Death is inevitable but we still seem flummoxed by it happening. We have all kinds of End of Life policies and procedures which do everything possible to make life difficult for those left behind.
Our language is around loss and unexpected, and grief and being bereft.
Why do we make Death so hard to process in our community and what can we do to normalise it across society?
We’re not flummoxed. We’re simply emotional and empathetic. We don’t want people (or pets) we know and love to die, because we miss them. We can also see that, for example, a child getting murdered is an awful thing, less awful than someone dying in their bed of old age, but both are dead, and we will either miss them if we knew them as they were big parts of our lives, or we can empathize with the people who did know them even if we didn’t, as we know how it feels to lose someone. People who were always in our lives, who we cared for and lived with, but are suddenly not will leave a gaping hole. It would be inhuman to not feel these things.