Dying Matters Week: Creating a culture of openness about death and dying

Sylvia Rothschild, Spiritual Care Lead discusses how different cultures deal with the universal experience of grief and loss.

All cultures and religions have clear teachings about caring for the dying person, as well as how to help the people who love and grieve for them. Caring for the dying and the bereaved is a profoundly human instinct, and while different cultures and religions have different ways of expressing it, spiritual and practical care for those dying and bereaved is fundamental to them all. 

At the hospice we focus on individuals, but it helps to know something of the different influences that shape them. We maintain links with many religious groups, gaining knowledge of different traditions, and the ability to link people back to the comfort of their roots if they wish.  

Our Spiritual Care Team consists of people from many faiths and none, because we want to be able to have meaningful conversations with everyone. In those conversations we’ve learned a lot about different approaches to death, dying and bereavement – and also about the universality of the experience of grief. 

Studies of grieving brains show no differences in relation to race, age or religion. Everyone feels loss, sadness, despair. How we show it may vary. For some cultures there’s an expectation of a stiff upper lip, for others the public expression of pain.  Some see dying and bereavement as a community experience, others have a more private or individual path. And we know too that regardless of belonging to a particular cultural or faith group, some individuals will want to do it their way.  

So we feel our way, walking alongside every patient and every loved one. We have artefacts such as prayer mats and a Quran cube, books of scriptures and poetry.  Crocheted crosses and hearts to share. We try to provide what each person needs for their spiritual sustenance. Most powerfully was working with a Hindu temple who provided an MP4 file for a patient to hear while dying; and encouraging their soul to ascend.  

Wherever we look, we find wisdom in the variety of cultural and religious approaches to death and bereavement. It enables us to help people find the right way for them, rather than them berating themselves for not approaching death or grief in some imaginary “right way”.  

Whether it is rituals to do before life ends, or expectations of how grief should be, there is a library of helpful and human ways to act that we can call upon in order to make these inescapable experiences ones that don’t leave us struggling and worn down, but instead lifted up and able to find meaning in whatever life throws at us.