Health, Death, and Finding the Words

Learning to talk about living and dying with the ones you love

Learning to talk about living and dying with the ones you love

My in-laws dressed for a Nigerian party.

It’s unpleasant to think about parents getting older and being less able to care for themselves. My parents and in-laws are quite independent and mobile presently — but inevitably that will change. I always recognized the importance of having conversations with family members about these things, but it was hard to know how and where to begin.

Growing up, my family did not partake in talks about the intricacies of life, let alone death. I didn’t know how or when it was appropriate to broach big, important topics like these. When my grandma’s health started going downhill, I watched my mom and her brothers handle her transition with compassion and grace. I wanted to be able to do the same thing one day, but I didn’t know how I would manage it without knowing what my parents wanted for themselves.

My in-laws on the other hand, seemed quite comfortable talking about these things. Shortly after getting married, I was invited to a family meeting, which was an entirely new concept for me. I had no idea what to expect, but my father-in-law had a long agenda, starting with where he wanted his body buried when he dies.

I need to stop here and emphasize how radical it was to be having this discussion. In my mind, these conversations happened behind closed doors, and only when they “needed” to happen. I had to fight the urge to dismiss the topic altogether on account of my father-in-law being quite healthy and active.

So he continued. His desired his body to be buried at his compound in Nigeria. The discussion stalled as his four sons did what they always did, which was passively agree with the idea and assume that it would just get handled. As the planner in life, I had many questions — though I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to ask. But I did anyway.

How does one get a body to Nigeria? What are the possible legal challenges of transporting a body across the world? How much does it cost? How does one preserve a body for that long? Is there a traditional ceremony that you would want on the day of your burial? And so on.

Very practical and important questions, and somehow it felt cruel to speak about this man we love in such morbid terms. At one point my father-in-law registered the discomfort in the room and acknowledged it by saying: dying is what makes life worth living. He’s right, and yet…

Then there were the frequent encounters with death that my mother-in-law was always talking about. She is a daily money manager and commonly works with aging clients. A big part of her job is to help clients and their families get their affairs in order before the they pass on. She regularly references a client or a friend who died, and it all felt a bit grim. But the more I got to know her and how she works with clients, the more I realized how much her work allowed clients to spend their last years focusing on the things they enjoy, knowing their finances were being managed.

My mother-in-law is also a 2x cancer survivor, which means she has faced questions of her own mortality, making her pretty qualified to help others to navigate that part of life. She has talked with me late into the night about what it feels like to be diagnosed with cancer and have society perceive it as a death sentence. It is also true that there is a deep anxiety that comes along with such a diagnosis that makes you fear that every single day could be the last. She says you do eventually get over it and learn to live life again.

Talking to my own parents about the inevitability of death and health issues is still a challenge. Our progress has been slow, but that’s okay. The more we talk about it, the more we create a space to have healthy and important conversations. My grandmother recently passed away, and I took the opportunity to have a discussion about about burial preferences. We made it lighthearted and I learned that my mother does not want to be buried near the water; she wants her ashes let go in the wind where she can be light and free.

Taboo topics — financial planning, inheritance, downsizing, end-of-life care, funeral costs, etc. — can tear even the most stable family apart. I think we avoid talking about them because they force us to see our mistakes, flaws, humanity, and ultimately our mortality. And of course talking about crappy things is not a silver bullet for averting a crisis or pain. It can, however, make room to connect in new and unexpected ways as a family, and maybe even bring some peace in the process.