The Inevitability of Death – How Do You Cope?

I have an interesting relationship with death.
It doesn’t frighten or worry me and sometimes I look forward to embracing it.

I’m often told my lack of fear is due to my belief in life after death, and it may be, I can’t see it without that option. Living this life, to me, makes no sense if there’s nothing else before or after it. This life is tough and often unrewarding, though it has its moments and times of great joy, but we slog day after day doing the same things ad infinitum – so my heart and soul needs something more to come afterwards!

Many have a belief stemming from religion, but that’s not what this post is about. If life after death requires yet more conforming and duty, then right now I can do without it! I’m looking to escape into the hereafter with romance and nature and endless mountains and waterfalls… Freya chooses her own heaven in Beneath the Rainbow… but, I digress.

I’ve known death, from losing beloved pets, to relations and friends, to staring it in the face myself at my own potential hand. Death has broken me, interested me, and fascinated me.

I suppose it was inevitable that my first published work would include it. In fact, it ended up being integral to Freya’s story in Beneath the Rainbow. The very first line in the book begins with her death. Don’t think it’s blasé, it’s not. It’s devastating, but ultimately inspiring and healing.

Beneath the Rainbow © Lisa Shambrook

When I first wrote this book, the only deaths I’d known were grandparents, I was sad, but none of us had been that close. Losing my first cat was distressing in a totally different way and it broke my heart, and losing a pregnancy was utterly soul destroying. However, readers wrote to me asking how I’d known their pain, and how had I managed to get it onto paper in such a poignant and soulful way? Writers have an innate sense of empathy – and additional magic.

It is a beautiful thing to be told that you’ve helped someone’s healing. Since then I’ve lost my own mother to Alzheimer’s and then to death. That’s a story in itself. Alzheimer’s steals someone from you in increments, and when they die it is often a relief. I grieved my mother many years before death took her. Yet, I’ve been advised by many to get grief counselling, and I may still need to do that.

© Lisa Shambrook

Death is at odds with life, there will be no escaping it. I watched Grayson Perry’s Rites of Passage (on Channel 4) opening episode about death and how different cultures deal with it and I was taken by its openness, honesty, and authenticity. He visited a people in a culture who kept their loved ones in a separate room for over a year, often visited and mourned, and loved, during that time, but funerals didn’t happen until they were ready and prepared to let the loved one leave. He then spent time with a family who’d lost their son and kept a shrine and an untouched bedroom for him and another couple where the husband was dying from motor-neurone disease.

It was the final couple that intrigued me most. They had a living funeral, where all his family and friends came together to share memories and stories, and to leave physical memories in a memory jar, created by the artist Grayson, to be enjoyed by Roch before he passed away. It was beautiful and tearful.

I’m very interested in other peoples’ views of death, death itself, and how we deal with it… In Beneath the Rainbow Freya watches her family crumble after her demise and is desperate to be with them. It takes her mother discovering secrets Freya left behind before she can begin to cope with her grief and begin to heal. Freya then encounters someone else near to the end of their life and does everything she can to help him achieve his last wishes.

Beneath the Rainbow © Lisa Shambrook

How do you deal with death? My own feelings are very strong surrounding my own wishes for what happens when I die. I don’t want a funeral service, I can’t bear the thought of people who barely talk to me or share my life to gather and mourn me at a service where I’m nothing more than a memory and hymns. I want something quiet and family based with real memories and emotions, at a place where my ashes can be scattered where I loved life. I want Audiomachine’s – Rebirth from Tree of Life playing on a device on a mountain top with my family laughing, crying, and remembering me!

Death can be devastating, scary, heartbreaking, relief, inspiring, and beautiful… and many more emotions. How does it affect you?

What are your thoughts? How do you want to be remembered?
Or is it something that never enters your mind?

Does death worry you or is it just a fact of life?

© Lisa Shambrook

Beneath the Rainbow is published by BHC Press and is a novel that will completely enchant you.

Freya won’t let anything stand in the way of her dreams – not even her death.
Now her family will need to uncover the clues to her secrets before it’s too late.

“I highly recommend reading this touching and moving story of acceptance and unending love.” —LibraryThing Early Reviewers

Beneath the Rainbow is available in eBook and paperback (choose your format) at:
Amazon UK, Amazon US, and your local Amazon. Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, Google Play, Kobo, iTunes, and other online outlets.