04/06/2025
Trigger Warning: This post contains reflections on death and dying. Please read gently.
I’m sharing this from a place of deep respect—for the lives we love, the journeys we witness, and the moments that change us forever.
The only death I ever witnessed was my grandmother’s, on the final day of her life. I was just ten years old. What I saw then left a mark so deep that it shaped how I related to death well into my adulthood. It left me afraid—unsure of what I’d seen, and uncertain about what she had felt.
Transitions in life have long held my attention. I am both fascinated and humbled by the ways birth and death—those two great thresholds—can become portals for profound healing and transformation. I’ve been privileged to support two women through birthing their babies, one at home, and I’ve birthed two of my own, including a home birth. From the outside, these experiences looked one way—but on the inside, they were rich with complexity, intensity, and change.
Last year, I read a book that helped me better understand what happens physiologically when we die. I wanted to know whether what we see externally reflects what our loved ones are experiencing within. I also read it because so many of my patients have shared deeply moving stories of sitting with loved ones in their final hours. I didn’t feel I had enough grounding or language to fully hold those stories, to listen with the steadiness and depth they deserved.
Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of holding space for clients who have shared griefs that defy words. Deaths by su***de. Murders. Sudden, unexpected losses. Long illnesses that stretch through time with slow, aching goodbyes. Deaths complicated by estrangement or silence or distance. Loss that arrives without closure.
The human heart can carry so much. I am endlessly humbled by the quiet resilience I’ve witnessed—by the ways people find meaning, beauty, and sacredness in even the most harrowing circumstances. Humans have an extraordinary capacity: to endure, to heal, to continue, and sometimes, simply to be with what is. Not to fix it, but to honour it.
This post is not easy to write. Death remains, in many places, an uncomfortable subject. But for me, not talking about it feels far more uncomfortable.
I come from rural Ireland, where death is met with sincerity, ritual, and community. We still hold multi-day wakes—gathering to share prayers, tears, stories, silence. The process of letting go begins with presence. When circumstances allow, we prepare for grief just as we prepare for birth.
Neighbours arrive with food. Local priests pray. Families sit and speak and remember. It is one of the few remaining communal rites of passage that reminds me we are not meant to grieve alone.
But in many places now, death is medicalised and hidden—made sterile, silent. And that absence of ritual can leave a heavy confusion in its place.
Over the past ten years, I’ve read many books that have helped me approach this sacred transition with greater compassion and understanding. Some have offered spiritual insight, others have helped me understand the physiological process. All have helped me feel more present—with myself, with others, and with the subject of dying.
I share them here not as a professional, but as a fellow human being. I lost my brother in his 40s under tragic and deeply complex circumstances. That loss changed me. It continues to shape how I see grief, love, and the quiet courage it takes to carry on.
So to those of you reading this who have suffered, who are suffering, who are caring for someone, or who are simply afraid—I want you to know I am holding you close in this conversation. There is support. There is wisdom. And you are not alone.
Swipe to see some of the books that have helped me—both spiritual and medical. These are, I believe, must-reads for anyone who wants to be better equipped to support themselves and their loved ones through death as a sacred, human transition.
If you have books that supported you, I would love to hear about them. Please tag, share, or pass this on to someone who may be quietly searching for comfort, clarity, or peace.
With love and reverence, always.
Fiona x
