our families.
We've shifted from past understandings of what made a good death -
as one that was surrounded by family, friends, the community,
people who shared our lives -
to now, being surrounded by professionals.
Effective strangers who - with the best of intention -
have a primary focus on prolonging life at any and all costs,
with quality of life following somewhat further down the list.
But what about quality of death?
We have come to see death as a failure,
and in so doing, we have set ourselves up to fail.
Research reveals that those experiencing
the unhealthy bereavement of a partner or loved one
are six to ten times more likely to die themselves
in the two years following that initial death.
These implications of our disengagement with mortality are enormous.
This is a public health issue.
So what can we do about it?
Where do we even start?
We need to talk.
Death should be socialized.
It is as natural and imperative part of a life experience as birth.
Let's talk.
It's never too soon to have these conversations,
but it's often too late.
Let's talk while we're healthy, while death is not an urgent issue -
at least not to the best of our knowledge.
I believe that no questions, no conversations
about any aspects of death, dying, disposal or grief should be taboo,
with anyone, including children.
Talking about death never killed anyone,
and not talking about it never made it any less real.
Yes, these conversations will stir our deepest vulnerabilities.
They will push against our strongest boundaries,
but they will reawaken our consciousness.
So ...
let's talk.
Let's talk about what we want.
Did you know that over 70% of Australians will die in a hospital
despite the fact that most of us want to die at home?
I want to die at home.
In my own bed.
And then I want to be buried in a natural burial ground,
in the hope that one day I might be excavated too.
(Laughter)
It only seems fair, right?
(Laughter)
What if today was your last day?
What do you want?
Do you know your options?
Home, hospital, hospice?
Inhumation, cremation, acclimation, natural burial, burial at sea?
Do you want to donate your body to science?
We'd appreciate it.
Do you know what legal documents you can put in place now, today,
to ensure that your wishes will be honored?
Even if you're no longer able to speak for yourself.
These questions cause us to evaluate our own death literacy.
Death literacy is knowledge and understanding
of the systems and processes surrounding death, dying and disposal.
This is a new public health movement being led here in Australia,
by The GroundSwell Project.
It seeks to unite the communities and the profession,
to bring them together,
and keep citizens at the epicenter of all discussions
and all decision-making surrounding their own end of life.
It adopts the motto, "Nothing about me without me."
It has as its central goal, just like in the ancient world,
that when anyone is dying, caring or grieving,
that everyone will know what to do.
This is so important because we're all connected.
Your living and dying affects my living and dying.
Today, less than 20% of people say they know the laws around dying at home
and the disposal of a dead body.
Did you know that when an expected death occurs at home,
you don't have to call anyone immediately -
unless you want to?
Did you know that if a loved one dies in care,
you have the right to access their body
and, with the right support, to bring them home.
In my home state of New South Wales,
you can keep the body of your loved one at home
for up to five days after death.
Provided you have a cool blanket or a cool cot, if it's a little one.
We have the right to experience the bodies of our loved ones,
to say goodbye in our own time,
in our own space, in our own ways.
We used to know this. We used to do this.
Did you know you can build your own coffin?
It's my mum.
(Laughter)
Or buy one directly from Costco.
(Laughter)
That's me.
Did you know that you don't need a funeral director
or religious or civil celebrant unless you want one?
Please, if you choose to use a funeral director,
promise me you will go to them
and negotiate a clear, itemized final written quote
before you need their services -
before you're at your most vulnerable.
Provided that you abide by the laws of your state or territory
and you loved one's will,
anyone can conduct a funeral service, a memorial, a celebration.
Just like in the ancient world,
we have the right to participate in and co-create rituals and rites of passage
that are meaningful to us and our communities,
and that honor the ways we want to remember and be remembered.
We can do it all ourselves if we want to.
Perhaps the best example that I can give you
of this happening in Australia right now
is that of Tender funerals,
a not-for-profit social enterprise based in Port Kembla in New South Wales.
Tender seeks to support its communities' rights
to access and reclaim those rights around death, dying and disposal.
Did you know there was such a thing
as not-for-profit, transparent-pricing funerals?
Death has become commoditized in Australia.
Our funeral industry has rapidly surpassed one billion dollars and is growing.
But there are alternatives.
Tender don't provide cheap, templated funerals.
Tender co-creates funerals with their communities
that are beautiful, authentic, unique and healing.
Tender assumes that their community can do anything,
not that they can't or won't.
Tender seeks to empower, not protect.
And we have this same power in our communities:
to reframe our vulnerability as our greatest strength.
The moment is here and the movement is rising
across Australia and all the world,
ignited by concepts like death literacy,
funorals, living wakes,
death cafes, death doulas, compassionate communities
and death walkers, like me.
Rather than seeing death as an obstacle that must be overcome,
we see it as an opportunity for connection,
for renewing our appreciation for existence
and for remembering the meaning and purpose of life.
This is the secret that my global ancestors
have been whispering to me in a collective voice
that has become as loud as a roar.
They tell me, "Life is so short!
Live it!
Breathe it! Feel your life every day while you can!
Because you're a long time dead."
I find it impossible to argue this point
against people with thousands of years of experience.
We have the ability to do this our way,
to step outside of institutionalized dying and commercialized death and burial.
To change the way we do death in modern Western culture
requires these moments of radical, disruptive honesty.
Denying death does not give us any power or control over it.
This is an illusion.
(Sighs)
Denying death just makes us ill-equipped
for its inevitable arrival,
causing us to miss its beautiful gifts
and profound opportunities for growth,
connection and ripening as human beings.
Power to care for our own is a human right
and the ultimate human privilege.
It belongs in our communities, and it's time to take it back again.
The power, knowledge, to care for our own,
is the ultimate human instinct.
It resides in our bones.
It's time to remember it.
It's time to act.
It's time to do death differently.
Thank you.
(Applause)