Deborah James has been dying in public for five years. Since her diagnosis of terminal bowel cancer, she has become famous and beloved as a tireless campaigner, co-host of the award-winning podcast of You, Me and the Big C, author of a book about cancer and a humane and life-affirming contributor to the conversation around how we face death. Now she has said she is at the end of her life. She is no longer being kept alive in hospital, but has returned to her parents’ home to die with her husband, children and siblings around her.
The phrase “end of life” has become a tag in familiar phrases: end-of-life care, end-of-life pathway, end-of-life wishes. The phrase “good death” is bandied about with no context. But at least we are starting as a society to talk about death. The brilliant, intimate, funny, flaying books and articles and programmes and podcasts by people who are dying have immense value, for they allow us to think of our own endings, and how we want to die says something about how we want to live.
