This week is Dying Matters Awareness Week and the British Humanist Association (BHA) has supported the week’s central aim of encouraging a healthier, more open attitude to discussions about death and dying.
The BHA is member organisation of the Dying Matters Coalition, which promotes the view that we must, personally and as a society, do more to normalise talk about death and bereavement, and to encourage people to talk about their wishes regarding the end of their lives.
Chief Executive of the BHA, Andrew Copson, said, ‘Some people assume that humanists and other non-religious people will find death difficult to talk about, if only because we don’t believe in an afterlife and cannot offer that kind of consolation to the bereaved.
‘But one of the comments we often receive about humanist funerals conducted by our celebrants is how refreshing they are in their honesty and what a relief it is to openly acknowledge the reality of death. It’s easy to talk about the healthy acceptance of death as a fact of life, but if it is cushioned in afterlife beliefs or embroiled in a divine plan then this acceptance is never total. Humanists are free to focus on celebrating a life, instead of trying to obscure the finality of death.’
The Dying Matters coalition has produced some excellent resources with advice on how to approach and be direct about the subject of death and how to talk to friends and family about end of life wishes.
‘There are good practical reasons for taking a head-on approach to death,’ Mr Copson continued, ‘Some people will be anxious for many years because they think it would appear morbid to talk to relatives about the type of care they want, or the circumstances in which they would want to be resuscitated, or indeed in which they might want to die. The contents of wills, letting family know about your organ donation wishes, and how you’d like to be remembered in a funeral – these are all things for which open conversation would be fruitful and make us happier in the long run.’
Notes
The Dying Matters coalition has nearly 7,000 member organisations. The aim of dying Matters Awareness Week (15-21 March 2010) is to raise awareness and generate debate on dying, death and bereavement. www.dyingmatters.org
The British Humanist Association is the national charity supporting and representing people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs.
Humanist Ceremonies™ is the BHA’s network of trained and accredited celebrants throughout England and Wales. The humanist weddings and partnerships, funerals and memorials, and naming ceremonies conducted by BHA accredited celebrants are unique, created specially for the people involved and based on shared human values with no dependency on religion or superstition.
Humanists are atheists and agnostics who make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values, base our ethics on the goals of human welfare, happiness and fulfilment, and seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves, individually and together.