Of Love & Care & Compassion

Dear Life by Rachel Clarke is a powerful and heartbreaking true account of the author’s life as a palliative care doctor.

The book speaks straight to the heart as we witness the love and care given to those facing their final days. They are given dignity and they are given choices, treated as individuals who still have a life to live, albeit a short one. “Living and dying are not binary opposites. The dying… are still very much alive.” The dying are aware of just how precious and just how fragile life is.

In a world where we hurry about, worrying about this and that; we need to pause and ask “would this matter on your deathbed?” What matters at the end is love and family. Have we lived a life of love? “In the end, when death bears down, there is always this, the love of others.”

In our modern world we are shielded from death. “In Britain, less than a century ago, death in the home was so frequent, so commonplace, that family members regarded the witnessed loss of their loved ones as entirely expected – entirely normal.” Today, we shy away from death. It is the last taboo.