Christian Comment with Mary Brown of Stroud Quaker Meeting

QUAKERS have no creed, but we do have a small booklet of 'Advices and Queries'. One asks: "Are you able to contemplate your death and the death of those closest to you? Accepting the fact of death, we are freed to live more fully."

Can this be true?

I have recently talked with many people, who accept death, and are happy to discuss it.

I am convinced that the advice is right.

I heard moving descriptions of death, some likened it to birth: both are hard work, both have the power to make grown men cry.

A carer, who described herself as 'a dye-hard sceptic and non-believer', told me: "something spiritual happens when someone dies".

Someone else said: "Contemplating death can help to enrich life."

Another: "It’s life affirming to talk about death."

We need to talk about death for many reasons: relatives need to know what the deceased wants for a funeral, we need more people to become organ donors, the bereaved need to feel able to talk about their loss.

A GP told me that if you want to die peacefully at home, rather than in intensive care attached to the latest medical technology, you need to tell someone while you still can.

I learned that, for some people, knowing death is not far off makes the last weeks of life particularly meaningful.

One said: "I would say Dad embraced life in that last month, he had some wonderful times."

Another: "He got letter after letter, visit after visit from people - just an outpouring of love for him... the whole summer for me was a wonderful time: a really precious time."

We will all die: that is certain.

Let us accept this certainty, and embrace our God-given lives, perhaps see life, as one person put it: "As it really is, in all its sparkling luminosity."

This is the most important reason to talk about death.

When Jesus said he came that we might have life 'more abundantly', or, in another translation, that we might 'live life to the fullest' surely this is what he meant.