Are We Ready
to Talk About Dying?
An article written by Katriona Feinstein from the AGD talk and exhibition at the Brighton School of Medical Science.
Bognor Regis
artist Antonia Rolls opens up the conversation on death – and the result is
surprisingly positive
I am sitting in a brightly-lit lecture
hall in Brighton and Sussex Medical School, watching a woman use a green LED
torch light to show areas of interest on a picture of a dead man. She draws our attention first to his
still-moist lips and then to the bright spots on his jaundiced, sunken eyes.
This is no medical demonstration. Our speaker is no woman of science. She is Antonia Rolls (left), full-of-life,
self-professed Artist Extraordinaire.
The picture is in fact a painting – hers – and in it she has depicted
her beloved partner’s emaciated face minutes after his death, framed by a
golden halo.
I was not sure what to expect. Like many, I am used to thinking of death as
something we all know is there, waiting in the wings, and that, probably, the
best thing we can do is just to keep it quiet.
Like an uncomfortable shared secret we know we’ll all be forced to
listen to, loudly, at some point or another.
Why not put it off until then?
Antonia is on a mission to show us this attitude is not
helping.
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Antonia Rolls’ partner Steve, the
inspiration for A Graceful Death, whilst dying of liver cancer in 2007.
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It all started for her in 2007, when her
partner, Steve, was dying from liver cancer.
Bewildered and angry, she did what she knew best and painted the last
few weeks, days and the actual day of his death, “with no other aim than to
survive and understand this terrible loss.”
She never expected anything to come of these painfully honest
depictions. “I didn’t think anyone would
want anything to do with me if they saw them,” she said with typical wry humour
as she showed us the first image of Steve’s deteriorated form.
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A Graceful Death –
Paintings from the End of Life, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, 3rd
October.
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But in 2009, she summoned the
courage to put on a small exhibition of the works in her house. To her surprise, strangers and friends turned
up and responded passionately to her illustrations of the end of life. Most importantly, she found amongst her
visitors a common desire to talk about their own experiences. “I learned a huge lesson that day,” she
said. “Everybody has a story to tell.”
And now, Antonia tours the country telling the stories that
people want told. Since those early
days, A Graceful Death has grown to include commissioned paintings of both
dying and dead subjects, in addition to “Survivors” – those bereaved, or those
who have endured a life-threatening illness.
At her exhibitions and talks she tells each person’s story in charming
and poignant detail, helped by poetry and
snapshots of that person’s life and death, written by their loved ones.
Her aim is to start a conversation about death and create a
space where people can share their feelings on this often-avoided subject.
“I don’t want to die!” she admitted readily
during her talk. “It’s the biggest
unknown.” But it is as much a part of
everyone’s life as all the rest, she said, and accepting death is fundamental
to having an easy one.
In East Asia, Confucian philosophy helps death to be thought
of as an inevitable part of Destiny. A
man’s death can be considered less final through a belief that his family will
constitute a continuation of his self.
However, as Antonia pointed out, in our more individualistic western
cultures, we do not have a tradition of acceptance and we tend to fear the
topic. She believes we all have to deal
with death at some point and most of us, through dodging thinking about it for
years, suddenly have to go through a “crash course” on how to cope whilst at
our least able to do so. She wants to use
A Graceful Death to show that it is not wrong to talk about death, to cry, to
get upset and to laugh. “There’s a lot
of laughter in the exhibition,” she said, with a smile.
The wit and candour
with which she discussed her own gruelling experiences illuminate each of her
paintings. Her simple diptych, ‘Alone
with Tea’ (left), portrays herself, desolate after her partner Steve’s death
but with a teapot and mug by her feet.
She writes in the paintings’ description that here she is taking solace
in the fact that “there is still tea.”
Then there is the story of Hiram Burnett (right), a real
character, strongly disliked by all of his children. On what was to be his final day alive,
Hiram’s daughter Cecil decided to visit him in hospital after a long time
apart. There Cecil finally realised that
although she did not like her father, she loved him totally. She asked him if she could take a photo and
he instantly pulled the cheeky face seen here in Antonia’s painting.
Walking around the cold and fluorescent lobby of the Medical
School, I could not help but be touched by these stories. Each person (or cat!) was given his or her
own small, personalised section.
Antonia’s great skill was to give each life a sense of truth and
immediacy, through boldly-painted facial expressions and
intimate accounts from families. The
cherished slippers, rubber ducks and tiny perfume bottles hiding cosily in each
painting were symbols of each of these subjects’ rich, various and funny
existences. I found an inescapable
feeling of brief closeness to each one.
And yet death as a topic can still seem too raw to seek
out. I was told that some who had booked
to come to the exhibition could not face entering the building. It is certainly true that a few of the
paintings are uncomfortable and haunting.
One in particular shows Steve in the bath with rubber ducks. She writes that here the illness had taken
hold of him and he had slipped into another place mentally where she could not
reach him. He looks frail, uncertain and
lost.
I asked Antonia why people want to be represented in their
dying states. Would their families not
want a painting that reminds them of the good times? Are there not photos from their youth that could
be painted?
In spite of what society expects, “dying people do not want
to go and die quietly in a room somewhere,” she replied. “Until they are dead they are very much alive
and they each have a story to tell.”
Many of them want to be seen, she said, and this is why they or their
loved ones have approached her to ask for paintings from the last stage of
life. I was surprised to learn from
conversations with audience members later that it is also not uncommon to take
photographs at funerals, in order to chart the very last part of a loved one’s
story. They saw it as part of the acceptance
of death.
And what does Antonia
get out of doing this work? “Painting
someone who is dying and disappearing before your eyes helps to keep a
connection with them even though they are changing and moving off to another
place.” After this helped her through
Steve’s death, she said it “seemed right somehow” to move on to painting others. “It is the most humbling and inspiring, and
sometimes very difficult, way to paint… It
has changed my life because now I try to understand what I have, not what I
have not.”
Although the subject matter may seem the heaviest, the
hardest to understand and the most frightening, Antonia’s talk on her work for
A Graceful Death and as a “Soul Midwife” (a spiritual and emotional companion
for the dying) was in fact uplifting and cathartic.
The audience watched in sharp silence as Antonia interviewed
Mike Hardy, an ex-headmaster severely disabled by Motor Neuron Disease, and
Michelle, his wife. Mike was supposed to
attend the evening but after 11 years of living with the disease, he had
recently become unable to travel and was forced to appear by pre-recorded
video. “He never gets any better,” his
wife said during the taped interview, “only ever worse.”
Despite such bleak content, the video and talk actually united
the audience – which was an eclectic mix of medical students, doctors,
mourners, clergymen and art enthusiasts.
The evening was not academic or particularly philosophical (apart from
encouraging openness). It was an
appreciation and discussion of a spiritual experience that never became
over-sentimentalised or centred on religion.
Its focus was our entirely human reactions to death and our shared
ability for resilience. In the context,
it became life-affirming to watch Mike and Michelle chat on film about carrying
on with their lives as normally as possible and Mike continue to tease Michelle
through his computer-operated voice, as he always had done when
able-bodied.
After the talk, most audience members turned to their
neighbours and asked them questions or comforted them if they seemed
upset. One woman talked to me about her
brother who had died young and I, usually reticent on such matters, found
myself telling her about the song they had played at my grandfather’s
funeral.
I would highly recommend A Graceful Death as an unusual and
unexpectedly uplifting experience.
A Graceful Death –
Paintings from the End of Life
Upcoming events:
1st-3rd
November: A Graceful Death and Soul Midwife Exhibition, Unitarian Church, 49 East
St., Bridport, Dorset, DT6 3JX.
16th-17th
November: A Graceful Death and Sound Therapy Workshop, 113 Marshall Avenue,
Bognor Regis, PO21 2TH.
7th
December: A Graceful Death and Gentle Therapy Day, 113 Marshall Avenue, Bognor
Regis, PO21 2TH
