To Die For - ELLE October 2019
Millennials may not be next in line to shuffle off this mortal coil, but that doesn’t mean we’re not ready
Maybe it’s because climate change-induced destruction is possible within our lifetimes (30 years, folks), maybe we’re finally taking umbrage against an anti-ageing culture or maybe we simply can’t resist the allure of a taboo. Whatever the reason, millennials are talking and thinking about death more than any other generation before them. In a study of more than 2000 recently bereaved people, UK funeral directors CPJ Field found that those aged 18 to 34 were more prepared for death than any other age group, while a Refinery29 survey of 300 people (mostly millennial women) found that 71 per cent had imagined their own deaths.
For $1.49, app WeCroak will remind you of your imminent demise several times a day (based on a Bhutanese philosophy that one must contemplate death five times daily to be a happy person), along with a quote, such as “Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you”. Ouch. Then there are streamlined end-of-life planning tools such as the website Cake and the app SafeBeyond. The former helps you organise your legal and financial documents and sets you up with a funeral checklist, while the latter provides a service for those who want to communicate with (read: haunt) their loved ones from beyond the grave via pre-scheduled messaging. And companies such as Everest, a Houston- based funeral concierge, are targeting millennials with slickly produced videos about planning for their digital afterlives. Via her YouTube series Ask A Mortician, Los Angeles-based Caitlin Doughty answers questions about death and embalming (her most popular video has 2.3 million views) and she now co-hosts podcast Death In The Afternoon with Louise Hung and Sarah Chavez, where they discuss everything from cremation to wills and advance directives. But conversations about what happens when we pass aren’t just confined to niche corners of the internet. Social scientist Dr Michele Knight hosts a “death cafe” in Sydney, where tete-a-tetes once considered too macabre for respectable company are held over coffee.
“People just want to talk about death without fear of being perceived as ghoulish or depressing,” she says. Visiting a death cafe, she adds, “Is the opposite: affirming, validating and comforting.”
Renee Adair, an end-of-life doula based in Sydney, says talking about how we want to journey to the other side removes the taboo of death. “When you think about death, you think about how you’re living your life,” she says. “Exposure in any topic softens you to be able to understand it more and have a different relationship to it.” She provides support to the dying and their families in the form of a medical translator, therapist, sounding board and hand to hold. “No-one wants to suffer at the end.”
Opening up the conversation means you can have control over making your death count as much as your life does, unburdening loved ones of choices during an already shitty time so they can focus on marking your life with a celebration you’d be happy with. Even if you do have to die to finally have free rein over the playlist.
BEYOND THE GRAVE:
MODERN ALTERNATIVES TO TRADITIONAL BURIAL AND CREMATION
BIOS URN
Offers biodegradable coconut-shell urns topped with seeds to help grow a tree (or you can even be put in a self-watering planter).
ETERNAL REEFS
Will mix your ashes into a special concrete to be used in an artificial reef that supports marine life.
COEIO
Be buried in a suit lined with mushrooms that will transform your body into vital nutrients to be passed onto trees.
This story originally appeared in the October 2019 issue of ELLE Magazine. Main image: Osamu Yokonami.
