Day of the Dead should be a UK annual holiday

Death faces all of us. Yet how reluctant we are to face death. We know that there is one inevitability, one immutable fact of life, over which we have no control, which is that one day we shall not be living. And our reaction to this? Well, generally not to think about it, talk about it, plan for it, confront it. And when we die, it is left to the living to deal with the aftermath of our death. 

So what is it about death that is still a taboo? There’s no better time to consider this question as on 1^st November is the Day of the Dead, a holiday particularly celebrated in Mexico, but also in other cultures, which focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died.

Why do we in Britain not do the same? Why do so many bereaved people grieve alone? Why do we not discuss the implications of our death in advance? It’s not that we can avoid it – death, I mean - yet we avoid discussing it?  Everything that happens after death is for the living.  When I’m dead, I certainly won’t be aware of what people said, thought, or did to me (or my body).

Most of us probably think about death in a kind of abstract way, but not about its implications for those we leave behind. When and where, if ever, do we consider our own death, mortality, or what it will be like, in a paradoxical kind of way, not to exist? At funerals? When we make our wills? Imagining our own obituary?

I have known people who have been terminally ill to discuss and plan their own funerals. My mother, only a week before she died, decided on and shared her funeral arrangements. My dying sister-in-law did not once talk about her imminent death, her funeral, or anything associated with this. People who decide to determine their own funeral arrangements do so mainly for two reasons; they want a say in the organisation of how they will be remembered, and they want to reduce the pressure on whoever is organising the funeral.  I have made clear in writing how I would like my funeral to run, and I hope whoever has to organise it respects my wishes.

How little we think about our own death and its impact on those around us may be reflected in our attitude to will making.  More than 60% of the UK population do not have a will. Research claims that most people suffer from ‘wills apathy’, or say they plan to have one written when they get older. And yet one of the major negative outcomes from death is familial conflict over the estate of the deceased.  We have a lower rate of will-making than many European countries. Similarly we have a lower level of organ donations compared with a number of other European countries.

None of us know when we will die, yet we will.  

Imagine for a moment that you leave home one morning to go to work, on holiday, for a walk, or that you go to bed one night, and that it is the last time you did any of these because you died.  Sudden death happens. My father aged 47 went to work one day, apparently fit and well, and never came home (except in my dreams).  A close friend in his 50s went to bed and never woke up.  Then there is the more predictable death too that comes from sheer old age, or following a terminal illness or the alcoholic drinking him or herself to death; my mother dying aged 93 after suffering from bronchitis and COPD, or my sister-in-law aged 54 from pancreatic cancer.

Is it possible to imagine our own death, and consider the impact of, and issues that will arise, say, in the first seven days after the event? How will relatives, family and friends be told about it? How will organs be donated (or not, as the case may be)? Who will register our death? Who will arrange our funeral? How will our partner, children, those closest to us, manage?  Who among our family and friends copes best?

And then over the following weeks our funeral is attended to, our estate and probate is managed. Family, friends grieve for us. Months pass, and anniversaries, birthdays, holiday festivals come and go. We are remembered, or not; people are still grieving over their bereavement. We are dead. They go on living, living with their grief, bereaving for their loss.

The Day of the Dead is echoed in many countries as All Saints Day, a feast day celebrated on 1^st November, or All Souls Day, a time to pray for departed souls on 2^nd November.  Though these are primarily religious occasions, for many European countries these days have long been holidays in which people take the day off work, go to cemeteries with candles and flowers, and give presents to children, usually sweets and toys.  The Day of the Dead is for those of us alive to celebrate our deceased loved ones, to share with others their lives and what they mean to us.  It is both part grieving and part coming to terms with death.  It is about both supporting and sharing with each other; about celebrating and holding our memories in a safe place.  The Day of the Dead becomes an annual stopping off point on a journey where grief lessens but becomes ever part of us as the years go by. We should make it a national holiday.

In acknowledging others’ deaths, we can recognise our own mortality, knowing that we can be certain of our own lives being celebrated, in the way the living wish to do it, through festivity, crying and laughing, eating and drinking, visiting graves and taking a holiday, or even dressing up in masks.  Then the living will see death not as a taboo but an inevitability to be faced openly and without apathy or fear.  

Mike Campbell, Vice Chair, Bristol and District Cruse Bereavement Care, writing in a personal capacity.