‘I was widowed at 23, young people need to talk about death’

Amy Molloy writes about marrying a man at age 23, knowing he has only weeks to live.

Do you know what to say when a friend’s loved one dies? Have you thought about the day your own parent, partner or best friend may no longer be visible? How would you discuss it, in a way that would be supportive, constructive, and even light-hearted?

If you don’t know the answer, you’re not alone.

A new study from the Royal College of Physicians in the UK has urged medical professionals to improve their bedside manner when it comes to discussing death, after identifying that “timely, honest conversations” about patients’ futures are not happening. However it’s not only doctors who need to become more comfortable with these conversations.

It’s been suggested that millennials are the generation most fearful of death, unlike our grandparents, raised through world wars, who learnt that life can be short. As medicine advances and life expectancy increases, we prefer to think of death as our “future self’s problem”.

But is postponing the inevitable increasing our terror of it?

Amy Molloy in The Amateursguide