Even though death is the irrefutable, inevitable, unavoidable conclusion to life, people seem to have a hard time coming to terms with their own - and others' - mortality.
People are afraid to die, some so full of fear, they are panicked by the very thought of their own demise.
Stephen Lloyd Garrett, a self-described death coach, has written three books, his latest called When Death Speaks, Listen, Learn and Love.
Northern Health invited Garrett to be part of the conversation earlier this week when about 60 healthcare providers gathered to listen to his perspective on the tabu subject.
Doctors, nurses, hospice volunteers, hospice society board members and others interested in the subject attended the event.
"He said we needed to be in a different conversation about death and dying," said Anne Chisholm, health service administrator at Northern Health.
The session was co-hosted by Northern Health and the division of family practice.
"Why it's important to me is that people who are at end of life and are not prepared, don't have their wishes necessarily reflected in the care that is maybe provided. The families don't know what they want because they haven't talked about it so the idea is to really make death a part of life," said Chisholm.
People aren't prepared with a will, or an advanced directive that offers specific instructions for end-of-life decisions.
"Have a good death, have a good death for your family members so people can say what needs to be said, so family members know what to do, how to be with each other based on what their loved one would have wanted, and in some cases not fight over things because it was clear ahead of time and take the mystery out of it whenever possible," said Chisholm.
People need to think about their death when they are well and healthy because it's part of everyone's future, she pointed out.
Garrett has a masters degree in leadership and training, diplomas in mediation, conflict resolution, negotiation and communication. He has two other books - Men Read This and Monks Without A Church.
"If you take a look at how we've been trained over the last 100 years, we've gone from an environment where we all mostly lived on the farm - about 90 per cent of us - to now mostly living in the city and we've gone from an environment where about 80 per cent of us lived in multigenerational homes to where now only 16 per cent of us do, so we're kinda just a little out of practice," said Garrett. "Apparently, we've evolved."
We've gone from the farm, where animals were slaughtered to provide food for the family, and seeds were planted in the ground in the spring and food was harvested in the fall and everything had a beginning and an end, he explained.
"And we were grateful because that was our darn food," said Garrett. "So I think that primary connection with the land is missing."
With the invention of antibiotics and all the medical technology, people became frightened of death and the goal of medicine has become to do everything to prevent death.
"There's nothing wrong with prevention or good medical care," said Garrett. "But at some point we gotta start talking. How do we want the end of our life to be? Where's the line between quality of life and trying to save a life? That's what I'm working on - trying to re-brand the grim reaper because I think it's an image that doesn't serve any of us because we're so frightened of it and most of us are so in denial about death."
During the session facilitated by Garrett he asked participants what they could do right now to make the successful shift from fearing death to opening up the conversation to change how people relate with death.
"Perhaps have, instead of 83 per cent of us not prepared for the end of life, have 83 percent of us prepared for it," said Garrett.
And that could mean, at the very least, 17 per cent of people have a will.
"We likely haven't sat down and spoken about 'don't stick any tubes down my throat, don't force feed me, don't do CPR', we're just not really clear on that so that the docs, nurses and the family all have the same care goals because right now they don't and that's where the conflict comes in," said Garrett.
