Fear Not Mortality

In my home town of Basingstoke, there is a true story of something so tragic and horrific, it just makes your skin crawl. When I was a young boy of around 10 or 11 years old, a lady I knew (I can't remember where from) informed me of this horrific story and I was so shocked I just couldn't believe her and went and found out information for myself. To my amazement, the story she told me was indeed true.  This true story is about Mrs Alice Blunden, the wife of a well off Malt Merchant, Mr William Blunden. The year is 1674 and Mr Blunden is away on business in London, when Mrs Blunden, a woman known for her large size and enjoyment of Brandy, found herself feeling rather unwell.  She called her maid and sent her to the local apothecary to fetch some to ease the pain. The type of pain relief back then, would have been an opiate derived from poppies. So Mrs Blunden drank the poppy water given, and fell into a very deep sleep. So much so that she could not be revived. The doctor was...

Image sourced from  https://letterpile.com/personal-essays/My-View-about-Death-Dying-and-Heaven It struck me this week that we use the word morbid so much, but do we truly understand what it means? So let's take a look at the Oxford dictionary definition of morbid below:  'Having or expressing a strong interest in sad or unpleasant things, especially disease or death.' So looking at the above definition, we see that they are already asserting that disease or death are viewed as sad or unpleasant. But when a doctor is treating a disease, do we claim that their interest in it is sad or unpleasant? Nope! It's actively encouraged, I mean how else would we have cures so many diseases, if not for interest in finding a cure!  Therefore we can clearly see that disease is not in and of itself, morbid.  So why is talking about death morbid?  So looking at this pragmatically, I can see that someone who is interested in death in a way that is unhealthy and all consuming, ca...

Artwork by Sarah Byng   The path of death is not a lonely one, should you choose to share the burden. The hard questions. Well what do I mean by hard questions? Well these are the questions that we skirt around or avoid talking about on the topic of death.  Death is one of the hardest things to talk about. Just the mention of death in a conversation and it will stop very quickly. I think the topic has been swept under the carpet so much over the generations, that most people don't even know why it is morbid. Whilst I understand this avoidance stance on discussing death, isn't it one of the most important things to happen in our life? Discussing death gives us a sense that things will not last and could give us the jolt into the present moment some of us may need. Making us do the things that we really want to do, for ourselves, family or others.  So how do we discuss these hard questions? Well to start with, speak to someone you know a friend or relative. Maybe ask them i...