Before #COVID19 I tended to think bereavement support was not integral to palliative care, fearing we might 'medicalise' grief.
During a period when family life is disrupted & beloveds are separated at death, prioritising bereavement care is essential - it starts before death.
1/ https://twitter.com/Lucy_Selman/status/1259046725836255233

Making sense of a death in our bereavement requires us to be able to understand the story of the dying.
This is why people bereaved by disasters need enquiries & information. They need to construct the narrative of their dying loved one's final days, hours, minutes.
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Making sense of our beloved's final part of living helps us to complete their story.
Those 9/11 messages from the Twin Towers & UA flight 93 gave us insights into the experience of those people as they faced death.
Their calls mention fear & sorrow, yet also love & thanks.
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In hospitals and res care settings, staff or the few allowed visitors are helping dying people to make contact with their beloveds. Their precious messages are of love & thanks, reconciliation & farewell.
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Some caregivers are keeping diaries for their patients or residents: records of conversations about their lives, their memories, the people they love. These records could enrich our story of a beloved being awake, or asleep. Of losing consciousness. Of changing breathing.
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To be able to synthesise the story of deaths we cannot accompany, we need information. Diaries, observations, notes from care staff, phone calls: we are inventing a new practice of the Virtual Deathbed, where we accompany our beloved from a distance.
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Helping people to piece together the narrative of their beloved's dying has always been an important task. Now, it's a global necessity.
We must take bereavement care very seriously.
And we must remember that it starts with the story of their living the last part of life.
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