Concerns of safety and vulnerability are legitimate and, of course, not all those at the end of their lives can tell their own stories. As life narrative theorist Paul John Eakin states, the breakdown of adult life and memory brings us “face to face with the end of an identity’s story”.
However, assuming that all elderly or dying people are beyond constructing stories of their identities or lives is folly. We must share end-of-life stories – safely, collaboratively – or risk oversimplifying the complexity of dying and denying the autonomy of dying people to share their feelings.
OUT OF PAGES AND INTO OUR SCREENS
End-of-life storytelling isn’t new, autothanatography – writing about one’s own imminent death – is an established literary genre.
This unique genre not only helps us process death (our own or a loved one’s), but also normalises anticipatory grief (grieving before the fact). Australian authors such as Cory Taylor and Georgia Blain have penned their own deaths.
In Dying: A Memoir, Taylor writes: “I am making a shape for my death, so that I, and others, can see it clearly. And I’m making dying bearable for myself.”
Similarly, at the end of Blain’s memoir, The Museum of Words: A Memoir of Language, Writing and Mortality, Blain acknowledges the power of having written her own life and death, stating, “This miniature is my life in words, and I have been so grateful for every minute of it.”
As writers and creators like Cutler demonstrate, the end-of-life stage can be difficult and heartbreaking, but is also a time to reflect. Autothanatological stories, whether written or digital, are a chance to “shape” death and to contemplate the past and the future at once.
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