The Palliative Times celebrates Dying Well Week.
“Dying well is generally considered much better than dying badly- says 68% of people.”
usgov survey (2026).
If there’s one thing we can count on it is that we will die some time after we are born. In fact many people have said that this is the one thing we all have in common, other than brushing our teeth. Despite death being the greatest commonality of human experience it remains a source of concern for many. In today’s Palliative Times we aim to explore why so many people are worried about their demise.
“Do they know something I don’t?” - asks our first interviewee- 99 year old great great gran Doris. Doris tells us that she isn’t worried about death, to her it is no different to the time before she was born. “The world didn’t know me for millions of years, it still mostly doesn’t doesn’t know me- children in China and Yugoslavia aren’t being taught about me getting divorced twice and working in a factory for 60 years. So when I’m dead it’ll be no different to when I wasn’t born. I hope I’ve done a little good but mostly I’ll be happy for the rest.” A lovely sentiment by Doris, we can all agree.
“But who will the world revolve around when I’m gone?” Says 68 year old Ron of Byfleet. We’ve met Ron at the cardiology rehab unit following his recent heart attack. “I don’t like the feeling that I’ll leave others behind. But they don’t seem to like the idea of coming with me. The Egyptians had it right- bury me with a few people for company and maybe a cat.” A unique perspective and one that we can all appreciate given there by Ron.
“Please don’t talk to me”. Geraldine, 70 from Cardiff, tells us that she’d rather not talk about the ‘D’ word. We assume she means death. Geraldine has stated: “I can’t imagine anything worse than talking about ’it’, the whole idea is awful. Why would I want to talk about something I can’t do anything about?”
There we have it, from the accepting to the humerous and perhaps most telling the tale of a very human desire to control the uncontrollable. Why do we fear death? We don’t know but we can say that it might be because we don’t talk about it enough and so perhaps it becomes a bigger thing than it should be due to a collective conspiracy of silence.
We leave you with a quote from our editor:
“I’m too busy to deal with..wait..are you taking this down… right, um, I think that talking about dying is probably seen as distasteful because it’s talking about something we don’t know much about. However, if we took that attitude to other things we’d never grow or learn or be prepared for anything. I think if we can talk about the weather, which seems just as mercurial as anything else, then we can talk about death. Right now leave me alone and stop writing.” -Ed, 2026.