Doctors Kerrie Noonan and David Brumley speak precisely and with great passion about the topic of preparing for death.
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As two specialists in the field with years of experience, they've seen and helped facilitate a change in the way discussions are held about preparing to die: how those who know their death is imminent want to end their final days; and how those who deal with death on a daily basis can talk with others about how it has affected them.
The doctors were part of a larger event held at the Ballarat New Cemetery called Living Today Dying Tomorrow, held in conjunction with the National Compassionate Communities Practice Forum, part of The GroundSwell Project.
Conducted in the newly-refurbished main chapel of the cemetery, the doctors joined end-of-life professionals, community and volunteer groups, health care organisations, lawyers and other groups to examine ways to communicate better the natural cycle that is the process of moving from life to death.
In the not-so-very distant past, conversations about death were far more commonplace in our lives, largely because death was infinitely more present.
Dying at home was a given for many; hospitals didn't have palliative care wards and medicines didn't exist which gave the chance of extending a life as they do today.
People would come to see the dead; they'd bring food and musical instruments, like the Irish wake. Men would make the coffin, they'd dig the grave by hand and carry the body."
- Libby Moloney, Natural Grace Holistic Funerals
In towns like Ballarat, where workplace deaths in dangerous sites like mines or quarries happened regularly, the dead were often retrieved and removed by colleagues and family members. Coronial inquiries were held in public (The Courier was a regular attendee) and were held in hotels, public halls and sometimes school buildings.
Until 1970, the average age of death for Australians was under 70. We simply didn't live that long. Now we survive over a decade longer, with the attendant frailties that a greater age brings.
Before he retired as Ballarat's palliative care physician five years ago, David Brumley had already long developed an abiding interest in how communities see and care for the elderly and dying.
He says the growing willingness to examine death, dying, loss and grief is welcome, but there is still a long way to go.
"There's a hell of a lot more to do," Dr Brumley says emphatically.
"We've just started on that path, really. I can engage people about choices now; sit down with people in a hospital when they know they are going to die within a few weeks, and I can usually be very honest and open about the truth of that, and can often talk about their choices and preferences."
Those preferences more often than not include the wish to die at home, surrounded by family and friends.
"Offering someone the option to die in their own home is, to my mind, really important," Dr Brumley says.
"Give people a choice. Not everybody wants to die at home, but about seven out of ten people, given the option, would choose to die at home, rather than hospital or a nursing home; not everybody - some would like the care of 24-hour nursing in a hospital, or a hospice like Gandarra here in Ballarat."
The co-founder and director of The GroundSwell Project Kerrie Noonan says the fact that 70 per cent of people in Ballarat would like to have their last days in their own home is a statistic that should be more widely shared.
Founded in 2009 by Noonan, a clinical psychologist, and playwright Peta Murray, GroundSwell describes its mission as developing 'research-driven strategies that develop death literacy for Australians and drive innovation for the way we develop end of life services and systems.'
"GroundSwell comes at it from the grassroots, community perspective," says Kerrie Noonan.
"We know that there are people who have been through caring, been through grieving before, who have a lot to offer and are doing a lot of informal support already in their communities. We know that schools and service clubs and churches and other places are doing a that supportive care; and one of the things we are interested in is bringing that to life, bringing it out into the open; having people recognise they already have death literacy."
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Part of bringing support into the open are the Compassionate Communities Forums such as the one held in Ballarat. From the the first forum held in Sydney, which David Brumley also attended, there are now a number of Compassionate Communities being grown around Australia, including Ballarat.
"It's not huge yet, even now," says David Brumley, "but we've got a group, we get together and talk; we've done this (Living Today Dying Tomorrow event); I think it will grow."
Kerie Noonan says the act of bringing together end-of-life professionals gives the public a chance to take greater control over a process that has been shrouded (to use an unfortunately accurate term) in a kind of mystery for many years.
"We want to look at this as a full spectrum," she says.
"You're well; you're diagnosed with something; you go through dying and you die; your family care for you and amongst all of that is a whole lot of legal processes and things you need to do. It makes a big difference if you have some insight into that whole process."
For Natural Grace holistic funeral director Libby Moloney, giving insight to those who come to her for her services is the key to changing our attitudes around death.
She states the three tenets of creating a funeral as making sure 'it is legal, it is possible, and it is beautiful'.
"Essentially what we do is bring back the real past of how funerals were held in the community," Ms Moloney says.
She says it was not so very long ago that we cared for our dead, laid them out in our own homes.
"People would come to see the dead; they'd bring food and musical instruments, like the Irish wake. Men would make the coffin, they'd dig the grave by hand and carry the body."
Ms Moloney says we know now how psychologically beneficial that immediacy with death was, and how it gave people a security that, in their own passing, they would be dealt with in the same way.
Natural Grace uses technology such as cooling pads, enabling families to keep a loved one in the home while they prepare for a funeral. They also advise the bereaved of their rights, and deal with cemetery trusts over issues like shroud burials.