A good DEATH

Biting the dust. Kicking the bucket. Pushing up daisies. Giving up the ghost. Shuffling off this mortal coil. Taking a dirt nap. Meeting your maker. And my personal, irreverent favourite: Popping your clogs. Once you start listing the euphemisms for dying, you realise just how many there are – and how uncomfortable we are talking about death. Yet we’re all going to face it.

Growing up, we often used to drive past a desolate little cemetery next to the highway. Without fail, my mother would say, ‘If you bury me here one day, I’m coming back to haunt you.’ As teens, my brother and I leapt at the opportunity to tell her that this was, in fact, exactly what we planned to do. We’d say we had already picked out her plot and the threat of haunting was really more of a perk: we were thrilled that she was planning to visit us in the afterlife.

I know this seems a bit morbid (or even flippant), but it may also be the reason that I know what she does want when she dies one day – which, I’ve come to learn, is quite uncommon. Most people avoid talking about death at all costs, telling their kids the family dog has gone ‘to live on a farm’ – and leaving relatives shocked by the contents of their will when they eventually pass away.

DYING SOLO

Over the years, we’ve become more and more disconnected from death as part of life. In the 19th century, the sick and the dying were typically housebound and tended