This is a personal subject, having very recently experienced both the provision of End of Life care to my Father and his eventual death.
Death and dying are, in most western societies at least, something of a taboo subject. Difficult to think about and even more difficult to talk about, We tend I feel to leave this difficult task to the health care professionals.
But the we all have a responsibility to help shape the care that people get during their final weeks and months, and to do that we need to talk about what our expectations for such care are and what informs our views.
Religion of course, dealing with death and what comes after as it does, acts to form the basis of many decisions on what sort of care is appropriate, but this usually means that the decisions are based around the ethics and ethos of Christianity in large part. This is not to suggest that Christianity has it all wrong, but I do feel it is about time the Pagan voice was heard in these discussions and Pagan ethics and ethos fed into the process.
So to this end I would like to start the dialog by bringing together some of my thoughts on what a pagan approach to End of life Care might look like.
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