By Ivor Williams
a designer, who is developing new ways of thinking about and experiencing death and dying
1. Don’t let the words people use - 'hospice', 'palliative care', 'end-of-life care', 'terminal' - put you off. Try to put aside any negative feelings about those words and look to the people talking to you about it, they can help you. They really want to help you.
2. You might be living with a loss that affects you. A loss that happened before you were even born. However, you might have the chance to come to peace with it in your own lifetime. This might be through what feels like luck, or sheer, sustained effort on your part. Either way, many people may never understand why you have a sadness in you, but that’s ok. You're ok.
3. We aren't as religious as we used to be, which is fine, of course. But one thing big religion gave us is a sense of the 'larger us'. Religion had the monopoly on it for centuries, but each and every one of us - religious or not - has a deep-embedded sensation that something came before us and will come after us too. That we are part of a constant thread of people, families, communities through time. Those religious clothes, scents and songs are just expressions of that thread through time. It's natural to think about what your life meant, when you get to the end, and how you fit into a grander scheme of things. It’s the natural human spirit. I encourage you to embrace it in anyway that feels right to you.
4. Some people live a lifetime in a few short years. Others stretch it all out, decades going by. No matter how much time you have (or think you have), what do you wish you had more time for? What really brings you happiness, peace, contentment, satisfaction, purpose? What stops you from doing those things? That to me, those are the only two questions you have to ask yourself.
5. When it comes to down it, I think people are often more scared of living than they are scared of dying.
About Ivor Williams
Ivor is a designer, developing new ways of thinking about and experiencing death and dying in the 21st century. He leads the end-of-life care projects at the Helix Centre, an innovation design lab inside the Institute for Global Health Innovation led by Lord Ara Darzi at St Mary’s Hospital in London. He co-founded the Helix Centre’s first spin-out venture, Digital Care Planning, which develops tools that help individuals and families take an active role in end-of-life planning and managing the care they receive. As director of the tech-for-good company Humane Engineering, he co-leads the development of Cove, a flagship mental health app available on the NHS, and quoted as “one of the best mental health apps” by the Guardian newspaper. In 2018, he was named a New Radical by innovation foundation Nesta for “pioneering a human-centric approach to the experience of dying, bereavement and grief”. He tweets as @ivorinfo, @helixcentre and @beinganddying.
