photo courtesy of
Rown Twine
The love hanky is by
Jacqui Patterson
We used Oxford Quaker Meeting House for a wide
variety of events and held a free open air fair in
a busy shopping thoroughfare in the city centre.
We facilitated or supported sessions with Sobell
Hospice and Helen & Douglas House for young
people and worked with the local homeless
community. We aimed to catch people where
they usually went, to talk to them through their
particular passions and interests, provide practical information, inspiration through visual arts,
music and performance and enable them to take
part in a wide range of workshops. We ran 38
events over two weeks and involved over 1800
people. To see more about what we did last time
visit www.kickingthebucket.co.uk
The work done by an Australian nurse, with people
nearing end of life showed that people reported
their priorities rested with their relationships, with
living the life they really wanted to live not just responding to the pressure from family or society to
live a certain way. Nobody said they wished they
had worked harder!
I think the way we approach our deaths often
reflects how we live our lives. The invitation to
really face our own mortality can lead to us asking some pretty fundamental and honest questions about what really matters to us and that
isn’t always comfortable of course. I know of
some people with life shortening illnesses who
say that they never lived life so vividly until they
began to grapple with the reality of their own
death. For others I know it can feel paralysing
and impossibly hard to come to terms with in
a myriad of ways and none of us know how we
would react until we actually face it. But we can
all get some benefit from facing our own mortality and realising we share this with everyone
we know.
I was very inspired by the ‘festival for the living’
death weekend run at the Southbank in January
2012 whilst I was preparing for my events, now
there have been a number of other festivals around
the country. I hope to see these becoming as
common as gardening and music festivals.
http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-ofthe-Dying.html
Time and again people talk to me about feeling
lighter after approaching the subject not gloomier
and you would be surprised how much laughter as
well as tears there can be in a room where death
is being talked about.
After all, death concerns each and every one of us
not just a group of individuals with a particular
hobby or interest.