The importance of conversation about dying matters

The importance of conversations about dying matters

As part of Dying Matters Awareness Week 2025, Oakhaven's Pastoral and Spiritual Care Lead, Lois Collings, considers conversations about and consideration of dying matters...

In 2017, the BBC aired a documentary film called A Time to Live. The film followed the lives of twelve people who had received a terminal prognosis and explored how they had found ways to celebrate life, making the most of their remaining time. The film was both moving and thought-provoking. It showed how they had come to terms with their mortality and, in the process, had encountered a sense of growth and healing that had given their lives a deeper meaning, acceptance, and even joy. This speaks to a profound paradox: that, in acknowledging death, we may come to live more fully.

To live fully is to accept that death is a part of the journey of life

This is a recurring theme in many of the world’s various philosophical and religious belief systems. The changing seasons offer us a powerful metaphor for the various stages we face throughout our lives, reflecting the natural cycle of growth, decline, and renewal.

We are all familiar with the cycle of life and death that shapes own human existence. Richard Rohr writes: “Death is not just physical dying, but going to the full depth of things, hitting the bottom, beyond where [we] are in control. And in that sense, we all probably go through many deaths in our lifetime.”

At Oakhaven, we see time and again how the awareness of mortality can awaken people to what truly matters. Far from being solely about loss, dying can be a time of deep connection, reflection, and personal transformation.

Lydia Dugdale, in The Lost Art of Dying, outlines two essential elements for living and dying well. First, to accept our finite existence; and second, to embrace the support of a community. We need others to walk alongside us, bear witness to our struggles, and hold us in love.

Why talk about death and dying?

How we think and talk about death and dying is important - personally, with our family and friends, in society as a whole, in general terms or more specifically as we face our own, or a loved one’s terminal prognosis. Such conversations help us see how death is a natural part of life, not something to be feared or avoided. Talking openly about our hopes, fears, and wishes can allow us and our loved ones to prepare, connect, and support one another through the most challenging of times. Ultimately, talking about death and dying is an act of choosing to live with intention, right to the very end.

A holistic approach

Oakhaven's holistic approach addresses the physical, social, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of care for patients and their loved ones. Anyone who has navigated the path of terminal illness will know that differing aspects of a person’s care needs often co-exist, sometimes in a complex and messy way. Our skilled team of multi-disciplinary professionals are available to help patients and their loved ones talk about death and dying at all points along the journey. And we also want to engage the community.

This week, Oakhaven Hospice is participating in Hospice UK’s Dying Matters Awareness Week. As a centre of palliative care excellence, we strive at all times for our patients and their loved ones to live as fully as possible in the light of a terminal prognosis.

There has been much in the news recently about the Assisted Dying Bill, but also encouragingly, a widening discussion about the provision of palliative care and the role of hospices in helping people to die peacefully and in a dignified manner.

Returning to the documentary film mentioned earlier, it seemed as if each participant found a way to face their prognosis with grace and dignity. Whether seen as a final transformation, a completion, or a passage to something beyond, death invites us to reflect on legacy, hope, and healing. These reflections – mental, emotional, and spiritual – can help us to live more fully, even to be more fully alive, whilst also dying.

If you have read this far, we invite you to join a broader conversation about how we think about death and dying – whether it is a new topic for you or something you have long considered.

Consider these questions:

How far do you see your own cycles of growth, decline and renewal?
Where have you found transformation in the midst of loss?
What has helped you through difficult times?
How have you celebrated life’s gifts, even the hard-won ones?
Who has walked alongside you and witnessed your journey?
Where have meaningful conversations occurred – and where have they been absent?
How can Oakhaven help to create space for those conversations, individually, in groups, or across the wider community?

Death remains a mystery

Beyond experiencing physical symptoms, people will often grapple with profound questions—about meaning, legacy, forgiveness, fear, hope, and what lies beyond. At Oakhaven, we are committed to helping people live most fully while caring for their physical decline and demise. We hold a space where people can explore in depth all that is important to them and their loved ones. That is where true dignity in death and dying lies; honouring all that it means to be fully human, and that is why talking about death and dying is so important, because Dying Matters.

Download your conversation starter

I will not die an unlived life

by Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

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The importance of conversations about dying matters